Life story parts three and four

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Draft

Life story parts three and four

David: And so I went off to university. I actually don’t know where to start. This is part three, and maybe part four of my life story. Where shall we start?

Sally: I get the feeling that this might be a long part of your overall story. Tell me about your major, and where you were living, and then go from there. We can talk about things like your health, your family and your social life later.

David: Okay, we will start there. I signed up for a degree in commerce and administration at Victoria University. My majors were accounting and finance. What else happened over those two years is that Amanda and I got married, and moved in together. And my health was awful. Those are the main things. I tried a lot of things, to try to recover my health, and none of them worked. I kept on getting worse. I sought advice from a lot of family members. And also I saw doctors and physiotherapists. I was diagnosed with “chronic fatigue syndrome”, not that that label helped me at all. I had to drop out at the start of my third year. 

The cause of my health problems was mostly that cell towers sent electromagnetic signals to my body (and nervous system), telling it to be unwell. I was already unwell from the trip overseas, but the cell towers caused me to remain unwell. There was some “analogue” stuff that disrupted my life as well, such as persistent, repeated and deliberate sleep deprivation, and significant noise pollution (especially while I am trying to sleep).

**

David: Okay then, let’s get on with it.

Sally: Why did you choose accounting and finance? 

David: I didn’t want to be poor. My parents hadn’t always had a ton of money while I was growing up. They had owned small businesses, had been in debt ever since I was born, they argued about money and had always had problems with things like dishonest thieving staff and break-ins at their shops. I didn’t want to have problems like that, and I just wanted to be able to make good money without breaking my back doing it. For what it is worth, they actually won awards for their businesses (such as business of the year in Taupo), but still had money troubles. And also I had just got engaged.

I had thought about doing engineering or science. Or perhaps becoming a lawyer or school teacher. But I wasn’t so sure about those. At one point I had considered doing a bachelor of science at Massey University (majoring in Computer Science and Physics), and had actually applied for a place in the Baptist Youth Hostel in Palmerston North. Which I was offered, but turned down. I also at one point signed up for an engineering degree (specialising in software engineering) at Massey University in Wellington. But I didn’t enjoy programming, and found it to be very frustrating. I sort of loved it, but wasn’t sure about the prospect of all of that documentation! And I wasn’t sure about a life always sat in front of a computer. I had thought about becoming a video game designer, but I had heard bad things about careers in video game design. I had also heard bad things about careers in science or engineering. Such as that you need a PhD before you can do anything in sciences and that the pay isn’t amazing. Or that for engineering you have to move to new locations to find the sort of work you’re interested in or qualified for. In the end, I chose to do a business degree at Victoria University in Wellington. I had done well in accounting, economics and statistics in school, as well as in mathematics in general. So I was good at the right sort of subjects. It was all a little bit “last minute”, but it all got sorted out in the end.

On the other hand, I also wanted to be an entrepreneur/inventor. I kind of had the feeling that I ought be able to do that anyway. And also learn to do computer programming and game design as well. And do these things on my own time and in my own way. I used to say that I just wanted the piece of paper, and that I could then learn or do whatever I wanted. I was extremely confident in my abilities to learn things, make money and to be an “ideas guy”. Whether the ideas be in finance, inventiveness, video games or whatever else. But all the same while I was at university, I devoted myself, truly devoted myself to learning the stuff. I *talked* about university being all about getting “just a piece of paper”, but I actually studied and got good marks. And I did wide reading around the topics that I studied. I really wanted to learn a lot, and I was surprised by how much good stuff there is to learn at a university. I love learning and improving my mind. Furthermore, I was a firm believer in the idea that you should never let your schooling get in the way of your education, so I was always learning everything I could in every possible way, especially from books. I loved reading, and still do. And then of course I said that you need the option of getting a good day job, and accounting is good anywhere in the world, so why not do accounting?

Anyway, so I ended up at Victoria University studying Accounting and Finance as part of a business degree.

Note:  I also thought that social entrepreneurship seemed appealing to me. 

Note 2: I felt that I was smart enough to get things done and create good products and inventions, or otherwise to successfully make money. Or perhaps to solve problems for other people. And I thought I could do it no matter what degree I had. But I didn’t count on health problems or energy issues.

***

I got back from my trip to Europe early in 2007, and went to stay at Amanda’s mother’s home at 5 Weka Road. It became my home. I was sick from my overseas trip. I had been hit by a lot of things on that trip. And I was obviously sick and unwell when I arrived at Weka Road, and I remained unwell. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get enough sleep, and I was always exhausted. I just had bone crushing exhaustion and awful fatigue, all the time. I would sleep until 12 or 1 pm, have broken sleep, and be exhausted anyway. I also had the weirdest symptoms of things like dry mouth, and was always extremely thirsty, my mind was shot, and foggy. And I just felt horrible in a generalised way.

Okay, I was now in New Zealand, staying at 5 Weka Road. I was unwell. I was sick. I felt horrible. Last year I had been healthy, fit and strong. And now I wasn’t. Which was alarming. And I also couldn’t exercise. Which was concerning. I was with Amanda, and we were engaged to be married. We were going off to university soon.

I will tell you more about 5 Weka Road. It was a four bedroom house in Raumati Beach, Paraparaumu. It is about 3-4 minutes away from the shops, and about 4-5 minutes away from the beach itself. It is about 5-6 minutes walk away from where Amanda and I Iater got married and had our reception. It was a comfortable house, and fairly spacious too, with lots of natural light, and a lot of windows and ranch sliders, especially in the lounge/dining area. It had a very warm and comfortable conservatory, which I spent a fair bit of time in back then. And it had plum trees up back behind the house, on an embankment shored up by a retaining wall. The beach and waterfront near Raumati Village is very nice. We were right beside a sandy beach there. And Paraparaumu itself is sunny and warm, especially in summer (it can be a bit windy is the only issue, but it’s very nice in summer, and the wind is much worse in Wellington). Amanda had lived in Raumati Beach for years. Shane and Lesley owned the house jointly iirc. It was a nice, comfortable house, if perhaps a little cold and sometimes a little damp (especially the front room, which was just a converted garage). The property also had drainage issues, and tended to get waterlogged (the front garden/lawn would sometimes flood and stay flooded for days on end). They had four cats and one dog. I liked that place.

And so I stayed there for some weeks. It was a few weeks before University started, and then a few weeks commuting to university before I moved to my Grandfather’s house in Wellington (We called him Papa by the way, not grandpa or grandfather. From now on I will refer to him as Papa. He was my paternal grandfather, aka my father’s father). I didn’t enjoy commuting into Wellington from Kapiti. It was gruelling and I was exhausted. Why was it so tiring? I was tired because I was already tired, exhausted and unwell from my overseas trip, and because I never recovered from it. And because they kept on using these electromagnetic weapons on my body to harm me, and to cause me to directly experience fatigue. But still, all the same, I enjoyed some aspects of the experience of starting at university. I enjoyed borrowing books from the library, and going to my lectures, and buying my textbooks and course notes and readings. I really was very excited to be going to university, which sounds a bit geeky, but I thought that I would like it. There were so many things to do and to join. Which is one of the reasons that it was so disappointing, because I was too sick to do the things I really wanted to, to join clubs, try sports, meet people, make friends, network very well, join the gym, and all of the other cool things you can do at university. So I had a few or several weeks in Kapiti (perhaps five weeks, I cannot recall). And then I moved into Wellington.

Sally: How was your relationship with your parents back then?

David: Oh, okay. We will cover that briefly, and then get back to the main conversation. I wasn’t speaking to my mother (she had been horrible to me! I was so unwell! I never bounced back from that trip!). We  reconciled later that year. Things between my father and I were a little bit strained, because he never offered any support to me when it came to the overseas trip where I became unwell (or even acknowledged that I was unwell). He plainly blanked me on that trip when I told him that I was unwell. Amanda and I had got engaged the previous year, which also caused a little bit of a problem, but strangely he hadn’t kicked up much of a fuss at the time! He didn’t love the idea. But I didn’t think it was that bad. At that point in my life, I didn’t understand people like my father. I’m a fairly honest and direct person. And he isn’t (note: they attacked my physically, again and again with electronic weapons, instead of engaging in plain, honest and direct speech. And I just can’t understand people like him).

[rework the above paragraph].

My father and I talked together about my finding a better place to stay in town, and we settled on Papa’s house. He lived there with his second wife Eva and his two youngest children Marton and Andras. Papa was originally from Hungary, from which he fled in 1956, along with his Mother, Father and sister.

David: Do you mind if I describe the house for a bit? I’m trying to paint a picture for the audience that will probably be listening to this a little bit later. As well as Takeo, Murray, Sophia and Jimmy, who are all suspiciously quiet at the moment.

All (Takeo, Murray, Sophia and Jimmy): Hi David, we don’t mind that Sally is doing the interviewing. She is doing a perfectly good job so far.

Sally: Yes please? Tell me more about your Papa’s house.

David: Okay, it was a massive house that spread out over three floors and was built into the side of a hill. And it was right beside Kelburn tunnel. They had a childcare centre on the bottom floor, and on half of the middle floor. And on the other half of the middle floor they had a guest room (with bathroom) and the study. And a huge, absolutely enormous amount of mess. The whole study area and adjoining room was full of junk and miscellaneous stuff (like hoarded stuff). My room was on the middle floor. The room I lived in was the same room that my father had lived in as teenager, while he was in his late teens. And perhaps even once he had finished school and was training to be a youth pastor. Or maybe that came later. He was massively religious before he turned bad. The top floor contained the dining room, lounge, kitchen and most of the bedrooms. The family all slept upstairs. The house was old, and a little musty. But very warm. Unlike most New Zealand houses, it was thoroughly warmed and properly heated. It had a gas furnace under the stairs that pumped out lots of warm air all day long, and it wafted up through the flight of stairs between the top and middle floor. I never knew the heater to be switched off. It was warm all the time. It was never cold in that house. I guess in summer it must have been off sometimes.

I grew up visiting that house sometimes. It was one of my three grandparents homes in that town (Wellington). That is, I had three sets of grandparents living in town. I also grew up spending time with Marton and Andras. That is, as a child we spent plenty of time together. The visited us in Taupo, we visited them in Wellington. And Andras used to come to Kapiti to play Halo 2 with us. They were family. And so when my father acts like I was a “runaway”, I was actually in Wellington living at his father’s house. Marton and Andras were Papa’s second set of kids. Technically they were my half uncles, but really they were more like cousins to me. They were younger than me. We used to play together in the childcare centre downstairs sometimes, with the toys and in the playground after the youngsters had left (they had an enormous supply of wooden bricks down there). They had a very nice cherry tree beside the walkway to the door. We sometimes played with the neighbouring kids growing up there. Matthew and I sometimes stayed there for a few days. It was a part of our childhood being there. What I am saying is that we spent time with these people (later in life: Papa was falsely accused of being a bad person and a pedophile, but I don’t think he was. There was a court case. I think it was a hit job, a take down, and then he got medicated. I think it gave him dementia. Perhaps anti psychotics. Some sort of foul play occurred).

Anyway, my room was on the middle floor. In the same floor as the study, which was chocka with junk. In the study, Papa’s old welding rods (which he used to sell) were stacked in cubbies against the wall, the computer desk was covered in rubbish, the whole floor was filled with junk, and just a path to the computer existed. My room was just across from it. Andrew/Andras (two years younger) used to play dota or other games in the study, sometimes along with me. When I first moved in, I had to do school work on their PC because we didn’t have a good internet connection. We fairly quickly had better internet installed, and ran a cable over to my computer.

I played a lot of games while I was there! I admit it. I was a computer game addict! Guilty as charged! I played a lot of DotA there (back when it was still fun). And played Natural Selection, which is a fantastic game (it’s basically halfway between Quake, Counterstrike, Team Fortress Classic and Halo 2). Anyway, I played a lot of games while I was staying there.

