Life Story, Parts Three and Four

Life story part 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 of university 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, and 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 (I cancelled it before term started). 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, inventing things, innovation, 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 just getting “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. It was a bachelor of commerce and administration majoring in accounting and finance.

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, way back then. It is made mostly out of brick, and it is carpeted. 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 in winter, 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? It was tiring 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 Paraparaumu (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 at the time (she had been horrible to me! The trip to the USA/Europe was awful! I was so unwell! I never bounced back from that trip! And she still pretended that nothing was wrong!). We  reconciled later that year. She was also still upset about my getting engaged (disclaimer: now of course everything about my mother was dishonest and false, but that’s another story. And I didn’t find out about that until 2023 when I learned about the existence of the fae. I also only found out [or otherwise realised] in 2025/2026 that she was fully responsible for attacking me and destroying my health back in 2006/2007). 

Things between my father and I were also a little bit strained. There were a few reasons for this. The first one is because I had got engaged to be married the previous year. He wasn’t pleased with that, but he wasn’t actually seemingly all that upset, he seemed to take it well, relatively speaking. But he was upset. I am sorry for the run on sentence. The second was 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. I was very unwell, and I needed his help, and he was unwilling to help me. He let me down._ And lastly, he was bothered that I was staying with Amanda. Which I guess would make sense.

The only problem with this point of view, is that he knew that I was being attacked by dangerous science fiction weapons, and that that was why I was unwell. He also knew that Amanda was a monster. He could have told me anything though. Anything about the world, the cell towers, my health, or about Amanda. I still saw him though. I still saw my father. For example, he lent me his acoustic guitar when I asked to borrow it. And also we went into Wellington together to visit his father’s house to talk about living there, because I needed a place closer into university to live. Also, Amanda and I used to hang out sometimes at his place. During the day, or sometimes to stay the night when term had started. 

Note: I should also mention that he knew why I was unwell. He knew that I was being attacked by electronic weapons. And I would go to him for advice and guidance sometimes. But he never told me what the cause was. In fact, he tried to act as though I was mentally ill. I will talk about this more later. That is, when I went to him hoping for guidance, he didn’t give me the information I needed.

So anyway,

I needed a proper place to stay in town, that had been the plan all along. And so my father and I talked together about my finding a better place to stay in town, and we settled on Papa’s house. Papa 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. My father and I visited Wellington together, and talked to Eva together (Papa didn’t handle business matters by then, he was suffering serious cognitive decline, alzheimers I think) to sort out my staying at their house. I was going to be charged only $100 per week board, which was very affordable!

*

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 was 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.

By the way, 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. They 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 prepared for us by Eva wasn’t very good. I think that she used to make food for the childcare centre downstairs, and then serve us the leftovers upstairs. She would make something for the children’s lunch, and then we would have the leftovers reheated for dinner. What sort of food did she serve? Sometimes we would have plain macaroni elbows with something like grated cheese. And that was the whole dinner. It was served lukewarm. Just plain pasta, with a pinch of finely grated cheese. Sometimes we would have plain mashed potatoes with silver beet mixed into it. On a few occasions we had plain parsley soup. I think we would sometimes have tomato soup with a whole onion served 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? I think that maybe they didn’t want to cook a decent dinner when I was home. Or maybe Eva was just busy. Sometimes we had a basic whole chicken cooked in the microwave, rubbery and chewy. But I like chicken, so I didn’t mind having that for dinner. Anyway, something was off about that house. There was always plenty of food in the fridge. But I often got all sorts of symptoms while living there. And started to wonder what caused my symptoms. I felt that it may have been the food.

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 ons 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!! I was learning chords, power chords, songs, some scales, and trying to learn some Weezer, Green Day, Nirvana and AC/DC. Progress was slow, but I preferred to play video games. I couldn’t get the sound to ring clear and true. I figured it out once I moved to Hathaway Avenue.

I wasn’t allowed to really make a ton of noise. This was because we had a childcare centre in the house, and indeed on the same  floor at me. Not only that, but the room they napped in was literally adjacent to my room. By the way, the child care centre was right beside my room. Right beside it. Literally right beside it. And so there was a lot of noise. I think I had some children walk with Eva to my room to say hello once or twice. It was their family business. And if I wanted to see Eva I had to go into the childcare centre and wade through an undifferentiated mass of children to get to her. Children are fine, but they sure are noisy haha. Anyway, 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 at 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 and still hadn’t recovered from that trip to Europe, and I was worried! I didn’t know why I wasn’t getting any better, and I didn’t know how long it would take for me to get better. 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. Another thing is that 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. For example, 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 for 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. That is what post exertional malaise (PEM) is all about. And so I will explain those things 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.

Key words: fatigue, back problems, digestion, post exertional malaise, sleep problem.

I was tired all of the time.

