I figured I had three options: kill myself, live as a criminal, or sell my soul to the devil in exchange for power. But one Bible verse which my first heard in my theology class in college had stuck in my heart: Matthew 7:7, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” That verse kept me from killing myself or giving my life to Satan because it made me think, “How will I find what I’m looking for if I kill myself?” Whatever it is I’m looking for, I just had to go on.
I finally gathered my last ounce of strength and said to myself,” I have to muster all the positive thinking and mind power I have and beat this. I can’t go on like this.” And i did just that. I straightened my shoulders, cleaned up myself, and looked for job until one day I got myself a job selling expensive cookware. I began to have a measures of success again. I stopped smoking, stopped drinking, and stopped cursing.
About a month later, I said to myself, “I can do it after all! So maybe I can smoke just one stick of cigarette and one joint of marijuana. I know I can handle it. May just one bottle of beer.” And as I began tasting the “prohibited” things I had weaned myself from, I found myself enslaved to them once more. I threw is the towel and said, ‘That’s it! I’m defeated. I’ve tried and I can’t get out of this.”
So one day I woke in a daze. I didn’t want to move, I didn’t want to eat, I didn’t want to talk. I just sat on a chair, my eyes staring into blank space, in the house of my relatives in the slum. As they were talking with me, I wasn’t responding. I felt I had reached my end. I’m just going to waste away in die.