My room had a bathroom, with a shower, basin and toilet. It also had a large windows, a closet, small wardrobe, a chest of drawers, and a desk that was falling apart. If I opened the cupboard, the gas furnace was in there. The other wardrobe contained most of my clothes. The room was overlooking the Kelburn tunnel. It was an okay place to live. But there were a lot of exhaust fumes from the tunnel, some gas fumes sometimes from the furnace. And lots of noise from the daycare next door. The food was also a joke. They sometimes served ridiculous things. 

What did they serve? Sometimes plain macaroni elbows, with grated cheese. Sometimes parsley soup. Sometimes just weird stuff. Sometimes just mashed potatoes with silver beet in it. It was odd. On the weekend I came back once and found that they had been cooking apricot chicken or something nice. Like chicken breasts baked in the oven with rice on the side? Something was off about that house. Maybe just soup with a whole onion. The food at that house didn’t make sense. I think that they used to make food for the childcare centre downstairs, and then serve us leftovers upstairs.

So anyway, I was at university.

Let us set the scene. I was living in this little room with attached bathroom. The rest of the family (Andras, Marton, Eva and Papa) were up stairs, and the dining room and living room too. Papa had dementia or something, and wasn’t 110% with it. He was also overweight, had suffered a stroke and a fall down the stairs (separate incidents) and so he lacked mobility. He was always sitting upstairs watching the TV. He just sat in his arm chair watching CNN. I was downstairs playing on my guitar, playing video games, studying, reading, and also texting Amanda. With guitar, I was looking up tabs on ultimateguitar.com, and I was trying to adjust the “action” and “intonation” of my guitar to make it sound better and function properly, just like the other guitars in my fathers shop. The guitar didn’t do well with hammer ins or pull offs, or so I thought. I also used a guitar forum and I had a big book of “how to learn guitar” given to me as a birthday(?) present by Lesley Jones, my soon to be mother in law. But I wasn’t allowed to really turn up the amp!! Because we had a childcare centre in the house, and indeed on my floor. Not only that, but the room they napped in was literally adjacent to my room. I had better internet installed so that we could better enjoy playing online games and I could more easily get school work done. I liked my readings, I enjoyed having access to the university library, but I felt just grotty and bad the whole time. I was still quite clearly unwell. 

David: So what next? … I’ll talk about my symptoms for a bit, and then what I tried to do about it. I will talk about exercise, martial arts, doctors, counsellors and counselling. I will talk about advice from family and Amanda and my in laws. And I will talk about my time in university itself.

Sally: That seems like a lot to get through!

David: Yes, well it is my life story after all. So let’s get on with it. It’s a long one!

Sally: Yes, let’s.

David: Let us talk about my health first. So I was living at Raroa Road in Kelburn. And I was going to university at the Kelburn campus as well. And I was unwell. I still hadn’t recovered from that trip to Europe, and I was worried! First of all, I was exhausted. I experienced high levels of fatigue. I was very tired. It was the new normal for me. And it was way above normal levels of fatigue. Also, I wasn’t sleeping very well. For example, for a while I would wake up exactly once every 90 minutes. Which is strange, I guess that it was electronic. I would wake up drenched in sweat as well. And it would happen again and again. I had brain fog. I had bad digestion. My digestion was very bad! And I had back problems. I don’t know how to describe them. But I just felt bad. My back felt bad, and things felt “constrained” and tight. I also had issues with controlling my body temperature, and issues relating to sweating. I got this thing called post exertional malaise, which meant that I couldn’t exercise, not really. Whenever I tried to do exercise, I felt very unwell afterwards. That means that when I tried to do things like a jiu jitsu class or an aikido class in my first trimester of university, I felt very bad the next two days. This doesn’t mean “delayed onset muscle soreness”. It is something else. It also means that when I tried to do some jogging, brisk walking, yoga classes, swimming or light strength training (such as sit-ups, pushups, squats and bicep curls) that I felt bad for a couple of days. And so I will explain those in a little bit more detail later. And I will explain how the whole health situation affected me, and I will tell you all about talking to the doctors, and to my father, to Amanda, to the counsellor, to the physio and about trying to exercise. And I will flesh things out regarding my health and symptoms in general. I will also talk about how it affected my social life and my ability to attend lectures and classes at university.

[There was also another issue when it came to exercise, which is that my neck and back were chronically tightened up (by remote control) and I just felt maybe a tiny bit constrained in my neck, back and chest. Or maybe that area was just tight. And another issue is that it seems that my iliopsoas (inner hip) and perhaps inner back muscles (such as the quadratus lumborum) were also chronically tightened up. This meant that exercise wasn’t so easy or healthy for me. I can’t explain exactly what I mean, but that it just didn’t feel good. It didn’t feel the same, and I just felt bad, wrong and exhausted. I didn’t understand at the time that they were doing stuff to my muscles by remote control. I felt merely that something was wrong with me. I can’t explain it accurately. Now the point to this paragraph is that the stuff they did to tighten up my back and neck and chest and shoulders, as well as iliopsoas, meant that I was unable to enjoy or benefit from exercise so much (or at least that it limited me in this regard). Which meant that even a 5 minute jog ended up feeling bad. The same is true when it comes to a swim, pushups, sit-ups, bicep curls and other such exercises. Those made me feel bad as well. That is the problem! I certainly couldn’t manage to do something like lifting weights at the gym, or a Muay Thai class, both of which I would have loved to do back in my first year of university - and actively wanted to do.]

Sally: Okay, so exercise wasn’t working out so great for you. It wasn’t going well. And you were still feeling unwell. You’ve been unwell since the Europe trip. And you never got back into exercise. Tell me about the rest of it.

David: Sure, I’d be happy to keep going. I will tell you more.

I guess that I still need to flesh it out a bit. I had been unwell in Europe and America. And then I came back to New Zealand, and I was still unwell. So I set about trying to return myself to health, and to get back into exercise. I also sought out advice and help from a variety of people, places and sources along the way. Here are some of the things I tried…

I went to the local public library in Paraparaumu just before term started and I borrowed some books about health, wellbeing, breathing, relaxation and posture. Such as “Posture Makes Perfect” by Vic Barker. I also borrowed a few books from the library about yoga, including Tibetan yoga. And one or two about breathing or relaxation. I have forgotten the titles of most of those books. I tried the Vic Barker posture stuff out later that year, and the yoga stuff out later that year also. I tried out the breathing exercises at some point, and the relaxation exercises too (I forget exactly when I did that). I tried a lot of stuff out over time. I forget exactly when I learned about certain things, and exactly when I tried them out, but I did try a lot of different things out over the years (and especially and including the first year).

I tried out a variety of supplements. First of all, I went into a health food shop at the mall and bought a multivitamin. And I took it for a while. But it didn’t make much of a difference. I read online that all these things do is give you “expensive urine”. That is, it just gets filtered out and excreted. I also tried a few other things such as spirulina, clolera, magnesium and zinc. But none of them seemed to do much. Some years later, my mother bought me some supplements from a company called “xtend life”, which I must have taken for about a year. But I’m not sure those did much either. And so I thought that I would take her advice and take them on an ongoing basis. She started out buying them for me, and then after a while, asked me to start paying for them instead of her paying for them. So I kept buying them and taking them. They were expensive! I used to talk to my mother a fair bit, and ask her for advice. Not so much in 2007 (we weren’t talking much in 2007. Actually, I tell a lie, we did talk a bit). But from 2008 until maybe 2016/2017. I took other supplements over the year too. And tried out health foods. In my opinion, supplement don’t do much. Or at least they didn’t do much for me back then (and why should they.. because I was being attacked!!).

But back to the exercise thing.

So… when I went to university I tried to get back into exercise. I would have liked to have get into weight lifting at the gym. But it was obviously too much for me to cope with. That was what I had really been hoping to do. I wanted to build up to squatting twice my body weight, and anchoring just over 1.5 times my body weight. While at high school I had been looking forward to having access to the university gym. But it wasn’t to be! I would also have liked to do maybe 6 months of Muay Thai (just the pad work and drills, mostly - no sparring! I had done my dash there with boxing). But that wasn’t an option either. So instead I went to a jiujitsu class and an aikido class (jiujitsu was Japanese Jiujitsu, but they’re just called it “Jitsu”. It wasn’t BJJ). Just to see if I could ease back into it, and also ignore the symptoms. I tried just one class of each, but I couldn’t manage. It was too much. By that I mean that the after effects made it not worth it. Instead of feeling good afterwards, I felt bad! And it wasn’t just “delayed onset muscle soreness” (aka DOMS). DOMS is the “good” version of feeling tired the next day. Instead of that, I felt a bad version of feeling tired the next day. Next I tried going to a couple of yoga classes. I thought that yoga was supposed to be gentle and healthy and helpful. Nope. It made me feel worse. Really, much worse. I tried both a hatha class and an ashtanga class.

What else?

I asked my father for advice. And he seemed to think that I wasn’t sick, and that it was all in my head, and that all I needed was a bit of exercise. He suggested that I try going for a swim, which I did. And then I felt worse. It really didn’t feel quite right swimming. It left me feeling quite fatigued. And it wasn’t normal, nice, ‘healthy’ fatigue like I used to get from exercise. Instead it was “yucky” fatigue. I also tried jogging, cycling and strength movements (as mentioned above). These all made me feel bad. And gave me post exertional malaise (not just “delayed onset muscle soreness”). I was a full time student at the time. I wasn’t working much. I did a few hours a couple of times at my father’s music shop in Kapiti, but I found that to be a bit taxing. It was while working at my father’s shop that he suggested that I merely needed exercise (he also suggested that I wasn’t sick, and was just “allergic” to Amanda!?). Sorry that that paragraph lacked clarity and flow. I might re-edit it.

I need to discuss the term “post exertional malaise”. Because it is going to come up again and again in future. And it is also a symptom of the condition known as “chronic fatigue syndrome” that I was later “diagnosed” with. So I will discuss the term post exertional malaise a little bit later.

As for being a full time student. I struggled to attend all of my classes and lectures, so I skipped many of them. And I didn’t have much of a social life. Because I was exhausted.

Sally: did you skip many classes?

David: Yes. It’s a funny story actually. I thought that I would be able to manage morning classes, and all of the classes that I needed to attend were available back-to-back in the morning, so I arranged the schedule so that I could get all of my lectures out of the way quickly. But then I rapidly found that I couldn’t manage. I switched to the evening streams (unofficially). But then I found fairly quickly that even those lectures were pretty taxing. And so I started cutting down on university attendance to save energy. I still did the work at home. What else did I do? I skipped as many tutorials as possible, while still meeting “terms” requirements. The quality of the tutorials wasn’t that great either, but that’s another story. I was quite dedicated and systematic when it came to study (I studied hard), but I often skipped lectures. I forget how many I skipped.

David: What other symptoms did I experience??

Well first of all…

I had terrible digestion.

Terrible!

It was awful. I had very bad constipation. And I couldn’t do anything about it. It was like a plague on my life. It was very hard dry stool. And it was all in small hard pieces, kind of like sheep droppings or small marbles. There is a chart that you’re supposed to use as a diagnostic tool. It is called the Bristol stool chart. And on that chart it would be level one. And I had this kind of stool very often. I might discuss it more later. It’s actually a pretty important part of my story. No matter what I ate, it was often bad. The symptoms were bad. I think that most of the digestive symptoms were caused by cell towers and stuff like that like. It was horrible. Just constant digestive troubles. Caused by direct action by the cell towers, that I think directly pulled moisture from my colon. There were other things they did electronically to cause the problems too. Both direct and indirect. I don’t fully understand the electromagnetic mechanisms, the radio wave mechanisms, and how they interacted with my nervous system and then my colon, but I do know that the symptoms were a problem. A massive one. I’d just be stuck on the toilet for ages, and trying and hoping for something. Again and again. And just a few pebbles. The stool was all these hard dry pebbles the side of small marbles. I would have to really try and struggle for anything. Again and again. It was awful. There are worse problems and worse examples later on though. To be covered later. 