[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 in Paraparaumu when I first got back to New Zealand and bought a multivitamin. I bought the best one I could find. 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, chlorella, 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! By the way, I used to talk to my mother a fair bit, and ask her for advice. Not so much in early in 2007. But from very late in 2007 until maybe 2016/2017, we were talking (I just didn’t want to talk to her for a while!). Anyway. I took other supplements over the course of the year too. And tried out health foods. In my opinion, supplements don’t do much. Or at least they didn’t do much for me back then (and why should they be all that helpful, given that my ongoing health problems existed because I was being attacked by science fiction weapons, and were not caused by nutritional problems). Note: In hindsight, it seems crazy to me that I was asking for and receiving advice from my own mother, given that she was the one who ruined my health in the first place (and actually engaged in a pattern of ongoing harm against me). I kept asking for her advice, and bouncing ideas off of her. And she kept deceiving me! But I didn’t know.

But back to the exercise thing.

So… when I went to university I tried to get back into exercise. I wanted to 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 being able to squat twice my body weight (about 122 kg), and to be able to bench press just over 1.5 times my body weight (94 kg). Those were my goals. 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 just wasn’t an option either. So instead I went to a jiujitsu class and an aikido class (the jiujitsu was Japanese Jiujitsu, but they just called it “Jitsu”. It wasn’t BJJ). I did it just to see if I could ease back into it. Fitness, that is. And I was also planning to 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 (I.e. post exertional malaise, and overall just feeling horrible. Like an internal “toxic feeling”). 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 went to my father for advice on a number of occasions. 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. That was the sort of guidance he offered. One of the things 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 of work 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!? That was his explanation as to why I was unwell). So much for fatherly guidance! He knew exactly what was wrong, and could have told me.

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.

[[[Post-exertional malaise (PEM) is the defining, hallmark symptom of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). It is a severe, delayed worsening of existing ME/CFS symptoms (such as extreme fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, or pain) that occurs hours or days after minor physical or mental effort that was previously tolerated.]]] - note, cfs seems to be an electronically induced illness. It is basically cell tower satellite sickness. It is a real illness, in that you’re really sick. But you’re actually just getting attacked with cell towers and satellites all of the time. 

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 couldn’t cope with early morning classes. 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. 

I was a dedicated student and I worked hard. But I skipped lectures.

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. This is the worst level. 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 directly and indirectly. 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 themselves were a problem. A massive problem. I’d just be stuck on the toilet for ages, and trying and hoping for something. Again and again. And just a few pebbles was all I would get. The stool was all these hard dry pebbles the size of small marbles. I would have to really try and struggle for anything. Again and again. It was awful. I will talk about it later, and in future posts.

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 breakfast cereal, and drinking more water. Whatever was wrong with me though, I couldn’t seem to do much about it. I tried other things over the years too. In later years, I did such things as eating toasted buckwheat porridge for breakfast, or sprouted buckwheat porridge with yoghurt (buckwheat is a high fiber food). But I will talk more about the digestive issues later, and the things I did to try to combat them.

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. I did this to try to regulate my temperature. 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 cold in some of the places that I lived. It was freezing cold, and so I was very cold a lot of the time. I think that this may sometimes have been done by cell towers or satellites? (Or perhaps they did this often?). Later on in my life there was a ton of stuff done to me relating to temperature, both hot and cold, including a whole lot of it when I got to Khandallah, but that’s a story for another day. That bit is way, way in the future. 

Next, also, they would make me sweat profusely, for no reason. Sometimes I would be freezing cold, and sweating profusely for no apparent reason. Sometimes I would be very warm, and sweating profusely, in an unnatural manner.  They seemed to cause this symptom fairly frequently. 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 a lot of the time, and had 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 a while, have some water, 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 they 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 would just make me feel grotty and horrible. 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. And it cussed them 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. So how it worked is that I would feel these waves of tightness, or I just have tension, and I didn’t know why. I think that this sort of stuff adds up. It’s awful. It takes a toll.

Their idea was that this was the physical manifestation of stress? But I’m not sure that their point of view makes sense. It is a silly point of view.

Next…

And there was generalised tightness. There was 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 already had fairly tight/taut/hard muscles in my shoulders and neck from boxing and then from lifting weights. Kind of… highly strung? I think you get tension in your neck, chest and shoulders when you box. And also maybe you carry around extra tension in your inner hip muscles as well. I’m not sure how to explain it. But for anyone listening, just because a guy can’t explain something, it doesn’t mean that it is untrue. But anyway, I think they added some generalised tightness to the muscles of a guy who maybe already had tight muscles, especially up top around his shoulders, chest, arms, neck, and also in his iliopsoas. Maybe my abs were tight as well, near the end of high school, going into this period of illness.

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 what one 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 the uphill path to the front door, and back out again, left me feeling exhausted. Even the stairs inside the house were exhausting to me!! I used to take shortcuts to avoid stairs sometimes, especially around town and at university. That’s the biggest symptom: fatigue and exhaustion. There were external stairs to get up to the house, and a path. And these had become a problem for me. 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. I didn’t used to even think about stairs, if you know what I mean.

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 you at the time. I only learned of their existence in 2024 (and also, 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.

