Testimony.
I was born July 6, 1990 in Central NJ and christened Melanie Dorothy Wright. I had the standard middle class family, went to a good school and was raised in a Baptist Christian church. In hindsight, it all sounds so easy. But somewhere along the way, everything went from easy and standard to very dangerous and complicated.
The first time I can remember hating myself, I was 12 years old. I felt like an outcast, in both my home and in school. At 6 years old, I was diagnosed with a skin disease called Vitiligo. The result was that my skin was that my skin began to change from a dark brown to a pale white in small patches at a time. My immune system was attacking my melanin and killing it off. While it confirmed to me that my immune system worked well, it also changed my life forever. In the early years; I looked a bit like a Dalmatian. Almost a decade later, the disease has leveled off. I’m almost all one color.
My mother was a wreck when I was diagnosed. I think she thought my life was ruined. At the time I was an ignorant child, I thought that the way people looked at me didn’t matter at all. To ignore the hurt I felt, I pretended that it wasn’t there at all. Even now, the revelation shocks me. All the time that I thought that I was okay, I never was.
I’ve never believed in God, I believed that I was bigger than that. I didn’t need some ancient old Man to rule my life. I was more than capable of living my way and making my own rules. In an attempt to concrete my physical rejection of God, I sought to extend it to the spiritual realm as well. I renounced God in my thoughts and actions. Every thing that I did was a literal rejection of Him. But that wasn’t enough. Back then I said that I was Wiccan, but it was really much closer to being a Satanist. I wanted so much to rebel against Him that I went to the complete opposite side of the spectrum.
During the years that I was actively renouncing God, I was also struggling with my sexuality and self mutilation. When I was in 7th grade one of the only good friends I had, came out of the closet. Soon after, I did as well and so did the rest of my tight knit circle of friends. We began to inter-date, a small group of flings that never really progressed past the kissing and hand holding stage. When I ran out people to date, I turned to the last possible source of romance: my best friend. She and I dated on and off for a few years.
In the 9th grade, we ran away from home together and were later apprehended and put into separate mental hospitals. After we were released from the hospital, we never spoke again. Later that year, I dated a girl that I had met my first year of high school. She fell in love with me. Later, I broke up with her and she tried to kill herself. Her parents blamed me for it and placed a restraining order on me. Soon, she moved away. I turned to drugs and liquor to fill the void that had been steadily growing in me.
Around the same time, I also developed an eating disorder. Between the copious amounts of cocaine I was doing and not eating I got very sick, very fast. In the time period of two months, I lost almost 30 pounds. I wasn’t thin by any standard but the way I was treating my body began to take its toll on me. My self esteem continued to plummet, my drug use increased and so did my self mutilation.
A boy I met but had never really known named Emerson suddenly took notice of me in our junior year of high school. He befriended me and began talking to me in English everyday. The first time he ever brought up Jesus, it was through a message on Myspace. He wrote a parable of sorts, relating my relationship with Jesus to that of a boy and his father. I ignored his email and only took notice of his use of the word “love”. Towards the end, he wrote that, “God has placed this awkward love for you in my heart.” That was so weird to me; I had never really been loved outside of the context of my family. I didn’t understand the concept of love. A few weeks later, he began talking to me about a band called mewithoutYou that I was unaware was Christian. After I was basically addicted to the band, he began talking to me about the biblical symbolism in the songs. From there on, we began having daily debates (arguments) about God.
Our relationship grew and soon I was very close to his best friend, a girl named Emily. I began hanging out with her a lot. Unbeknownst to me, the both of them had been praying for me to come to their youth group for quite some time. As we became closer, she began inviting me to their youth group every Friday night. Every week I had an excuse, be it a party or something completely fictional. Finally when my desperation and depression had reached a head, I agreed to go one day. The instant I stopped being so afraid, I was transformed. People who knew me two years ago barely recognize me now.
I’ve been saved 3 years now as of February 2009. Since graduating highschool, I’ve moved to Kansas City, Missouri. I did a 6 month internship in July 2008. At first, I only planned to stay here for six months. After I completed my internship in December 2008, I moved back to New Jersey. I recently moved back to Missouri after a six month stint in New Jersey. My time in New Jersey was difficult and almost ended up with me losing my faith.