I tried a lot of things to deal with those issues. I will give you just a couple for now. I tried massively increasing fibre (such as by eating broccoli or brown rice. I also tried eating lots of plums or kiwifruit). I also tried fibre enriched cereal, and drinking more water. Whatever was wrong with me though, I would seem to do much about it.

There were body temperature issues, problems with sweating and problems with “dry mouth”. They would sometimes make my body temperature extremely warm, and sometimes extremely cold. I am not sure how they did it. And so I would keep on having to warm up or cool down. And this was a real issue for me. And it was an issue that existed and persisted for years and years. And I would take off my sweatshirt and put on my sweatshirt again and again. My hoodie or jacket. And no matter what, I always needed to take my jacket off or put it on again and again. Always I was alternating between cold and warm.

What else? I was freezing in some places I lived, or dangerously overheating (there was a ton of that stuff in Khandallah, but that’s a story for another day. That but it way, way in the future). Also, they would make me sweat profusely, for no known reason. Sometimes I would be freezing cold, and sweating profusely. Oh, and my mouth was dry. Just always. And I couldn’t eat. Especially in the morning. And my mouth would twist up with sour food. I had to drink water or something with every mouthful of food. I actually had to skip breakfast, and significant appetite issues. For years. Years. For years I had both dry mouth and appetite issues. As for “dry mouth”, I had a routine in the mornings, where had to drink tea, wait, eat an apple, and wait a while and then eat some “corn thins” or rice wafers with cheese on them. It was all I could manage? It’s silly!? I didn’t know that were messing with me. I didn’t know what was causing all of these symptoms. Imagine the confusion for someone like me. Sick, and all of these symptoms, and no known reason why!

They also used to give me a symptom where I got stupidly hungry. I called them hungry attacks. But that doesn’t come into play while at Raroa Road. It occurs later.

They also did these attacks called “stress him”.. where they would tighten things like my neck, back, shoulders or chest. Or other muscles. But just make me feel grotty. Their label is “stress him”. But that is just a label. Labels like that don’t matter. The problem is that it messed with my muscles. It caused problems. In a variety of ways. They told me just the other day that this attack is called “stress him”, but I don’t know if it is true. I would feel these waves of tightness, or I just have tension, and I don’t know why. I think that this sort of stuff adds up. It’s awful. It takes a toll.

And there was generalised tightness. Of muscles like in my neck, back, chest and shoulders, and perhaps iliopsoas. I’m never 100% sure how all of this works. Or I often am not sure how it works. It is weird. It was chronic (I.e. long term). I think it was chronic, at certain periods. It’s hard to know. It’s just that I had massive problems.

I also had brain fog. Quite a bit of it. And I felt bad a lot of the time. Just a lot of feeling grotty.

I was exhausted. That is the most important symptom. I was tired all the time. That was the new normal for me in life: exhaustion. It was like that for years. But it was worse exhaustion than might normally expect. I even found it difficult to climb up and down things like stairs sometimes. For example, the stairs to get into the house at Raroa road and back left me feeling exhausted. Even then stairs were exhausting!! That’s the biggest symptom: fatigue and exhaustion. There were external stairs, to get up to the house. And these had become a struggle. And even the internal stairs at Raroa Road were tiring. Stairs were exhausting. 6 months ago, I was bench pressing and doing squats. And now basic stairs were a problem for me.

See below for pictures of the stairs.

Sally: that is shocking! That is a ton of symptoms. Did you not know that it was the computers, and cell towers!?

David: no. I had no idea. I didn’t know about the computerised cell towers that could hurt at the time. I only learned of them in until 2024 (I only heard of the fae in 2022/2023, I didn’t know about them before that). I repeat, I was not aware of the existence of these cell towers or satellites that could hurt you or cause physical impairment back in 2007. I only came to be aware of their existence in 2024 (back in 2023, I thought that they were connected to, or built into, the structure of the “house” itself, I did not know that they were cell towers and satellites, as well as other “mobile” pieces of equipment).

Sally: so what did you do to try to regain and rebuild your health? Or to figure out what was wrong?

David: Now what else did I do to get my health back? I visited doctors. Going to see doctors is the main thing I did to try to get my health back. Because that is what you do if you are sick and you want to be healthy: you see a doctor. And so I talked to doctors. I told them what my problems were, and asked them to do tests, and to help me understand what was wrong, and what to do about it. At that point in my life I used to have a fair bit of respect for authority, and I thought that doctors were authorities in their field, and at least somewhat trustworthy. And so I relied on them.

I believed that doctors are your first port of call if you’re sick.

I visited a doctor. She was an Indian woman. I told her that I was feeling sick and I told her my story (I probably started at the start, and worked my way through). 

[I sometimes struggle with tense, so we might slip between present and past tense here.]

I would have told her that the previous year I had been healthy, and that I had become sick while on holiday in Europe and hadn’t recovered. I would have explained that to her. And talked all about my symptoms. I would have told her that I was exhausted and suffering from high levels of persistent fatigue. I would have told her that I didn’t sleep well at all and suffered from constant sleep disturbance, and that I couldn’t exercise, because when I did, the following day I would feel like I was “hit by a bus”. And I would have told her that I was suffering from severe constipation, and explained that symptom in detail. And also that I had tried to re-establish patterns and habits of exercise. And failed.

And then what? She ordered a bunch of blood tests. And then I went to get the blood tests done. After that, I went back to her for the results. All of which were totally fine. And then she ordered more blood tests. All of which came back normal. And I had my second appointment.

I am not sure exactly when various pieces of advice or comments were given. But I will just say, that she was a very bad doctor.

She ordered lots of blood tests. Which all came back normal. She ordered blood tests for me on two occasions. We tested everything. Everything. When we got the blood tests back, she said that the tests were clear and nothing was wrongly test results. Everything came back normal. She lied to me though, and misled me very badly. She could have told me at any point what the actual cause of my health issues was/were. But she misled me by not simply telling me that I was suffering the ill effects of being harmed by cell towers. This caused me so much harm. As for the severe, chronic constipation, she said that my symptoms didn’t count as constipation, because even though it was very hard dry stool, that at least a few pebbles came out in the past 72 hours, therefore it isn’t technically constipation (it was constipation. She was just playing silly buggers when it came to definitions of constipation). She should have diagnosed it as constipation, declared that it was being caused by cell towers, and then treated it with osmotic laxatives (such as movicol, aka macrogol) and good advice (and basically by just telling me the truth).

I said to her, “what if is chronic fatigue syndrome”? I am worried about that. But she said that I shouldn’t worry about it, because chronic fatigue syndrome is a “self limiting problem”. I was still worried about it. I had heard that it was bad and never went away. And she ordered blood tests for me, lots of them, instead of simply helping me. She didn’t even have to test anything. She could have just told me. And she said that if it is chronic fatigue syndrome, that just to “start low, go slow” when it came to exercise. Which isn’t helpful! I couldn’t exercise at all! I needed some truth, and some good advice.

She was a very bad doctor. I think that I later saw another Indian woman doctor at that clinic. Similar to the first one. I would give you names, but I can’t remember them, and the university hasn’t mailed me the information I wanted. (By the way, another clinic I went to deliberately “lost” some of my records. And the records are actually very important!)

Sally: That is horrible, I don’t understand why there are so many bad and dishonest doctors.

I went to the university clinic. And I did this even though I didn’t think that the university clinic was the best one in town. But it was free. In hindsight, I would go to a proper doctor, and probably a male one. One that I pay for. Or possibly a clinic run by Christians. Never a free clinic.

I saw that doctor twice, maybe three times. I have forgotten her name, but she was an Indian woman.

I later went back to that clinic. But I will revisit it later.

I asked my dad for advice. And he suggested that I was suffering from depression. And/or that it was all in my head. And suggested things like “all you need is a good run” or “you just need a swim”. 

I did not ask my mother for advice. I was hardly talking to her. This was because she had hurt my health very badly by not letting me rest while I was overseas. I was very, very upset with her and so I didn’t talk to her for quite some time. I later forgave her for what she did, and told her so. But when I did that she made a big song and dance about how dare I forgive her for letting me travel around Europe with her. As though she was the aggrieved party. In hindsight… she had known how sick I was, and that I really, really needed rest. She knew I was unwell, because she was the one damaging me!! Using electro-magnetic weapons!! But she damaged and hurt me anyway! And then denied me rest! And gaslit me by pretending that she didn’t believe that I was sick! And then she has a go at me for forgiving her, to try to restore the relationship. It boggles the mind!! At the time I thought that she merely disregarded my health problems because she didn’t care or didn’t believe me, and that was enough for me to not be on speaking terms. But it turns out that she caused the health problems, and ignored me when I said that I was unwell. She’s awful. In so many ways.

What is next:

Amanda vaguely said a few things about antidepressants not being that bad, and being like a light at the end of the tunnel. But then dropped it. 

Now when it came to my health in general, she was supportive and nice, acting like she believed that I was unwell (I thought that it might have been glandular fever from which I never fully recovered? I didn’t know much about medicine or disease at the time). So she knew why I was unwell. And could have told me. But chose not to. But she was nice to me, and treated me with at least surface level kindness. She actually acted like she believed that I was sick. And was kind, and nice and helpful. She didn’t act like it was all in my head, or that I was faking. I relied on Amanda quite a bit. 

What else did I do? I went to counselling. Here is how that happened… I had been getting advice from other people, one of them being my father. And he seemed to think that my health issues were psychosomatic, or perhaps “just depression”. I disagreed, but he seemed to think that they were depression. He believed (or otherwise suggested) that depression can cause physical symptoms, including fatigue and the sort of symptoms that I was experiencing. But I wasn’t experiencing the symptom of “persistent sadness” that was spoke of in diagnostic manuals for depression, so I couldn’t see how it would be “depression”. If you’re exhausted, but don’t feel sad all the time, are you depressed? I don’t think so. But anyway, I went to counselling anyway. I did it just in case it helped somehow, and because it made sense to me at the time. Not really, but why not. I did it mostly to humour my father, and also to “check that box”. So I went and talked to a counsellor. Actually three of them at university, they were funded after all! And I couldn’t seem to see the same one consistently. I got bounced around a bit, and it came to nothing. In hindsight, it is because no one speaks plainly. Counselling was a bit of a bust. It’s sad, because to have specialists who listen to you talk about your problems, and then explain things in full to you plainly, that would be very useful. In theory. But they couldn’t do anything to solve my problems, or my health. It wasn’t very useful. They could have told me that my health problems and symptoms were caused by cell towers and interference with my nervous system. That was the advice and “good counsel” I needed. I was pretty unwell, and getting worse. It was ruining my life.

I thought I would try anti depressants, just in case, and also to check it off the list, kind of just to humour them (family, who suggested it might be depression). This is not a good reason to do things!! Don’t just humour people by doing stuff that doesn’t make sense! And so I tried taking fluoxetine (Prozac). The doctor prescribed it. It wasn’t good for me. It’s actually really bad for people. I took it for just a couple of days, and it was horrible. I straight away wanted to kill myself. It was horrible. I was miserable. Talking about psychiatric symptoms is weird, and doesn’t come across well, but I’ll do it. When I took it, I felt a very strong desire to kill myself. It was a very strong desire. The feelings didn’t make sense to me. But I felt a very strong desire to kill myself. And in particular I remember an incident where I was walking along Salamanca Street in Wellington (jut beside the university), and felt a strong desire to throw myself into traffic. Which isn’t normal for me! I also felt a symptom/feeling of generalised rage. And it also made my hair smell funny (this comes into the story later). I had weird chemical smelling sweat, and it got into my hair. And so, I didn’t like feeling like this! And so I quit taking the drugs.