[For the sake of completeness, here is some more information. Back in 2023, I thought that there was hardware connected to, or built into, the structure of the house or apartment itself, that can mess with your mind, body and nervous system. I believed that this hardware was responsible for the strange things I had experienced in the Khandallah property, Midway Pacifica Motel, and this property here in Hutt Road. I did not know that the hardware consisted of cell towers and satellites, as well as other “mobile” pieces of equipment, as opposed to being a part of the physical house itself].

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 people in positions of 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 think that I may have visited a GP at the Coastal Medical Rooms clinic in early 2007. I told them what was wrong, and that I was feeling unwell. They were unable to diagnose me with anything, and they were unable to help me with anything. I am still waiting on my full medical records. I can’t quite recall this appointment or doctor’s visit very well. The doctor’s clinic at Coastal Medical Rooms is a fairly normal New Zealand doctor’s clinic.]]]

I then visited a doctor at the Victoria University Student Health doctor’s clinic. 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 or my story, and worked my way through). This was in perhaps in May 2007. But I am still waiting on my records from Victoria University. This was a free doctor at a free clinic.

[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. All of which 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 all clear and nothing was wrong. 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 causes of my health issues were. But she misled and deceived me by way of simply not telling me that I was suffering the ill effects of being harmed by cell towers. This decision of hers 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 chronic constipation. She was just playing silly buggers when it came to definitions of constipation, and chronic constipation). She should have diagnosed it as constipation, declared that it was being caused by cell towers and satellites, and then treated it with osmotic laxatives (such as movicol, aka macrogol), and also by providing me with good advice (and basically by just telling me the truth).

I said to her, “what if it 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 though. I had heard that it was bad and never went away. And so anyway 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 what was wrong with me and what caused it. And furthermore she said that if it is chronic fatigue syndrome, that when it came to exercise that I should just “start low, go slow” when it came to exercise. Which isn’t helpful! I couldn’t exercise at all! 

What I needed was some truth and some good advice. I didn’t get either of these things from this doctor. I can’t recall her name though. I hope I can find out what her name is soon, once I get some medical records from the clinic.

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 paid 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 went back to that clinic later. But I will talk about that 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 very much her for quite some time. I later forgave her for what she did, and told her so. But when I did that she actually 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, when I was trying to restore the relationship, even though I knew that I wasn’t at fault. It boggles the mind!! At the time I thought that she merely disregarded my health problems while in Europe because she didn’t care all that much, or didn’t believe me. And back then, 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 all that bad, and being a bit like a light at the end of the tunnel for some people. I disagreed a bit, and then she dropped it. She was only half pushing the idea.

I want to talk briefly about how Amanda treated me when I got sick and how that affected our relationship. In general when it came to my health, she was supportive and nice. She was kind to me. She believed that I was unwell, and did not treat me as though I was a malingerer (some people did). She didn’t act like it was all in my head, or that I was faking being unwell. And she was helpful too. Whenever I couldn’t manage something, she would pick up the slack. As the years passed, I came to rely on her quite a bit.

But at the same time, she knew that I was unwell and could have just told me what was wrong but chose not to. She was a bad egg.

*

What did I think the underlying problem may have been? 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.

What else did I do? I went to counselling. 

Here is how that happened… I had been getting advice from other people as well, 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 at the same time I wasn’t experiencing the symptom of “persistent sadness” that was spoken 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 all the same. I did it just in case it helped somehow, and because it made sense to me at the time that I at least try it. 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, because I couldn’t seem to see the same one consistently. I got bounced around a bit, and it came to nothing. But I still did the counselling thing, as they were funded after all! Counselling was a bit of a bust. In hindsight, it was probably a waste of time because no one speaks plainly. It’s sad, because to have specialists who listen to you talk about your problems, and then explain things in full to you, and explain them in plain clear English, that would be very useful. In theory, at least. 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 sort of advice and “good counsel” that I needed. I was pretty unwell, and getting worse. It was ruining my life. They didn’t help.

I thought I would try anti depressants, just in case, and also to check it off the list, kind of just to humour people (and to humour my family/father, 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! But also just in case it was somehow depression, even if logically it didn’t make sense that my problem was “depression”. 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 (just 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, and to go out “clubbing”. I also wanted to experience a bit of normal student life, even though I was unwell. We took Rachel Burston once too. She was Amanda’s best friend from High School. We also took Jess Mackenzie with us once as well. Jess was one of my friends from high school. I actually introduced them to one another and encouraged them to become friends. They were friends for years afterwards. Amanda and I went out twice, maybe three times. And that about it. 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 Christian religious prohibition when it comes to the mild-to-moderate consumption of alcohol. I wasn’t supposed to drink heavily, and drunkenness was discouraged in the Bible. But I tried it out, the whole going out to bars and clubs thing. It was meh? It was okay. We went home before it got excessively late.

What else? I used to commute on the weekends. Like I would go back to Kapiti on 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 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 (including most of the solo) and the first few of minutes of Stairway to Heaven. I could also noodle around in the minor pentatonic scale along with backing music.

