Hope Remains

By Lee Timmer

Hope Remains is the second book in the Hope series, A Journey Towards Hope being the first. The book tells of Lee's struggles with schizo-affective bipolar disorder and how he copes with it. He wants to inspire others with his own thoughts on mental illness. Lee also waxes poetic about several other topics in the book including love, compassion

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen House LLC
• Release date: Jul 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781951961596

Lee Timmer

Lee Timmer is the author of the Hope series of books. He was born in Gladstone, Michigan and lives currently there. He wishes to inspire those suffering from depression and other mental illnesses with insights gained from his own struggles with those disorders. Lee enjoys reading, time with family and friends and spending time with his dogs, among many other things.

Book preview

Contents

Chapter: The Second Descent

Chapter 2: Again I Rise

Chapter 3: Caring

Chapter 4: The Love

Chapter 5: Desire To Help

Chapter 6: Thoughts Create

Chapter 7: Traits and Characteristics

Chapter 8: The Tangibles and Intangibles

Chapter 9: More About Me

Chapter 10: Hope For The Future

Chapter

The Second Descent

Ahem...now where was I? Ah yes, the last time you saw me I was recovering from major depression and getting along just fine. So why another book? What happened? Well, to put it simply, I took two steps backwards and fell into a hell of my own making. Not long after I finished my last book, perhaps the most frightening thing that could ever happen to a human mind happened to me; I began to hear voices in my head.

When the voices first started, I was in denial. I passed off the occasional word or short phrase off that I heard in my mind to my imagination. One weekend, after a visit to my grandparents, I returned home and that night I lay in bed and found some peace. I thought to myself, The voices are gone. It was at that moment I knew something terrible was happening to me. It was the first time I put a label on what was going on in my mind and after that night of rest, my fear began to rise (I was later diagnosed with schizo-affective bipolar disorder).

Now, before I take us any farther, I would like to say it is painful for me to recall this time in my life. But I know I must go on, because of my desire to help others like me know they have the chance to recover and to show others who are reading for different reasons how I arrived at my present state of consciousness. With that being said, I can tell you my prevalent state of mind during this period of my second descent was one of fear. Terror really. I had no idea why this was happening to me.

I was afraid I was going crazy, but at the beginning my fear level was so high I didn't tell anyone what was happening to me. I just grinned and bared it. An earlier version of myself would have sought a way out, but suicide never crossed my mind. I didn't know it at the time, but I was stronger than I realized because of my triumph over major depression only six months or so earlier. The hope I had found only a short time before the voices began would be my strength through a torturous ordeal that was just beginning.

As in my last book, I will be putting poetry before you, describing how I felt about my life at certain points over the last six years. I should note that during the initial part of my struggle (and the worst parts also) I did not write any poetry. I did not do any writing, period. As I think about it now, if I had written back then during my worst struggles, I believe I would have been able to face them better. But hindsight is 20/20 and all that. So here is my first poem. Enjoy.

Hope Remains

When I am feeling blue,

I recall all that I've been through,

I remember the suicide try,

And the dreams where I always fly.

I know there has been confusion,

Amidst all my past delusions,

The voices I sometimes hear,

And when I begin to have fear.

There is power and strength in me,

This is something that is plain to see.

For all the pain I have felt,

I am still me and nobody else.

I have found the love in my heart,

So it is time to make a new start,

Towards the life of my dreams,

And to you I say, Hope Remains.

Looking back now, I believe I know what triggered the voices to start. I think it was an overload of my mind by my spiritual practices and the new thoughts I was beginning to think as I rose to hope after battling major depression for so long. In order to help the reader understand, I will describe in more detail what I mean by spiritual practices and new thoughts.

For many months before the voices began, I was doing many things differently in my life, perhaps too many new things at once. I was meditating, weightlifting and doing yoga everyday, eating much more healthy, and beginning to think brand new thoughts as I first began reading about the law of attraction. All these things certainly sound positive enough, but we must take a step back and realize all of these things were completely atypical for me. Before doing these activities, I was drinking a lot, lost in a world of depression without hardly any productive activity of any kind. So starting all of these positive activities at the same time, I believe, was a massive shock to my system on a physical (I lost nearly 40 pounds in just a few months), mental (realizing my thoughts become things and like attracts like: the law of attraction), emotional (I was letting go of a painful past) and spiritual level (I was meditating many hours a day and having many spiritual experiences).

I believe this complete reversal of lifestyle happened to quickly for my conscious mind to keep pace and I broke down, the voices I started hearing were the effect. I need to tell readers that none of the voices I heard were ever threatening or particularly menacing, but just the fact that I was hearing inner voices that were not my own conscious thoughts was (and sometimes still is) fear-inducing and intrusive. During my struggle I had brief glimpses of freedom from my auditory hallucinations. Here is a poem describing one such period.

Voices

With a hard knock on the head,

The voices disappeared,

God had answered my prayers,

And then my new life appeared.

Living with voices,

Is mental torture,

But I survived and was healed,

And became just that much stronger.

You will never understand,

The pain I endured,

Almost every moment in agony,

With the past was I tortured,

But with the grace of God,

I was given another chance,

To live a new life,

To dance a new dance.

If I made it through voices,

You too will live through your pain,

If you just have faith,

God will bring peace to your brain.

This poem was written during a three month long period of time where I was free from voices. As is evident in the poem, I was overjoyed by a miracle of healing (temporary, but I still was ecstatic during it). The story behind this poem is simple enough and is told in the first line of the poem. I hit my head very hard on a supporting beam in my homes basement and the voices disappeared for about three months. This may seem hard to believe for some, but that is exactly what happened.

Continuing on, after the voices started I began meeting with a spiritual master my mother introduced me to. He helped clarify what was happening to me in a spiritual sense, and did much to show me how to be a more spiritual person. During one such visit with him and his wife, I was particularly distressed and I decided right then and there I had to leave. Not just leave his home, but leave my home as well. Essentially I was in fight or flight mode, and I chose flight.

I packed my car full of what I though I would need for the trip, picked up my dog and took off. I ran away from home at 31 years of age. Sounds kind of silly, right? But that is what I did. I told no one I was leaving. This was a selfish decision on my part, as I was living with my mother and grandparents and somewhere inside my deluded mind