I think that it might have been a second Indian woman doctor who prescribed them? I can’t recall. I am still waiting or trying to get my medical records.

I was no closer to figuring out what was wrong with me.

Later on, while at university, I went to a physiotherapist. But I think that was in my second year. They weren’t much help. I had a bit of a sore shoulder.

Sally: Okay, so you were unwell, and you had all sorts of symptoms. And you had tried to rehabilitate yourself and restore your health through exercise and rest. You had tried seeing doctors and counsellors. You had had a lot of blood tests, that got you nowhere. You were sick! And you tried anti depressants, which were very bad.

David: Yes.

Sally: what was your life like at the time? In other ways? It was your first year at university after all.

What else? In spite of being unwell, there were still things that I did. Because life goes on. Sort of. Ummm, I went out to student bars a couple of times with Amanda because she wanted to dance. I also wanted to experience a bit of normal student life, even though I was unwell. We took Rachel Burston once (Amanda’s best friend from High School). And Jess Mackenzie once (one of my friends from high school. I actually introduced them to one another and encouraged them to become friends. Which happened). We went out twice, maybe three times. And that about it. Amanda wanted to go out clubbing. Ummm. It wasn’t very exciting, and I was exhausted anyway? I felt tired during those evenings. And I felt tired the day after. By the way, I was religious, but there was no prohibition when it comes to mild-to-moderate alcohol consumption. I wasn’t supposed to drink heavily, and drunkenness was discouraged in the things that I read. Religious texts etc. But I tried it out, the whole going out to bars and clubs. It was meh? It was okay. We went home before excessively late.

What else, I used to commute on the weekends. Like I would go back to Kapiti in the weekends. To spend time with Amanda. I missed her. I stayed with her and her family. Paraparaumu was nice than Wellington. Wellington didn’t feel like home.

I learned to play guitar. Which was fun. I didn’t have a very high quality guitar and I wasn’t allowed to play loudly (I was living in the same building as a childcare centre when I was in Raroa Road). But I still taught myself to play on my guitar. At that point I was still a better pianist than guitarist, but I was improving. I fooled around with the action and intonation of my guitar to make it sound better. But I probably just needed a better guitar. All the same, I worked on fundamentals (while playing quietly on my amp), so that I would eventually become decent either way. The new guitar could wait. I worked fairly hard at learning to play guitar, and I was starting to get pretty decent. I kept improving at guitar over the next year or so. I did really need slightly better equipment, and a place where I could play a little more loudly. I eventually got to the point where I could manage Smoke on the Water and the first few of minutes of Stairway to Heaven. 

And then we got married. We got married at the registry office. Because you’re not supposed to “move in” together before you get married. And also we were going to live with my Nana who was living in Karori, and she was a very conservative and devout Christian (or so I thought). And so I guess we got married. We got married. We just got it out of the way so that we could live together. It’s a Christian thing. Don’t over think it, it’s a Christian thing.

And then we moved to Hathaway Avenue, in Karori. We moved into a spare room in my Nana’s house on Hathaway Avenue.

David: Do you think that we might come back to the rest of this tomorrow? It is a long story, after all?

Sally: You were right, it is a long story. I would be happy to come back to it tomorrow.

David: Yes, I think that suits me.

***

David: and we’re back.

Sally: let’s keep going

And then off to Hathaway Avenue..

A couple of weeks later we moved into Hathaway Avenue. This is my Nana’s house. It was the best place I could think of to rent an affordable place in Wellington. Although, in hindsight, we have just found a place in a flat in Wellington. Flatting would have been much better. I don’t know why I didn’t do that. But at the age, I still counted on family. And trusted family. Which is actually sad. In hindsight, it turns out that my family was pretty much good for nothing.

Anyway. So we moved into Karori, and rented a room (and a half) from my Nana.

Sally: Could you tell me about his house you were staying in. And what your life was like while you were living there.

David: Yes, of course I can. It was my Nana’s home. And it was a horrible and very hard period of my life. I experienced a very significant decline in my health. I think even my memories were fried from that period of time.

David: It was the home where my Nana had lived for as long as I could remember. I used to go there for holidays and for visits while growing up. It is a place that used to feel like home. I was very used to my Nana, and she had always been close with my father, and also when I was in my teens used to visit us fairly often. And stay with us also. I loved my Nana. The house itself was down the side of a hill. And it was just up from a stream. It had four bedrooms, a kitchen dining room and a lounge. It was a little bit… rundown? Dated? And it was cold and damp. Probably because it didn’t get much sun, it was beside a stream, and down the side of a hill. But as I said, I had used to spend holidays with her at her home. I used to chill out there reading books, playing with her Lego, playing with her cats, playing with the neighbour’s kids (I had a crush on a girl who lived there). I had fond memories of Nana serving me breakfast at Hathaway Avenue. Even though it is kind of silly. She had a favourite way of serving breakfast, where we had Weetbix covered with a sprinkling of sweeter (more expensive) cereal like nutrigrain, followed by toast with peanut butter and Vegemite, cut into little squares. What else? We were in a spot surrounded with hills and staircases. Like, there was a staircase to get up to the street, and a bit of a walk to the bus stop. Which is important, because things like ordinary stairs or hills had become a difficult thing for me. It was a place with fond and good memories for me from childhood. It’s actually a nice place in my experiences as a child. I just want to say that again, I loved my Nana, and it was Nana’s house, where I had stayed many times in the holidays, and visited many other times.

David: So Amanda and I moved there. And I was as sick as a dog. I felt unwell. They kept doing electronic things to me. And I got sicker and sicker. Similar symptoms, but more tightness in my neck and back. And worse sleep. We were together, which was nice. But I was unwell! I should post a picture. As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words. Here I am at the time:

Picture of me from Uncle David’s stash of photos.

Sally: So how were things between you and Amanda?

Not good. Well, on the one hand, it was nice to be with her. I loved her, and we were together. And to not commute to have to see her. But on the other hand we had conflict. I thought it was just the sort of fights you might have right after getting married (we technically had just got married). But she was a new Christian. So I thought that may have been it. As it actually happens to be, she was just a bad egg all along.

We fought! And argued.

Okay: so I was a Christian, and I almost always assumed good intentions on the part of other people, by default. For example, I was golden rule oriented. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And so when we fought and argued, I assumed that she was a good faith actor. Which might seem bizarre or naive. But I should mention that she came from a bad family, and a bad environment growing up. So I made allowances for that. We just fought and argued. But I was a good faith person, and very honest. And she wasn’t. But I didn’t notice. Just read that again.

I had read a book about marriage (lent or given to us by the Cottons, who had done Amanda’s pre-baptism course. The Cottons were a respectable family in our local church). I think that it was “The Marriage Book” by Nicky and Sila Lee. And from that I was led to believe that it isn’t uncommon for there to be conflict early on in marriage. But anyway, I had university to attend! And material to learn, and tests to take. And so life goes on.

Sally: Were you very unwell while you were there?

David: Yes, I was very unwell. I even looked unwell. I would be quite happy to post pictures of myself too. I look unwell in those picture. My shoulders are all bunched up too. I look awful. What else… 

How did I pass the time while I was there?

I played the computer game Natural Selection. I played the piano and guitar. They didn’t have proper internet there when I moved in. I don’t think that they had internet installed at all. And so I had fiber optic internet hooked up to the house. This was important for both gaming and study (it was also important for communication, and also googling stuff to try to find out why I was sick). Amanda and I studied together. We did plenty of school work. I was teaching myself to play Stairway to Heaven. Or trying to! I was teaching myself to play Moonlight Sonata on the piano. But I struggled to focus while doing these. Especially playing the piano. But I couldn’t understand why! 

Please note: yes, I did learn to play guitar and I did practise the piano. And yes, I did make progress, it is just that it was hampered a bit. I was able to play the first couple of minutes of Stairway to Heaven, and ditto for Moonlight Sonata. I also had issues with my neck, shoulders, chest and back being tightened up while trying to practise. Which meant that it just wasn’t the same. It really wasn’t as fun as it should be to practise these things. I love music! 

Amanda and I were planning out our wedding. We got married legally at the registry office, but we still had an actual wedding planned for the 19th of January. Like a proper wedding for guests and stuff later. That was the plan from well before the registry thing. We had been planning the wedding for ages. We ended up treating the event on the 19th of January 2008 as the real and important thing. We were kids, well not really kids. But still fairly young. And so I guess people ended things when young.

Chang!of topic, I was really unwell. I couldn’t sleep well at all. I just plain couldn’t sleep. It was horrible. I didn’t have a decent night sleep at all. Every night. I think I only had ONE good night of sleep while I was there (I slept in a different bed, in the spare room, just in case it was partner disturbance, and I had one glorious perfect night of sleep. Only six hours, but it was the only good night of sleep I had had in ages. Basically I crept off and had a nice night of sleep). Overall though, I was exhausted, my digestion was awful (really bad symptoms, so bad) and my neck and back felt bad. I also had some other symptoms. I was cold a lot of the time, and lost weight, and I couldn’t seem to get warm and stay warm. And I think that the cold was unnatural (radio wave induced).

They tightened my back up long term here, I think. And I couldn’t sleep properly because of this. And my shoulders were wrong. I will put a picture up. And I had skin issues, and exhaustion. And moisturiser made my skin worse. I am not sure if they gave me skin issues on purpose though. Incredible exhaustion. So I just played video games. I wasn’t very sociable.

My digestion was horrible.

I came to believe that I was gluten intolerant. It was suggested to me by Amanda that this was the case. Or her mother, I forget which. I tried it out, and it seemed to make a difference. But perhaps some of the symptoms were caused by cell towers. Or maybe lots of the symptoms were related to cell towers, and so when I tested gluten intolerance, I thought it made sense?? I think they lied to me, and misled and deceived me: I eat gluten containing grains, and then I get symptoms, and then I assume the symptoms are caused by the food. It’s a scientific test. But actually, it was subverted by messing with the testing instrumentation. That is, my body. They subverted the test, by directly causing me symptoms using cell tower signals.

Anyway, the digestive problems I had were significant. And untreated. And didn’t respond well to fibre, water consumption or plums, prunes or kiwi fruit (all of which are supposed to help).

I reconciled with my mother. That is that I forgave her for harming me by not sending me home during the Europe trip. As a Christian, I felt that it was important to forgive her. At the same time. I think that she may have been still upset with me for getting engaged all of a sudden without even checking with her. But there are also other, long standing issues in that relationship too.

[Also, unbeknownst to me she had been harming me very badly and electronically in the past! And continued to do so in the future. Additional note: years ago, when I was younger, I had been told that she had been unfaithful to my father, and this was the cause of their divorce. And because of this, I had nearly cut my mother out of my life entirely. We were Christians, and adultery was a big deal. This is a very, very important part of my life story. It would have been morally right to do so. It was out of compassion and mercy that I kept her as a part of my life. And it was often a close run thing. They split when I was about 13.] - my father told a lot of lies about all of this, and my mother didn’t correct them. She played along.

We worked our way through the year at university, both of us studying fairly hard, and then I finished university for the year, with straight A’s. My marks were good. Just fast forward a bit. I had to skip a lot of classes and lectures.