Getting Married

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 are 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 could 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 that age, I still counted on family. And I trusted my 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 the 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, a 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. It was small to medium in size. 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 the girl who lived next door). I had fond memories of Nana serving me breakfast at Hathaway Avenue. Even though it is kind of silly. She had her 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. And that was followed up by hot chocolate served always in the same two mugs (one for me, one for Matthew). 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. We were married! 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. I might post a picture down below.

Sally: So how were things between you and Amanda?

Well, we were married and living together. How was it going? 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 (she was living a double life and was a completely false and worthless person).

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. And I believed in kindness and compassion, 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. And arguing in good faith. 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. She did a course learning all about Christianity before our church would let her get baptised. The Cottons were a respectable family in our local church). I think that the book 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. 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). I played the piano and guitar. 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 things. 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 I was hampered a bit. I was able to play the first couple of minutes of Stairway to Heaven, and maybe two minutes 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 legally married at the registry office, but we still had an actual wedding planned for the 19th of January 2008. Like a proper wedding for guests and stuff later. That was the plan from well before the registry office 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 do strange things when they’re young.

Change 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. 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).

*(Just as an experiment, I slept on a different bed, in the spare room, just in case it made a difference. The bed Amanda and I shared was a little uncomfortable, and I wondered if that was the problem. And Amanda woke me up a bit at night. And so I tried sleeping in the spare room, in a spare bed. And I had a fantastic night of sleep. 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. And that was it. The exception to prove the rule. I think it stopped working. And also I was encouraged not to sleep in the spare bed.)

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 there was one weird thing, which is that moisturiser made my skin worse. I am not sure if they gave me skin issues on purpose though, but if they did, moisturiser made me worse. I experienced incredible exhaustion. So I just played video games. I wasn’t very sociable.

I was so tired that I had to actually “budget out” how much energy to spend on going to lectures and tutorials. And I economised on attendance. That’s crazy.

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. And so 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, the “scientific test” 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 didn’t respond well to things like increased fibre consumption, increased water consumption or eating lots of plums, prunes or kiwifruit (all of which are supposed to help; supposed to have a laxative effect). I had already asked a couple of doctors for help. Without much luck.

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.

[other, longstanding issues with my relationship with my mother:

Unbeknownst to me she had been the cause of my health problems while overseas in Europe.

She had also harmed me electronically in the past! For example, she did this when I was 14, just after my trip to Japan.

And she continued to harm me in the future. 

She harmed me electronically (especially my digestion) when I went to visit her in Christchurch. Not that I knew it.

And when she visited me in 2013, she contributed to a situation that caused me very significant harm. She is awful. (That one was a conspiracy between Amanda, my mother, and a local GP who had been friends with both of my parents way back when they used to go to the Karori Baptist Church in the late 80s. I’ll talk about that situation later.)

Another problem: years ago, when I was younger, I had been told that my mother had been unfaithful to my father, and that 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 cut her out of my life. And I seriously contemplated it. But it was out of compassion and mercy that I chose to keep her as a part of my life. And it was often a close run thing. They split up when I was about 13.

By the way, my father told a lot of lies about all of this, and my mother didn’t correct his lies. She played along. The truth is that they were both polyamory enthusiasts, and also weren’t Christians. My father was even a wiccan.]

Once I reconciled with my mother, I was able to start going to her for advice again.

Back to the main story, Amanda and I…

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. 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. I 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 the sternocleidomastoid), 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, and therefore wellbeing. 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.

Christmas

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 and Allison. I liked her family. And they were both welcoming and nice to me. Someone switched off the cell towers or something, which gave me at least one good night’s sleep (maybe two?), and I dreamed of that night sleep for ages. I kept on dreaming of moving to the Wairarapa. Fantasising about it. Because I hadn’t slept like that in ages…

It was a nice Christmas. I read some Murakami for the first time in my life (what I think about when I think about running) and a book about Schrödinger’s Kittens. The food was nice. Food at Amanda’s family’s Christmas was always amazing.

Looking back on stuff like this is sad and odd at the same time because the whole situation was so dishonest. I liked her family, and I felt like they welcomed me as part of the family. I married into their family after all. And then I ended up so badly hurt over time that I couldn’t manage to go to university or work. And then eventually I ended up getting crippled over time!? It is awful.

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. I will try to find the photos taken by our paid photographer.

