When I got to sixth grade, schools were integrated, and I went to the white school, where racism was a problem. The white kids made fun of me. The boys picked on me and called me names. I was called “Boy” and crazy. Girls laughed at me because I was too shy to talk to them. I know at this time I was messed up real bad with mental illness, as far back as 1960. As time went on, I would get worse. The teachers thought I had a learning disability but didn’t want to help. They would just give me a zero and forget about it. All this happened from 6th to 8th grade. Then I had a teacher named Ms. Luman who helped me get to the 9th grade.

I had been drinking from the age of 12; did not know about dope, but would put aspirin in cigarette lighter fluid, put it on cigarettes and smoke them. I rolled up paper, held it to my mouth and sprayed Pam (and sometimes paint) through it for three seconds, and blacked out. At 13 years I tried pot, which I needed more as time passed. By the summer of 1975 I smoked pot every day, drank beer, wine, whisky; took pain pills, LSD, cocaine, heroin, angel dust, speed--anything I could get.

By 1976 I did not know what was going on, drinking and doing drugs every day from 1975 on. When I was real young, my brother had hit me on the right side of my head, close to the temple. A year later, I started having migraine headaches, and for a long time would see colors—red and blue. During the 80s I was on a pill which made me sleep all the while. I was in the bed and did not want to take the pill. My mother told my brother that I would not take the pill. My brother came into my bedroom and hit me in the face, and I hurt real bad. I told him I would kill him if he hit me again, and the abuse stopped for a long time. He would still get drunk and act wild. When he got married and had kids, he did not drink as much. Still to this day, when he drinks he gets crazy. I don’t think he will ever stop drinking. This causes trouble with his wife, but for me, I have forgiven him.

Another brother would jump on me and put me in the floor; would talk real mean to me until he died. In the summer of 2014, this brother had come to Jesus, his Lord and Savior, which made me feel good. There were eight of us kids; I was treated bad by all of them because I had mental disorders. When I came back to Silverton, weighing 113 pounds, I had low testosterone, high calcium and a staph infection. It took a long time to get over this, with the Lord’s help.

The drug problem got really bad, and in 1980 I did not know who or where I was. My dad and brother asked me if I wanted to go for a ride, and took me to MHMR (Mental Health and Mental Retardation) in Plainview. I had been on that road many times, but thought I was going to France. I found out that I had three mental disorders--bipolar, schizophrenia and dyslexia. 10 times I was in a mental ward; once in the Pavilion in Amarillo; in Vernon Center four times, where I was beaten up. Released in about 1986, things were still bad, growing worse, and I could not cope. At night the family would put me out and I would walk the streets around town. People would come to the house and say that they were going to kill me because I was sick, would talk about me and call me names.

But I know the Lord Jesus was with me. I went back to MHMR and started to get help; I moved back to Plainview; lived in a half-way house and three other places until 1997.