Now as for exercise, I tried to get back into it and failed. Again. I just wasn’t well. This is before we finished university for the year. But I tried. What did I try? I tried doing yoga from a book, even though I had already tried two yoga classes in the past. I borrowed a book of yoga from the Karori Campus of Victoria University and then I printed out a bunch of “achievable” poses.  But they didn’t work for me. I think that it was the tightening in my back/torso that did it. It just felt bad afterwards, and the exercises didn’t help. I also had “post exertional malaise” afterwards. I tried doing breathing exercises from yoga as well. Aka pranayama. I did some stuff from a book called “Posture Makes Perfect” by Vic Barker. And some other stuff. The posture exercises (stretches) made me feel bad. They were supposed to stretch the neck (especially sterno cleido mastoid), the hamstrings and the iliopsoas (I think). That book also talked about shoes, raised heels and the effect on gait. I think that the book is at least 50-70% false. But I did chin pushbacks, sit on bench hamstring extensions (sit on a bench and extend the legs), and leg kickbacks, place hands on a bench and kick back the whole legs. This was supposed to improve posture, and therefore breathing. But it did nothing to help, and actually had a very negative effect. It made me feel _horrible_. Also, I tried going for walks up along Hathaway Avenue to the top of the hill and back. I did this because I had previously tried jogging and found that it was too hard for me. And that I was extremely tired all the time. And so I tried walking instead. And even walking and hill climbs don’t work or help!! It was supposed to build strength or resilience. Or fitness. But it just made me feel worse. Everything made me feel awful, and I kept on getting post exertional malaise (I felt like I had been “hit by a bus” after exercise). And so trying to get back into exercise, or to improve my health through stretches, yoga, breathing exercises, posture exercises or vigorous walking didn’t work for me.

I actually felt very unwell here. It was an extremely horrible time in my life. I lost weight. Somehow, I think that my memories didn’t fully form during that period of time. Some of it is kind of blanked out. I think my mind must have been a little bit fried back then.

And then the next challenge after that was to… make ends meet. It was holidays and my student allowance paused over the summer. If I had been healthy, I would have loved to have worked full time. And I could have saved up some money. But I couldn’t work full time. I was too unwell.

I got a job cleaning houses. At first I tried to do fast food. I did one afternoon of work, and went home and went splat on the bed. I don’t like doing jobs in fast food. And so I tried to do cleaning jobs instead. It’s crazy though, the previous year I had been able to handle things like boxing, running, jump rope, pushups, sit-ups, weightlifting and anything I wanted. But now I couldn’t even manage a few hours working at Burger King without feeling awful. Anyway, it was just a trial. Fast food wasn’t for me.

I then used a website/service called student job search to find some cleaning jobs, and pieced together enough income to survive. But cleaning houses was _brutal_. It was actually quite hard. It was exhausting. We had money. But I was exhausted. And so anyway, I pushed through. And it wore away at me. It took its toll. I was too much of an Ayn Rand fanboy to just get welfare. I probably should have just gone on welfare. I was even losing weight. I think that this period of time caused significant long term harm. At the same time, we were planning our wedding and honeymoon. And one more thing, I kept getting hit by cold rays. Or at least I think that I did. Or maybe the house was just extremely cold. I never know for sure.

We had Christmas in the Wairarapa, with Amanda and her family. They were my soon to be in laws. This includes Shane, Ken, Natalie, Lesley, Megan, Simon, Terry, Allison. I liked her family. And they were both welcoming and nice to me. Which is sad and odd at the same time. Because the whole thing was so dishonest, and then I ended up getting crippled over time!? But I wasn’t crippled on Christmas Day of 2007, which was nice.

And then it was time for our wedding. We got married on the 19th of January 2008. We did so at the waterfront cafe and kitchen. Well actually, we did so on the beach just across the stream from the bar and cafe. There is a little bridge. I think that it might still be there. And so we got married! Which is insane. But that’s life. Mike Hocking officiated. We had about 60 guests. We had a paid photographer and catering. Amanda’s Aunty Megan made a chocolate wedding cake. Someone paid for a significant bar tab, because Amanda’s family drank. The whole day went pretty smoothly. I will try to find some wedding photos. All I have are a bunch of photos from my uncle David. These have been posted, but they aren’t always good photos.

And then we went on a honeymoon to Australia. We went to Surfer’s Paradise, in the Gold Coast. It was very hot. I’ve been to Surfer’s Paradise before. I’d have been just as happy to have gone somewhere in NZ, but Simon and Terry paid for us to go to Australia (Amanda’s Uncle and his partner Terry, now wife). It was very generous of them. While we were over there, we were both a little unwell, especially Amanda (I think that she was faking being ill though). This meant that we couldn’t do some of the stuff that we wanted to do. Like go to amusements parks (such as Dreamworld, Movieland, Dreamworld, Australia Zoo, Wet and Wild or Seaworld. We did some fun things though, like look around shops and go to a few tourist things like a mirror maze. I wasn’t really well enough to enjoy any of those places, but I could possibly have coped with going to Australia Zoo, or walking around movie world. We didn’t have enough money to do all of these attractions though, anyway. By coped, I mean push myself to get through the day. Sometimes I just pushed myself to get things done, even though I was feeing unwell. But Amanda was unwell too (she said that she had sinus issues) and some couldn’t do anything much. Truth be told, I have forgotten much of it. And as I write this, my mind feels a little bit blah. By the way, “pushing through” often leads to negative effects. It actually takes its toll on your health.

And so we got back from our honeymoon, arriving back in New Zealand. We were still students living at my Nana’s house. And we felt that we needed a better place to live, and neither Amanda or I liked Karori very much. The place we stayed at in Karori was cold, damp, isolated and far from everything (it was also very lonely). And I had been quite unwell there! And Amanda’s Aunty Megan offered us a place to stay in Mount Cook. It was a studio apartment, and a rental. And so we took it. And then we moved into an apartment on Hansen Street in Mount Cook, Wellington.

Sally: Please tell me more about the apartment.

It was a one bedroom apartment on Hansen Street. It was right across from a bunch of student apartments (the Drummond Street Apartment Complex). It was a stone throw away from the Adelaide Pub (which was a fairly notorious pub back in the day, or so I am told). It was reasonably nice inside the apartment. It was clean and tidy, and fairly new/modern. It looked nice, and Amanda’s Aunty Megan didn’t need it. She had decided to move into another part of town to flat, because she claimed to be experiencing “mortgage stress”. Whatever that means? In hindsight, probably she felt that the apartment was a lemon, a dud. And just wanted to live elsewhere. And also, I think that living there was supposed to be unpleasant for me? I’m not sure. Perhaps it was rented to us as a way to stress me out, wear away at me and cause me hard. To stress me out or deny me sleep. But anyway, she rented it out to us. 

But anyway, we moved in… it turns out that it’s extremely noisy!! There were very loud, very annoying road works planned for Adelaide Road, late at night. There was construction to both the left and right of us, that started early-ish in the morning. One block of apartments was going up. And another block of apartments was being repaired and renovated. And the Adelaide Bar was extremely noisy on Friday and Saturday night. And our neighbours across the hallway were noisy too, and liked slamming the door and yelling “goodbye” very loudly at night. Constantly. I think they were Chinese. And the door dampener didn’t work, for the door to the staircase. And we were right beside the stairwell. It was noisy. And not that nice living there. And there was no double glazing, which might have helped with noise from outside. And the garage door was noisy, for the basement garage. And the student accomodation across the lane was noisy. The only thing to do with an apartment like that is move out. It was horrible. It was so noisey.

It was my year (or more like 8 months) of no sleep. It was horrible. It was very bad for me. But it wasn’t just sleep and noise. It was…. Other symptoms from cell towers. They tightened up my back (aka torso) in nasty ways. And then I couldn’t sleep so well. And also Amanda had a bad habit of deliberately tossing and turning to wake me up! And I just couldn’t sleep much! I didn’t  realise at the time that she did it on purpose. But in hindsight, she was doing it on purpose. And she stole blankets. Furthermore, I got hit by symptoms that fried me a bit. From the cell towers. I was really unhappy with it. I wasn’t sure what cause it. I started to think there was something like mould, spores, or chemicals making me sick in the apartment. The previous house, Hathaway Avenue, had been a bit mouldy. And I thought that mould there had harmed me. I even threw stuff away just in case it was chemical or mould!?? And so I became paranoid about things like mould, spores and chemicals. I had symptoms that included a scratchy throat by the way, and prickly skin. 

Soooooo. What did I try to fix my health? Well, here is another thing. I tried an allergy test (it came back more or less negative, no major allergies). And I did a few sessions of the Alexander Technique. Strangely enough, the Alexander technique relieved by symptoms very, very powerfully. Why did it remove my symptoms so effectively? Perhaps it was because my symptoms included the tightening of my back (aka torso) using my remote control weapons (neck, iliopsoas, chest, shoulders and upper back). And when I went to the Alexander technique lessons, it greatly relieved the tension. And did so very swiftly. This is because they turned off the machines. They had to. That is how it worked. Also, the Alexander technique works to relieve tension in things like the neck. It’s a weird type of body work, sort of. It is a type of training. It’s very powerful, but I think it can be used in really, really nasty ways. It is similar to qigong or yang style t’ai chi (see the ten rules of yang t’ai chi).

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Let us discuss the good points of the apartment, and so on… The good side is that it was warm. It was warm and comfortable. It was bright and airy. The kitchen was perfectly adequate, and the shower worked well and it had warm water. It was fairly close to multiple bus stops. It had a balcony. Downsides, the blinds broke and weren’t fixed. The tapware broke, and our landlord never fixed them. Unlike Karori, it was nice and warm. And it was close to stuff too.

And I worked a bit. I cleaned houses and offices. It was bad for me, so I cut down on it a bit over time, until I stopped doing cleaning altogether. I was actually really quite unwell, but I felt obliged to “push through”. Even though it was actually harming me. I found a bit of work tutoring a high school student (Ambika Saha). And I had some part time work from my lecturer Martin Turner. He gave me a (paid) job. He wanted someone to prepare spreadsheets for him to use as a resource for/with his students. I had to take a bunch of balance sheets from various companies listed on the NZ or Australian stock Exchanges, and input numbers from them into a spreadsheet, to be used as a sample for his students in his financial statement analysis classes. He taught “fundamental analysis” in the paper ACCY306. See also: Graham and Dodd. He wanted to have a big file of them. He still uses a similar batch of documents for his classes as far as I know. I also worked as a tea attendant. Where I made tea in the afternoons at the university. It seems like a funny job, but they paid me to do it. I was exhausted all the time. They kept on doing stuff to me electronically. It was a horrible period of time in my life. But I just pushed through and I kept getting worse. I think that “pushing through” can make you worse.

I studied hard, and did well academically.

What shall I do next? I might just talk about my health in 2008. Talk about health.

The apartment was a place where I got hit with a lot of symptoms, and suffered from a lot of sleep deprivation. Some was sleep deprivation due to electromagnetic means directly hitting upon my nervous system, some were was due to noise. Some of the sleep deprivation was due to Amanda hogging the blankets. But they actually did a lot to me by remote control nervous system attacks.

What else?

I played computer games. I played guitar. I got better at guitar. And I tried to get my friendship with Ben Jack going again (he was my childhood best friend), but it floundered. I was too tired to be sociable. I spent some time reading. Things kept on carrying on. The fact that I spent weekends in Kapiti meant that I didn’t socialise enough. And so I didn’t really make new friends. I had lost weight. I still saw my family a bit. By the way, I was on speaking terms with my family. I was losing weight and getting weaker! Which was horrible to me. Absolutely horrible.

I enjoyed my studies at university. They were actually quite interesting. I learned a lot. I did some financial accounting, management accounting, corporate finance, tax accounting, audit, management studies and a few other things. And I did both my readings and Amandas. I was getting back into reading for pleasure. I always enjoy learning new things and reading about new things.