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 that I could have pushed myself to get through the day. Sometimes I just pushed myself to get things done, even though I was feeing unwell. But this time Amanda was unwell too (she said that she had sinus issues) and so we couldn’t do anything much. Truth be told, I have forgotten much of it. It was a lot time ago. 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 university 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 studio apartment on Hanson Street. It was right across from a bunch of student apartments (the Drummond Street Apartment Complex). It was a stone’s 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. I don’t know exactly how many square meters it was, but I would describe it as a medium sized studio apartment. It had a full kitchen, a kitchen window, a balcony, a rancher slider, a bathroom with a full sized shower, toilet and basin. It had blinds instead of curtains in front of the ranch slider and window. It had a large set of shelves through the middle of the apartment, dividing it. It was easy to heat and easy to clean. 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, there were probably other motivations involved. Perhaps she felt that the apartment was a lemon, a dud. And just wanted to live elsewhere. And so she fobbed it off on us. Or perhaps she did it to cause problems for Amanda and me. I think that living there was supposed to be unpleasant for me? Or maybe she knew that there were road works planned, and wanted to avoid them. Or possibly it was a bit of all three. I’m not sure. Perhaps it was rented to us as a way to stress me out, wear away at me and cause me harm; to stress me out or deny me sleep. But anyway, she rented it out to us. 

We signed the contract and moved in. And we found out very quickly that it’s extremely noisy!! There were very loud, very disruptive road works planned for Adelaide Road late at night. It needed resurfacing. Adelaide Road is such a busy and important road in Wellington that you can’t close it during the day to do roadworks, so they did the roadworks at night. This went on for weeks or months. Next, there was construction to both the left and the right of us, that started early-ish in the morning. One block of apartments to our left was going up. And another block of apartments was being repaired and renovated. That one was to our right. And the Adelaide Bar was extremely noisy on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. They played a lot of loud music. We had student accomodation (then affiliated with Massey University) across the lane from us. Which was very noisy at times. And our neighbours across the hallway were noisy too, and liked slamming the door and yelling “goodbye” very loudly at night when their guests left. They did this constantly. I think that they were Chinese. And I think that they did it on purpose. This sort of thing often happened when we were trying to sleep. And the door dampener on the door to the staircase didn’t work. And we were right beside the stairwell. Next, the garage door to the basement parking garage was very loud. The whole place was noisy. And it was not that nice living there. And there was no double glazing on the main ranch slider to the balcony, or in the kitchen window, which might have helped with noise from outside. The only thing to do with an apartment like that is to move out. It was horrible. It was so noisy. But we stayed there for much too long. I’m still not sure why. Inertia, I guess? Or perhaps we didn’t want to offend Amanda’s Aunty Megan. We usually spent the weekends in Paraparaumu.

There were other problems with the apartment, such as that the blinds broke and were not repaired. We couldn’t raise the blinds. This meant that it was hard to access the balcony via the ranchslider. The phone broke, and I think that the wiring for the phone line was screwy too. I don’t remember. The TV broke and/or had no reception. The tap in the kitchen broke. And one of the two swipe cards for the front door broke and we were never given a replacement by the landlord, Megan.

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 that I experienced symptoms from cell towers. They tightened up my back (aka torso) in nasty ways. And then I couldn’t sleep so well. By the way, when your back is all tight and constrained, it has an effect on your sleep quality. 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, which woke me up a fair bit. Furthermore, I got hit by symptoms that fried me quite a bit, from the cell towers. All sorts of things. I am being vague about it, but I think that I got hit by all sorts of stuff. I was really unhappy with how I felt at the time. I was very unwell. I wasn’t sure what caused it. I started to think that there was something like mould, spores, or chemicals making me sick in the apartment. By the way, the previous house, Hathaway Avenue, had been a bit mouldy. And at the time I had thought that the mould there had harmed me (paranoia). I even threw stuff away just in case it was carrying mould or spores from the previous house to my new apartment. And so I became paranoid about things like mould, spores and chemicals. I had symptoms that included stuff like a scratchy throat by the way, and prickly skin.

So what did I try out in order to try to fix my health while we were living in the studio apartment? I had an allergy test at a local clinic, as prescribed and requested by my doctor (skin prick tests). I think that this one was ordered by a random, miscellaneous clinic in the basement of a place in Lambton Quay. I can’t recall the name of the clinic. The test came back negative, as there were no meaningful reactions or allergies. By this time I had given up on the previous doctors at Victoria University, and tried a paid, private doctor instead (a user pays, free market doctor). I probably gave them a full explanation of how I felt, and of the history of my symptoms, before asking for them to order more tests, including basic blood work and an allergy test. Next, I did a few sessions of the Alexander Technique. Strangely enough, the Alexander Technique relieved my 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 their remote control weapons (neck, iliopsoas, chest, shoulders and upper back were all targets for long term tension and tightness). And when I went to the Alexander Technique lessons, it greatly relieved the tension. And it did so very swiftly. This is because they turned off the machines when I went to the lessons (Amanda or Paul or whomever seems to have turned off the machines). They had to, I guess, that is how it worked. And so when I am at the lessons to get tension worked on (this is the goal of the technique in the first place, or at least one of the goals) they also have to pull their finger off of the button for the remote control tension. The Alexander technique works to relieve tension in things like the neck, back and chest. It’s (sort of) a type of body work. It is a type of training. It’s very powerful, but I think it can be used in really, really nasty ways. As well as in good and beneficial ways. It is similar to qigong, or yang style t’ai chi in terms of the principles and ideas (see the ten rules of yang t’ai chi). I also tried taking spirulina and chlorella as supplements. They were supposed to be “superfoods”, but they don’t seem to be very effective. Or at least they didn’t make me feel any better.