I also had to review a lot of material from sixth and seventh form before I could tutor Ambika. She was a really easy student to teach by the way. She practically taught herself. Although perhaps I actually did a good job and was helpful. She was a student at Queen Margaret’s college in Wellington. It is a private school and is the best girls school in Wellington. She ended up being top of a few subjects in her final year. She was top of economics, top of English, top of accounting and she also won the “scholar award”. Next, this is an awkward topic, but she was a lovely young woman and a good student and I didn’t have a crush on her. It wasn’t even on my radar. I saw her only as a student. But because the world is the way that it is, I have to say it.

Anyway, it was a _hell with no sleep_. That was the Hansen Street apartment in Mt. Cook.

My year of no sleep.

Sally: Literally no sleep?

David: Haha, no. Not quite literally no sleep. But it was pretty significant sleep deprivation. Sometimes it was all I could think about. Sleep and exhaustion. There was no way to get rest!!

Now as for the next issue, our car. This is a strange one.

We had issues with someone moving our car (Elmo). We kept on finding that the car had been moved. And then we would have to hunt it down. You see, we didn’t have a parking space in the garage. Or probably we did, but didn’t know and weren’t told that we had one signed. So we had to get on street parking (you need a special council pass to park in that area, which we bought). And so we parked on the street. 

People kept on moving it. Tradesmen and other worker seemed to be doing it. Using road works as an excuse. There would be road works, and someone would move our car. We would find it a street over, or three streets away. We once found it across town in the parking lot for Te Papa, the museum. I don’t think that there was always road works on the street where it had been parked either. I think they lied. In the case where it wound up by Te Papa. I had to call the council to find out where it had been hidden. I think that these incidents were all done on purpose, and I think that my father and brother were behind this one. We were being harassed via our cars.

And then it escalated, and someone lit our car on fire. Sorry, that was sudden. You’re supposed to write things a little more smoothly. There was an arson attack on our car, and someone set it on fire. And the whole thing was a burnt out husk. It was really annoying. We relied on that car quit a bit. And so we were carless. And it was quite upsetting! We just got a call one day, and they asked if we were the owners of the car with a particular registration, and then the person said that it had been lit on fire over night. And we went out to see it, and found that it had been destroyed.

We were not enjoying living in Mt Cook. It was horrible, and so noisy. And we were spending weekends in Kapiti anyway. We spent the weekends at Amanda’s mother’s house or grandparent’s house. In the end we were leaning towards moving home to Kapiti. On the whole, I hadn’t enjoyed Wellington very much. And my health had become much, much worse.

We spent the weekends in Kapiti. With Amanda’s family. They treated me like a part of their family. Or so I felt. It turns out that they were all fake!

It was kind of sad, my university experience. I just couldn’t enjoy the things that I wanted to enjoy. Or do the things I wanted to do. I was too tired. I was exhausted and unwell. Like joining clubs, socialising, working more hours, and having more fun. There were tons of things I wish I could do.

***

We moved back to Kapiti halfway through the second trimester in 2008. We kept going to university, as usual and as expected. But now we were commuting. She commuted as far as the Kelburn campus (that is an additional 30 minutes into town), but I commuted only as far as the Pipitea Campus (right at the train station). We both studied fairly hard. Well, Amanda studied hardish. And then after maybe 3-4 months of living in Kapiti, we had our end of trimester exams, and finished university for the year. I got good marks, and Amanda passed her papers fairly comfortably. But we’re back in Kapiti, which was nice. Kapiti feels a lot more like home. I suppose I should tell you more about the Kapiti Coast sometime, but perhaps I will do that in the notes. The house in Kapiti was quite cold. We had to use the fire place quite a bit. I never could quite figure out why that place was so cold, physically. But it felt more like home in general. And once the fireplace was going, it was fine. I was also able to spend more time with friends and family there. Or so I thought. The funny thing is that I moved back to Kapiti just as my father moved away from Kapiti. His music shop failed, he got married to Vivian, and moved to Lower Hutt, and moved to a spot up in the hills, largely inaccessible other than by car trip. So even though I moved back to Paraparaumu, my father had moved out of town. I missed my father. One of the good things though is that we were able to start spending more time with friends from high school and church again. And so we started spending time with people like Jesse Orchard, Aaron Oldcorn, Nathan Thatcher, John Cosgrove, Lauren Cosgrove, Ashley King. And their families too, a little bit. Including the Orchards, who had been part of my life since the age of 15. We were also able to resume regular church attendance. I was going to church at the CCC. I think Amanda petered out of church attendance somewhere along the way.

While living in Paraparaumu, I visited a few doctors at the University medical clinic at the Pipitea Campus. I saw a male and a woman. The male was white, and the woman was Chinese. Her name was Dr Susie Poon, and his name I cannot recollect. I told them about my health problems. But the doctors were useless. I told them a bunch of stuff. And also asked for more tests. Nothing came of it. I asked them for help, but they didn’t help me. They pretended that there was nothing wrong with me. They both (of course) knew what was wrong, but let me in the dark. I probably would have told them my whole story, start to finish. But I cannot recall. I am still trying to get my notes!

What else? I tried to revive a habit of having a shared lunch with an open invite after church. Here is how it is, we used to have this thing called “youth lunch”, for the youth group. And so I revived it. And was youth lunch, but without us being young any more. The name didn’t make sense anymore, but the idea was sound. And then we did it and let it going for a fairly long  while. But basically after church we all went to the shops to get something to share/eat, and then met up at someone’s house afterwards. We rotated whose house it was at. And after lunch we did something like cards, board games or video games (for example, Bang!, Catan or Guitar Hero). Sunday lunch was a very consistent habit.

So anyway, it was the summer of 2008/2009. My health and well being improved with the warmer weather. And I think that I had some Alexander technique lessons, which relieved tension (but also they switched off the machines during the sessions, only to “re-tension” my back in the days or weeks after I went to the sessions/lessons.. it is complicated). Here is how it was: I had electronically created remote control tension in my neck, back, hips, torso and overall body, and then I went to these sessions, and the moment they started doing stuff, I felt better. I felt better because of two reasons: firstly the lessons themselves relieve tension in the neck and back. Secondly, they switch off the machines that by remote control had created the tension. The relief of the tension was as though it was by magic. Again, I apologise for the inconvenience of coping with my poor explanations and descriptions. But anyway, the lessons made me feel wonderful. I couldn’t explain it, but they made me feel like a human being again.

And then I needed to plan out the following year at university. But I wasn’t sure if I could manage. So I tried to see if I could get an appropriate diagnosis, so that I could get permission to study part time and still attend university. I went to Doctor Susie Poon at the Victoria University Medical Centre. And I got a medical certificate recommending that I be able to study part time while still receiving the government student allowance. Once I had this, I planned out my next year. The diagnosis was for “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I think that she was the first doctor to diagnose me with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I am still trying to get copies of my medical records from that period of time.

The plan was to study part time. Actually, it was to choose a level and quantity of study that was just under part time. I think it was five papers instead of six. But maybe they were easier papers? I don’t know. It was a less tough year. But I also had a part time job tutoring at the University. I had two classes of accounting students, which meant that I was getting relatively good money for non physical work, AND I got paid for time spent on preparation and marking. No more cleaning jobs!!

What next. I had the whole year planned out, and things were looking bright. I wasn’t 100% well, but I felt much better. Or at least much better than I was. And I felt pretty positive.

And then I went to a birthday party. I got something like the flu, and took a couple of days off. And then someone blasted me with radio waves and electro magnetic attacks to make my illness worse!! I didn’t know that it was electronic. I just got damaged heaps by it. And then I was sick and dropped out of university (I got a full refund). So I got the flu, but someone leveraged that and used it as an excuse to blast me. And then I got sick. And thoroughly so. And so I quit university. I dropped out. I had already been unwell for ages. Perhaps I should have stayed enrolled, and pushed through, and adopted an attitude of “C’s get degrees”. And skipped my classes, and coasted. And just missed the first couple of months of university. But I thought that I was better off dropping out. But also that I could take a full year to fully recover, and then go back the next year. Don’t forget, but at that time I had been unwell for two years, without any real understanding as to why.

What else did I do?

Because I was now no longer a student at Victoria University, I switched from being a patient registered with the medial clinic in Wellington to being a patient at KYS (Kapiti Youth Support). I saw Dr Amanda Clarke, and relied on her. I went on a bit of a long term mission to figure out what was wrong with me. And we did a bunch of tests and checked up on everything. I knew I was unwell, and I knew that was sick. But I didn’t know what caused it. I saw her a lot of times, and I saw specialists at Wellington Hospital, and her choice of physio at TBI.

I thought that I might need to rely on a doctor’s clinic back home in Paraparaumu rather than the doctor’s clinic in town. The is why I switched to a new clinic. But I think that I chose the wrong doctors.

And I also was still tutoring. I kept that job. Because it was just one trip into town per week, and two one hour sessions talking to students. I could do it even with very low energy levels. And I got paid for all of the preparation time, which I could do at home.

I enjoyed my job tutoring. It was easy, and enjoyable. My students rated me highly. And as I said, I was only required to actually be at the university for two hours once a week (if I remember correctly). The rest of the hours could be done at home, and carried out in my own time.

And that was it. That was how I dropped out of university. And become a university dropout, not a student. They just damaged me so much that I couldn’t study anymore. And it was horrible. I was too unwell.

I was a good student. And an intelligent man in general. But my days of studying were over.

I also couldn’t work a job. I was unemployed and unemployable. Technically, I did do a little bit of part time work. But only just. And not many hours.

And so I became unemployed and unemployable, and unable to study.

And I think that we should leave it there for now.

I am planning to write up a few more parts to my life story soon.

*****

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Notes

1-8

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Note One:

Amanda and Religion

Amanda became a Christian back in high school. I met her when we were fifteen. I had just moved from one town to another. And I didn’t know anyone. We up ended sitting together in mathematics (they put me in mainstream math, ugh, I had done very badly in the streaming test for reasons I have explained elsewhere). She and I were also in Accounting and Japanese class together. We quickly became friends.

She was a troubled girl with a less than ideal upbringing. When I first met her, she had claimed that she was molested by her step father (her mother’s ex husband). She lied by the way, which is a disgusting thing to do. She also told me that her father was an alcoholic and had exposed her to drug use. She had a lot of stories about her father, who she really didn’t seem to like.

Amanda also engaged in self harm back in high school. She cut herself with pieces of glass. At one point she had cuts all over her arms. It’s horrible.

She was vaguely associated with the same set of people who also went to the Coast Community Church, without being one of them. She had gone (on occasion) to church events or evenings, but it wasn’t her cup of tea. I was an attendee of the Coast Community Church. It was my “home church”.

When she was about 17 or 18, she became a Christian. Partly I think it was because her Nana Kath suggested it and gave her some religious literature, and partly because I invited her along to church. Her Nana Kath was a good influence on Amanda and encouraged Amanda to become a Christian.

We believed in things like salvation and the forgiveness of sins. And of being a new person. She came along to church with us. She was baptised. The idea is that you are saved, forgiven, and that your sins are washed away, and that you have “become a new person in Christ”. She did a pre baptism course with the Cotton family, who were a respected family at our church. She was baptised by Stan Rolston, one of the longterm elders of the church (a brief note about elders: we were an elder led church, not a pastor led church. All of the elders had either day jobs or ran small businesses. Being an elder was a part time thing for them. Stan was basically one of our part time pastors).

Amanda and I were the sort of couple who talked about religion or belief often, and would pray before bed. I used to read and study the Bible often.

We even volunteered to help out with the youth group. And participated in running and planning out events. That bit was in our twenties. This was me and Amanda. Rachel Burston (Amanda’s former best friend) got involved in this too, even though she was irreligious. Volunteering to help out with the youth group didn’t stick, because I was too unwell.