[David: Sorry, I’m not sure that was the best way to explain it. The above paragraph wasn’t my best paragraph. I feel that the stuff about the Alexander Technique wasn’t very well written. But I am trying my best to do a good job of explaining things.]

Let us discuss the good points of the apartment, and so on. The good points are that it was warm and comfortable, and that it was bright and airy. The kitchen was perfectly adequate, and the shower worked well and it had a consistent supply of hot water (unlike the shower and hot water in Raroa Road). It was fairly close to multiple bus stops. It had a balcony. It was close to the Newtown shops, which were okay and nice to look around in. And in a pinch you could walk to Wellington CBD or the University Campus at the train station, which is where I studied (it was about 45 minutes of walking, but more-or-less flat the whole way).

And I worked a little bit. I cleaned houses and offices. Doing physical work like cleaning houses was bad for me, so I cut down on it over time, until I stopped working as a cleaner 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 through Student Job Search (SJS) tutoring a high school student, Ambika Saha. I liked that job. And I had some part time work from my lecturer Martin Turner. He gave me a paid, part time job. He wanted someone to prepare spreadsheets for him to use as a resource with his students. The spreadsheets were to be used in his future financial statement analysis classes, where he taught students how to use the Net Present Value (NPV) method of valuing companies. I had to take a bunch of balance sheets, statements of financial performance and statements of retained earnings from various companies listed on the NZ or Australian stock exchanges and copy numbers from them into spreadsheets, to create a resource pack. I think I did 30-50 companies? He wanted to have a great big stack of them. As far as I know, he still uses a similar batch of documents for his classes. Note: He taught what is known as “Fundamental Analysis”, which was invented and popularised by Professor Benjamin Graham and Professor David Dodd who both worked at Columbia University in New York. And then used to great effect by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger in managing their company Berkshire Hathaway. For more information, please see the books “Security Analysis” by Graham and Dodd, or “Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist” by Roger Lowenstein.

Note 2: Benjamin Graham and David Dodd are credited with developing the field of securities analysis and value investing while working at Columbia University.

Note 3: Martin Turner is now a senior lecturer in accounting at Central Queensland University, at the time he was a senior fellow at Victoria University and working on his PhD in accounting. He previously was a fund manager who worked for AMP and led AMP's private equity business in NZ, which invested over NZ$200m in over 20 private equity and venture capital investments. He can be found on LinkedIn, and here.

I also worked as a tea attendant, where I made tea and coffee in the afternoons at the university. It seems like a funny job, but they paid me to do it. I made tea and coffee, made up and served platters of biscuits, did a bit of photocopying, and then came back to tidy up the tea area and kitchen after afternoon tea was over.

What next…

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” the symptoms and I kept getting worse. I think that “pushing through” can make you worse when you’re dealing with this sort of stuff.

Anyway, I studied hard, and did well academically.

David: What shall I talk about next? I might just talk about my health in 2008. And then I’ll try talking about my social life and how I passed the time, before I talked about how I ended up moving back to Paraparaumu.

Sally: Okay, keep talking. Take your time.

The apartment was a place where I got hit with a lot of symptoms, and suffered from a lot of sleep deprivation. Some of it was sleep deprivation due to electromagnetic science fiction weapons messing with my nervous system, some of it was due to noise. Some of the sleep deprivation was due to Amanda hogging the blankets and jostling me while I slept (on purpose). But overall, I experienced a high level of sleep deprivation. And it wasn’t good for me. I had lost weight. I was losing weight and getting weaker! Which was horrible to me. Absolutely horrible. I had worked hard in high school to put on some muscle, but I had lost weight and it was sad. I also looked kind of pale, weak and sickly. And I was exhausted all of the time. They actually did a lot to me by remote control nervous system attacks, and with noise, and by other means. Being there damaged my health quite a bit.

David: Anyway, it was a _hell with no sleep_. That was the Hanson 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 any real rest!! And they also directly hit me with fatigue and tension electromagnetically. It takes it’s toll!

**

What else? How did I pass the time?

How did I pass the time, other than studying and completing basic household tasks, and working. 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 anyway. I spent some time reading. Things in life 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. By the way, I was on speaking terms with my family. And I still saw my family a fair bit. I also worked on teaching myself to cook. At the time I was cooking things like roast chicken, pumpkin soup, green Thai curry, basic mince dishes such as lasagne and various dishes like potato and pea curry, lentil curries and chickpea curries. Amanda liked vegetarian food, and especially liked the potato and pea curry. I tried street evangelism once or twice, after reading a book about it. It was not successful. I tried making moccasins out of leather. It was extremely unsuccessful. I browsed food shops like Moore Wilson’s (it was a place of wonders to me, like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory) and I also browsed food shops like the Indian Supermarket in Newtown.