*

A bit more about Amanda’s family

Drugs, Alcohol and her Father

Amanda’s father (Darryl) used to drink a lot. It was a problem. According to Amanda, her father passed out drunk a few times in front of her. It was so bad that on one occasion she thought he was dead. There was also another occasion where he locked her in a room and then also got drunk. And then she had to climb out of the window, to go home. She was a child at the time. And that after that incident she decided to stop seeing him, and didn’t visit for him a couple of years. She also said that he exposed her to the use of illegal drugs. She said that his friends were doing drugs in front of her when she visited to stay as a child. The story is that as a child she would be there, and his friends would just be doing drugs in front of her. Passing around joints or perhaps worse. And she said that when she stayed with him as a child, the house was always cold, dirty and horrible. She said that they didn’t have enough blankets or bedding, and that the blankets and bedding that they did have were gross. And that she didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in the beds at his place, and that they had to make cocoons of blankets that she brought from home. What else? He was a punk and had actually joined (or started) a punk band named “Goat Rider”. The name of his band was “goat rider”. He was the front man, aka singer. They had a stage show in which he used to ride a rocking horse with a goat’s skull on it while breathing fire. And on one occasion, his hair caught fire because he was breathing fire while he had a lot of hair product in his hair. They showed me the video once. He had since quit drinking and become a Christian, and even a pastor (I forget his rank) in the Anglican Church (he was a member of St. Mark in Raumati Beach). He later got a masters degree in theology. He worked as a typesetter (or a similar role) for the nursing council of New Zealand (they are the regulatory body for the registration of nurses in New Zealand). He had dropped out of university in his twenties, but later finished his Bachelor of Arts in his 40s. He got his drivers licence in his 40s. He loved punk music. Here is a link his webpage https://sermoncentral.com/contributors/darryl-ward-profile-61924

Daryl and Lesley got together when she was 18 and he was 21. Approximately that age. I am not sure exactly how old they were. And then they decided to have a child on purpose. This is because he was a punk and she was insane (and a lesbian). Amanda was born, and then Amanda’s mother tormented Darryl until he left her. I think she wanted to raise a child on her own, rather than with a man. Lesley went on the DPB. She did her best to ruin his ability to get custody. And he paid a lot in child support. He got really into men’s rights etc, and that sort of thing. Perhaps the cause of the breakdown in the relationship is that Lesley thought that he was pathetic and useless. Or perhaps she just tormented him too much until he left. (There was an incident where he was too afraid of heights to climb up a ladder to change a lightbulb, and Lesley and Megan bullied him over it. Or something like that). Looking back, they’re both awful people, they like being awful, and they actively want to be awful people.

Amanda and I used sometimes to go to the Sunday morning Church service at the St Marks Anglican Church in Raumati Village. Darryl would preach there on occasion. Amanda said that she preferred that church to the CCC. Her father lived in a house literally adjacent to it.

[picture here]

*

Alcohol, Casual Sex and her mother

Her mother was an alcoholic also. But according to Amanda, “never used to drink around Amanda” when Amanda was growing up. Lesley drank way too much all her life, and she still does, as far as I know. She also was a neglectful mother who didn’t feed Amanda proper food. And used to feed her too much sweet stuff. Amanda ate too much junk food when she was young. And even had to have baby teeth removed due to excessive consumption of sugar, and lack of dental hygiene, resulting in massive decay and the loss of teeth. And this led to her adult teeth growing in wrong and crooked. She was a bad mother. Next, I think that Lesley was a lesbian (secretly). Sort of. Technically I don’t actually know what she was, probably bisexual. But probably I would call her a lesbian. She had a boyfriend, Shane. Who worked for the NZ army as a commissioned officer (communications). And then worked for the ministry of defence, in security (information technology). He had TSS (top secret special) clearance. He then worked for BNZ (the former state bank of New Zealand) in security. He liked computers. Back when I was with Amanda, I assumed that Lesley was straight. I had no reason to think otherwise.

Lesley is not a good or sensible person. For example, I think that she has slept with Brynn. I don’t think that it was a healthy environment to grow up in. Lesley is quite the swinger.

Amanda grew up in an irreligious household, and her upbringing was perhaps very secular. Her mother engaged in casual sex and encouraged her daughter to do likewise, which she did. Amanda later converted to Christianity and left that lifestyle behind (it of course hardly need be mentioned that everything Amanda ever said or claimed about being a Christian was nonsense and lies).

*

Mutual friends and church people

We had some friends in common with one another when we got together. And there was some crossover between friends and “church people”.

Firstly, Jesse Orchard was a mutual friend, his father, Geoff Orchard, was (and is) an elder. I think that he may have been merely a deacon back then? But I cannot recall. 

Jesse and I became friends back at the age of fifteen. He was a “leader” in the youth group iirc. He and Amanda knew one another growing up. Jesse was a Christian.

Nathan Thatcher was also a mutual friend and a Christian.

Nathan and Jesse were both school friends and church friends of mine. Ditto for Ashley King. John and Lauren Cosgrove were church friends of ours also. And used to come to lunch every Sunday as well, for a while. Jesse, Nathan, Ashley, John and Lauren Cosgrove were all Christians. A lot of mutual friends and acquaintances visited our church, or attended it. If even for just a couple services, or a few youth group events. It was fairly popular back when I was 15/16, and Andrew Crawshaw was still running it. Rachael Burston came along a bit as well. She was Amanda’s closest friend in High School. Sorry if I jumped all over the place chronologically, but that is the nature of things.

**

Note Two:

The Orchard family

The Orchard family consisted of Geoff and Christine Orchard, David Orchard, Karl Orchard, Jesse Orchard and Annalise Orchard. Geoff was the father of the household and Christine was the mother. The others are siblings.

I spent plenty of time with them both as a teenager and afterwards. When I first moved to Kapiti, my father was a member of the CCC (before switching to the Meadows Pentecostal Church). Dad encouraged me to be a part of their life. They were a prominent christian family at the Coast Community Church.

I used to stay over at their house. I stayed with them plenty of times. Sometimes for days on end.

Jesse Orchard later married Natalie Hymers. I used to work alongside Natalie Hymers as a cleaner. We both went to Paraparaumu College. And we both went to the CCC youth group. She was later a flatmate of ours, and very difficult, filthy and messy. We worked to basically “house train” her. She was a friend. Her mother and step father were meth addicts who abused and neglected their children. I thought we were doing her a good turn (a good turn never goes unpunished).

Geoff ran a joinery, the orchard joinery. It was the family business. Christine worked in the joinery a little bit too. But was mostly an office worker and home maker. Their family was briefly over in Papua New Guinea as missionaries. Also, Jesse used to attend the local Christian school which used to have the ACE system. The local Christian school was located on Tutanekai street, which is exactly right beside KYS, the local free youth medical clinic. The local Christian school got shut down before I moved to Kapiti.

David Orchard married Emma (I forget her maiden name), who had previously dated Andrew Crawshaw. Andrew Crawshaw was the youth pastor for a while at the CCC. And baptised me. Andrew Crawshaw later boarded at our house, and has also worked for my father. He is a musician, and also ran a music shop for a while in Kapiti. David Orchard became a youth pastor. He and his wife worked at “Kapiti Impact Church”. And then worked at the Zeal Youth Development Centre. He is now working at his father’s joinery, as the manager.

*

What else?

Fake Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Both David Orchard and Jesse Orchard faked having “chronic fatigue syndrome” and/or “post viral fatigue syndrome”.

David Orchard faked having cfs back when I was about 17-19. He had months and months of it. He had to quit his job, and it was horrible. People acted as though he was dying, or that he was experiencing something like terminal decline. He just slept all day, and couldn’t do anything. He was married, and his wife Emma had to support the both of them. They moved as a couple up north to Auckland, because they wanted to work in ministry. And then while he was up north, a pastor prayed for him, and he was miraculously healed. It was at a healing meeting at a pentecostal/charismatic church. He was healed just in an instant. He actually gave a talk up front in the CCC to tell us all about his miraculous healing. It was a big deal. He went from sick and feeling awful, to being out-and-about and exercising again. Just straight away he was doing stuff like kayaking and getting fit. He actually did have problems for years, and eventually had a shoulder surgery. But I’m not sure if the shoulder thing was related to the cfs.

I also stayed with David and Emma for about 3-4 days when I was 18. He just slept all day. How it happened is that my father went away for a week, and needed a space for me to stay, because he didn’t trust me to stay home alone without him for a week (!!!).  I was put into Jesse Orchard’s house for that week. My father and Jesse’s father arranged it. They had known one another for a fair while. But then Jesse’s grandfather died and they needed more space at the Orchard’s house for visiting relatives. And so I ended up staying a few nights with David and Emma Orchard, at the house where they were house sitting. It was a fairly nice house, with a nice pet dog. And only 5 minutes walk away from my usual place of residence at Linwood Drive. Anyway, he had “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” and was very unwell. I say faking, but I think he actually had symptoms. And that his symptoms were electronically induced. He looked unwell. He looked awful, dreadful, or whatever adjective you prefer.

Jesse faked having CFS when I was about 19-21 (I can’t fully recall exactly when he “had” it). But anyway, he became sick. Natalie and he had just become a couple. She was his girlfriend. And then he got sick. And he had about 18 months as a sick person. I forget exactly how long. But I was sick at the same time. We were friends and both sick. He played a lot of World of Warcraft. He rode on his exercise bike (graded exercise therapy), to prevent de conditioning, and he took Powerade which he made from powder to maintain electrolytes. He went to many, many doctor’s appointments. And he got a lot of blood tests. His brother used to drive him to appointments. He was as sick as a dog. He did balance table therapy as well (which just made him unwell). He lived at home with his parents. He probably had electronically induced symptoms.

As part of his story, he claimed that he was healed through prayer. He said that a counsellor prayed for him, and then he was healed miraculously. And suddenly. That it was like Isaiah 40:31 “but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint.” He told me at a Bible study at Jared and Amanda Doncliff’s house that he had suddenly been healed, and quoted that verse. I was fairly sad at the time, because I had really wanted to become healthy again! To be well and not sick any more. I envied him. Even though you’re supposed to be happy for other people. We had both been simultaneously sick. In hindsight, it had been fake (an electronic simulation/stimulation).

But then he later changed his story to say that it was just counselling and quitting world of warcraft. He also said that playing world of Warcraft gave him a “false sense of achievement”. What else? He had later stints of poor health in his life, and he never really did much in life. He did a diploma in IT in his late twenties. He was a high school graduate. He and I were friends. He was my best friend in high school. Which is complicated thing, okay? Because it was like.. by default? Because who else would fill that slot? Aaron? Amanda? Max? I felt like we weren’t hugely close, and I didn’t know him perfectly well. But who else? I definitely wasn’t his best friend, that seemed to be Chips (aka Jono), or “tall Daniel”, or Chris Westwood. But he was mine. Probably I felt like my closest “friends” were my family.

Chips was one of Jesse’s friends. He liked footman frenzy, and other Warcraft Three: Frozen Throne based games. He had a car, and used to drive people places. His real name was Jonathan East. He went flatting for a bit with Jesse and (tall) Daniel up in Palmerston North, which was a bit of a debacle. He tried to do an OE in the UK, which was a disaster. And then worked as a call centre operator for WINZ for a number of years. I probably don’t actually need to mention Chips.

By the way, I used to rely on people like Jesse Orchard and Geoff for advice. Geoff was supposed to be a “good Christian man”.

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Note Three

Christianity

I was a Christian, and quite religious. It’s difficult to explain that now. Because I’m on the outside of that whole thing, looking back  in on it. I’m on the outside looking in, if that makes sense. And some of it is good, and some of it still makes sense to me. But some of it seems odd. And I have also have had a thoroughly horrible life in some ways.