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, auditing, trusts, management studies and a few other things. And I did both my readings and Amanda’s readings (I used to read both her textbooks and her bound copies of course readings). 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 on the other hand 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. I shouldn’t have to say it, but because the world is the way that it is, I have to say it.

[[[maybe add in another bit to the tune of… I was married, a Christian, and wasn’t looking for anything on the side. It would have been nearly incomprehensible to me that I would be looking to become an adulterer. Furthermore, I had a job to do, and that job and role precluded romance, even if I wasn’t married. I was a tutor, and it was my duty just to teach her. And not even to be a friend, let alone a lover or a boyfriend. By the way, that comes across as awkward, but that is because that is one of the things you think about, but seldom feel the need to discuss out loud, because you just think it through, and then act appropriately. If you know what I mean.]]

Now for the next issue, our car. This is a strange one; it is strange part of the story.

We had issues with someone moving our car. 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 we didn’t know and weren’t told that we had one assigned. 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 workers seemed to be doing it. They tended to use road works as an excuse. There would be road works, and someone would move our car. We would find it a street over, or even three streets away. We once found it across town in the parking lot outside Te Papa, the Wellington museum. I don’t think that there was always road works on the street where it had been parked either. I think that sometimes they lied, and just moved it at random, even if there wasn’t any roadworks. In the case where it wound up by Te Papa, I had to call the council to find out where it had been stashed. I think that these incidents were all done on purpose, and I think that my father and brother were behind this one. Amanda and I were being harassed via our car.

And then it escalated, and someone lit our car on fire. Yes, actually. There was an arson attack on our car, and someone set it on fire. 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 overnight. And we went out to see it, and found that it had been destroyed. The whole thing was a burnt out husk. It was really annoying. We relied on that car quite a bit. And so we were carless. And it was quite upsetting!

Our car was a red Honda Civic 88. It was a perfect starter car. Amanda inherited it from her great grandmother. It was as old as we were. We had named it Elmo. But anyway, it was gone.

We were not enjoying living in Mt Cook. It was horrible and very noisy. And we were spending weekends in Paraparaumu anyway. We spent the weekends at Amanda’s mother’s house or at her grandparent’s house. In the end we were leaning towards moving home to Paraparaumu. 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. I went regularly to things like Amanda’s Grandparent’s family dinner night. And I had lunch at their place also. Lesley said that she liked having me as part of their family (she said that it was like having a son that she didn’t have to give birth to). I was invited to Amanda’s father’s church and home often. I went to their home for tea and conversation a fair bit. I got along fairly well with Natasha.

It was kind of sad, my university experience. I just couldn’t enjoy the things that I wanted to do and to enjoy. And I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do and enjoy in life. I was too tired. I was exhausted and unwell. I struggled with things like joining clubs, socialising, working more hours, and having more fun. And exercise just wasn’t really happening or realistic. There were tons of things I wish I could have done.

***

Amanda and I moved back to Paraparaumu 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 I studied hard (I studied hard while hardly attending classes! Because I was unwell). And then after maybe 6-10 weeks of living in Paraparaumu, 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 without phenomenal marks. But we’re back in Paraparaumu, which was nice. 

At that point of time in my life, Paraparaumu felt a lot more like home to me than Wellington. I suppose I should tell you more about Paraparaumu and the Kapiti Coast sometime. And I should talk to you about the house at Weka Road. But I think that I might have already done that in another part of my life story. 

The house in Paraparaumu was quite cold. Heating was a problem. We had to use the fireplace quite a bit and dealing with firewood was often a struggle. I never could quite figure out why that place was so cold. But anyway, once the fireplace was going, it was fine. I think that they used electromagnetic cold rays on me while I was there but I can’t prove it.

While I was living in Paraparaumu, and still attending university, I went to the doctors a few more times. I was still unwell and I wanted answers. I wanted to know what was wrong with me and what to do about it. I went to the doctor’s clinic at the university (it was free after all). This time I went to the clinic at the Pipitea Campus (this is the one at the train station, the business campus). I visited two doctors, without any real success. I told them that I was sick, and that I didn’t know what caused it. And I told them my story. We talked for a bit, they ordered some blood tests. The tests came back normal. And we weren’t any closer to knowing what was wrong with me. The first doctor was a Chinese woman, Dr Susie Poon. The second doctor was a oldish white man, I can’t remember his name. Nothing came of it. Basically, 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 they kept me in the dark. I assume that at the time I would have told them my whole story, start to finish. Note: I cannot recall all of the details, because it was a long time ago now, but I am in the process of trying to get my medical notes from the University.

David: Let’s talk about my social life and how it changed when I moved back to Paraparaumu.

Sally: Yes, let’s talk about your social life. Tell me all about it.

David: Amanda and I had moved back to town and all of my old church and school friends were there. So I started spending more time with them, which was nice. Amanda and I started spending more time with people like Jesse Orchard, Aaron Oldcorn, Nathan Thatcher, John Cosgrove, Lauren Cosgrove and Ashley King. I also saw a bit of 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. I forget exactly when or why she stopped attending church. I even had a long conversation with a prominent member of the church, John Jennings, about how to persuade Amanda to come back to church. He suggested that some of those particular battles aren’t worth fighting.