So anyway, I was the type of person to do daily devotionals, read the Bible every day. I had Bible reading plans. I went to church and youth group. I kept attending church as an adult. I read Christian books, and borrowed books from the church library. What else? I went to pastors and elders for advice. David Walker and Jesse Orchard were both pastor’s kids. Mike McHocking was a pastor, and a family friend. And their family was important to ours. I didn’t trust non Christians, and I mistrusted liberal Christians. I went to Bible studies (such as the one ran by Jared and Amanda Doncliff), and even invited Jenna and Natalie along to it. Jenna briefly became a Christian, but that fizzled out. I was often to be found lying down in the middle of the lounge floor in 5 Weka Road, in front of the fireplace, reading the Bible. Accompanied by one or more cats. Later in my life I would listen to Christian podcasts and recorded sermons as a way to pass the time. I listened to an audio Bible recording, I listened to sermons, and I listened to ministry podcasts. I also grew up going to the parachute music festival. And I memorised scripture. I even had flash cards. And had a prayer journal, at one point.

Amanda and I were the sort of couple who talked about religion or belief often, and would pray before bed. I used to read and study the Bible often.

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Note Four

John Jennings

I used to believe that it was important to have good people to talk to. Good Christians who you can trust. And there was this guy at church, John Jennings. And he had been friendly and kind to me on a number of occasions. For example, I had shown up at church on a couple of occasions too late for “youth lunch” when I was a teenager. And he offered to have me around to he and his wife’s house for lunch instead. Which I thought was very kind. He was also a greeter at church. As an adult, I got to know him a little bit. He had Amanda and I over to his place for dinner once (and he came to my place once also). And it was this idea I had, that you’re supposed to have good people able to speak into your life. To offer you advice and guidance. So we put ourselves out there. Anyways, he was the guy in our church who ran an ersatz Christian book shop. At dinner, Amanda and I told him the story of how we got married, and also how my health had fallen apart. That I had been diagnosed with “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” by my doctor. And that I was now a university drop out, chronically ill and unable to work. He also showed me his shelf of Christian books for sale. He happened to have a copy of “Where is God When it Hurts” by Philip Yancey. Which I purchased. He also lent me a copy of “Exploring Church History: 20 Years of Christ’s People”. Which I later returned to him. In hindsight, nothing about anything he said or did was real. All fake. It’s sad.

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Note Five

What is the Alexander technique 

The next paragraph is taken from this link: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-alexander-technique-can-help-you-literally-unwind-201511238652

“The Alexander Technique (AT) is considered to be a mental discipline that teaches individuals how to let go of tension in the body and how to enable the body to move with ease and minimal effort. AT is used to treat a variety of conditions, from musculoskeletal pain and repetitive strain injuries to breathing problems, voice loss, and sleep disorders. Many artists, musicians, dancers, singers, and actors use AT to help enhance their performance. The purpose of AT, ultimately, is to enable individuals to methodically unlearn maladaptive (negative) habits — which can show up in the way we stand, sit, eat, walk, or talk — and instead learn how to return the body to a relaxed, balanced state of alignment and poise.”

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It helps to relieve excessive tension in the neck, back, chest and shoulders. And can bring about a tremendous reduction in symptoms.

When I did it in the past, it helped to make me feel a lot better. It makes symptoms go away.

I think it might be a scam or charlatanry though. Sort of.

I will talk about it more in future.

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Note Five

Physiotherapy

I saw a physiotherapist in my second year at university for a sore shoulder. He was a student physiotherapist.

Physiotherapy didn’t work, the Alexander technique did though.

I had hurt my shoulder moving from Hathaway Avenue to Hanson Street (I caught a small set of drawers awkwardly when they were tossed to me, and my right shoulder had gone “crunch”).

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Note Six

My in laws

We (Amanda and I) spent weekends in Kapiti, often with Amanda’s family.

I rapidly became part of Amanda’s family.

I would go along to their weekly family dinner, and also to lunch at their house on the weekend. I would go to Christmas Day with their family. Which was sometimes held in Paraparaumu, sometimes in Foxton or the Wairarapa. Christmas with Amanda’s family was usually pretty good. They were welcoming and made me feel like I was a part of the family. I will talk a little bit about her family here. And I intend to talk more about her family later on. I liked her family. 

Her family included:

Lesley Jones (working in Information Technology)

Megan Jones (chef)

Allison Jones (delivers mail)

Simon Jones (sells photocopiers)

Terry Shubkin (engineer, and then CEO of the Youth Enterprise Scheme, now CEO of business Wairarapa)

Natalie Bowles (retired school teacher) (deceased)

Ken Bowles (retired bus driver)

Lesley was my mother-in-law, Megan and Allison are Amanda’s aunts. Simon is Amanda’s Uncle. Terry is Simon’s wife. Natalie Bowles is Amanda’s late Nana. Ken is Amanda’s (step) grandfather.

Darryl Ward

Natasha (teacher)

Maria Ward

Ludmilla Pyochechyta (spelling?)

Nana Kath

Darryl is Amanda’s father, Natasha is Amanda’s step mother, Maria is Amanda’s half sister. Natasha is Russian and from Kazakhstan. Nana Kath is Amanda’s Nana, and Darryl’s mother.

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Note Seven

I will include a few maps or pictures of Paraparaumu (or Kapiti Coast as a whole), so as to give people some feel for the lay of the land in general.

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Note Eight

Intentions: what I intend to write about later, or what I hope to be able to write about later 

I saw a ton of doctors throughout 2009 and 2010. This started out with my seeing doctor Amanda Clarke at Kapiti Youth Support (KYS) in 2009. She was my GP (general practitioner). I told her about my health problems. And told her my full story. She ordered multiple rounds of tests. And was unable to tell me what was wrong with me. She diagnosed me as having chronic fatigue syndrome. But she also secretly put the words “mild depression” into my notes. She then started to refer me to specialists and other old university friends of hers in Wellington hospital. The first specialist was a neurologist working at Wellington Hospital named Dr David Waite. I saw him, and he recommended that I take anti depressants, in tiny doses (amitryptaline). He also did things like test my reflexes, given that he was a neurologist. And ordered blood tests. Technically he wasn’t a full specialist, but rather a GP working in the neurology department of Wellington Hospital (he was basically a neurologist). I think that I saw him twice.

I later saw Dr Paul Roberts. He was a doctor in the outpatient clinic of Wellington hospital. He was technically just a GP, but was supposed to be the guy to see for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. He was practically a specialist, according to my GP. I saw him perhaps three times. Dr Amanda Clarke sent me to him.

Thirdly, I saw Dr Alistair Neill. He is a specialist in the respiratory department of Wellington hospital. He is a fairly prominent doctor and researcher. By the way, I didn’t know at the time that he was a fairly prominent doctor and researcher. And so anyway, I had a sleep study. It was an overnight one with all of the electrodes attached to your scalp.

Did the sleep study help me? No, not really. Did the sleep study help me to figure out what was wrong with me, or what to do about it? No, not really.

I will discuss this all in future (I hope!).

Next, I told Dr Amanda Clarke that I had some back problems. In response to this, she referred me to The Back Institute (TBI) on Rimu Road. In hindsight, they were horrible and dishonest. They failed to help me, they kept me in the dark. And they actively harmed me with their advice.  I’ll write about it more in future.

I want to write about all of that that later. But that belongs in parts five and six. Parts five and six should hopefully cover 2009 and 2010.

Also visited a lot of physio-therapists, both in 2009 and 2010, but also over my life in general. Including 2011 and 2012. But I don’t remember when all of these occurred. I think May happened from between 2009-2012. I hope to write about these also.

And so by the end of 2010, I was really sick and not improving. I was unemployed, unemployable, and unable to study. It was horrible. I will write up parts 5 and 6 sometime later.

In 2009 and 2010, I was sick. And getting sicker and sicker.

In 2009 and 2010, I was going to lots and lots of people for advice. But they kept me in the dark on purpose. Including ministers, doctors, family and friends.

I am hoping perhaps to write an additional post about my relationship with Amanda’s family, and my place in her family. I did marry into her family, after all.

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In parts five and six, I intend to write about the times I went to the elders for prayer and advice, especially regarding my worsening health problems. Including going to the Elder Geoff who has had two sons with CFS.  Both of whom recovered. And one claimed that it happened by miraculous healing. I might also talk about the time he lent me a book that was anti “Freemasons”, and talked about breaking intergenerational curses associated with freemasonry.

In part seven (or later, which might cover from 2011 all the way until 2014), I might write about the time I reached out to Stan Rolston. I needed advice and guidance. I was very unwell, an invalid, and getting worse.

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Another note:

I was experiencing fatigue all the time. Like the symptom of fatigue. All the time. Or pretty much all the time. Like, not LITERALLY all the time. But actually all the time. And I had a bad night sleep every day. Almost every night. Almost.

It was noteworthy whenever I wasn’t fatigued.

What else…

When I stayed a night at Dad’s one time, the fatigue vanished. This was 2007. That was noteworthy. Another time I slept in the spare bed in Karori, and had a good night sleep. That was different for me! Two nights in the Wairarapa over Christmas to see Simon and Terry. A break from feeling awful. Or maybe it was just one night. One night staying in a place called “under hill cottage” in Wairarapa for Mum’s wedding. 

They caused sleep issues all the time, and fatigue just allllll the time. It was the normal thing for me.

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A few photos:

Which photos have I included?

I have included…

The house at Raroa Road (Papa’s old house). The stairs that were exhausting back in 2007! Some maps. And a couple of pictures from our wedding. Then one from our honeymoon in Australia. And then one is just a picture of Amanda (at the age of about 21). Just because. There is one of me at my Nana’s house, with family (in which I am quite unwell). There is a repeat of the picture from my honeymoon. And then one picture from my mother’s wedding. And there is a picture of me sitting at the computer at my father’s house. I think we were having a LAN in late 2007 or 2008 (yes, I was still spending time with my family, more about that later, I hope). There is maybe another picture from my wedding, one more from the apartment, one from the Hathaway Avenue, and then another more from the wedding. And one of my making chicken. And then some stuff about marks in university and high school). I hope to tidy this bit up later.

Here are some more pictures showing you Raumati Beach and Kapiti in general.

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Here I am at my Nana’s house in 2007/2008:

Here I am at around the same time, at my mother’s wedding, held in Featherston on the 12th of January 2008:

Here I am a week after my mother’s wedding, on my honeymoon:

I don’t look well in those pictures, in my opinion.

Here are a few more pictures from around that period of time:

My father’s hours in January of 2008. We had a LAN there. I left my computer there when Amanda and I had our wedding and then honeymoon. Andrew, Ben, Matthew and I played games together. We played Warcraft. Also had a different set of people over on another day, and we played half life.

Another one from my wedding, 19th January, with my grandparents

One at the apartment in mt cook, Hansen street 

One more in Hathaway Avenue, my Nana’s house:

One more picture from my wedding:

One more from the apartment, making chicken.

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Ps: 85 or above is an A+; 80 - 84 is an A; 75-79 is an A-. 50 percent is a C. I think. B+ is a 70-74. I forget the rest. Maybe a B is 65 to 70. And a B- is a 60 to 65. And a C is 50 to 60. I think there was no such thing as a C plus or minus. Anything below a 50 is a fail mark.

Information science award was for computers in sixth form. But it was a combined 6/7th form computers class. I just took it in sixth form, and won it. It was a very good place, albeit disorganised. It included Boolean algebra. The senior mathematics prize was for being the overall top of mathematics in my final year of high school (it was the prize for combined statistics and calculus, even though I didn’t take out the top prize in either statistics or calculus). The price Waterhouse economics prize was no big deal to me. The national bank prize for economics was simply winning the top prize for economics in 7th form, my final year of high school. I was top of physics in 6th form, but not 7th form.

The brown family scholarship was $500 cash, the nzqa scholarships for statistics and accounting were $500 each.