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 it 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 kept 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 we might play something like Bang!, Catan or Guitar Hero). Sunday lunch was a very consistent habit.

*

A brief note about John and Lauren Cosgrove

John Cosgrove was a year older than me. He had formerly been a Mormon. He become a “mainstream” Christian at the age of 13 and was an attendee of the CCC. He went to Otago to study computer science. His life was odd. He loved Russia, drank from a pewter mug. He was strangely skinny. And he got married when he and his wife were at university.

He graduated and came back from Otago when he was 21, and tried to get into a job installing telecommunications cables. He hated it. But anyway, he often came to lunch on Sundays. He went to church. And he also invited me to poker night a couple of times, which was held Nathan’s house. We played cards or something and had ginger beer mixed with bad whisky. I didn’t go regularly, because I was unwell. I can’t remember what we played, it might have been a game other than poker. Maybe 500?

But that was my social life.

**

And I had hoped to spend more time with my family there, but my father moved to Lower Hutt at roughly the same sort of period of time that I moved back to Paraparaumu. The funny thing is that I moved back to Paraparaumu just as my father moved away from Paraparaumu. 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. I actually needed him in life. I needed advice, guidance and company.

Matthew came to stay with us at 5 Weka Road for maybe 3-4 weeks. I can’t remember exactly how long. This was at the end of 2008 or the start of 2009.

I’ll go on a bit of a digression by talking about my church attendance for a 

while. When I was in high school I went to the CCC. And then when I moved into to Wellington for university, I wasn’t sure which church to go to. Sometimes Amanda and I went to St Marks in Raumati Beach, sometimes Amanda and I went to the coast community church in Paraparaumu. And then after Amanda moved into Wellington and we got married, then we tried going to the Karori Baptist Church. But it didn’t stick. It wasn’t for us. But we still sometimes went to the CCC or St Marks even while we were in Wellington. When we moved back to Paraparaumu, this meant that we could resume attendance at the CCC or whichever church. Amanda wanted to go to St Marks, but I wanted to go to the CCC. We alternated a little bit before that.

There was actually a really weird incident. Where Amanda was feeling unwell in church. And had to walk out. And then she said that somebody tried to cast a demon out of her in the foyer. But I’m not sure what to make of that incident. Also, totally unrelated, we went to the Meadows Church (a Pentecostal church). Amanda didn’t like that, because there were people doing shaking in the aisles and doing other Pentecostal things.

The house at 5 Weka Road, Paraparaumu cost us $400 per week in rent. $400 per week is affordable, but not extraordinarily generous. We took in flatmates to afford it.

So anyway, it was the summer of 2008/2009. The weather was nice and warm. And I wasn’t working that summer. And my health improved a bit. I felt some optimism. But I wasn’t really “well” properly and thoroughly. I had merely improved. I warmed myself in the sun a lot. I love basking in the sun. My health and well being improved with the warmer weather. I did some walking, but wasn’t able to really get back into “proper exercise”.

Alexander Technique:

I think that I may have had some Alexander technique lessons that summer. But I can’t quite recall if it was that summer, or the next one. These lessons relieve tension in the neck and back. These lessons in the Alexander Technique can greatly reduce symptoms.

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 from my doctors, 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 a little bit under full 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 that I planned out for myself. But I also had a part time job tutoring at the university lined up. 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!!

**

[[[restart here]]]

What next? I had the whole year planned out, and things were looking a bit more hopeful. I'll be honest though, I was still unwell.

And then I went to a friend’s birthday party. While I was there I got something like the flu, and I got really sick. And then I was sick for weeks. I couldn't go to university. I couldn't attend university. And so I skipped all of my classes. And then because I had missed 2-3 weeks of university, and saw no real prospect of getting well quickly enough to catch up, I quit. It was horrible. I was still sick when I quit.

 

I kept my job tutoring once per week (two hours tutoring classes once a week for I think it was between eight and ten weeks), but quit studying and university itself. I kept this job because it was only once a week, and it was in the afternoon, and I thought I could manage. This job involved a bit of marking and stuff, but I did that bit at home. I was right, I coped. The commute took it out of me, but I coped.

**

How did it feel when I got sick? Uhhh. I can't remember exactly. Something just wiped me out. I got the flu. And I got flattened by something. In hindsight, it must have been electronic interference on top of an “organic” illness. But I didn't know that at the time. I felt weak, wiped out, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't rest properly, and I couldn't eat. I experienced fatigue, I had a sore throat and runny nose. I was mildly feverish. And overall I felt like an elephant had sat on me. Now, I had already been unwell before getting the flu (I have described and explained my health problems and symptoms earlier in this page, and the previous two pages about my health problems). I had been unwell for over two years, albeit with some modest improvement over summer (but even then I had remained unwell). And so I had got properly and thoroughly sick. It was horrible.

It felt like my life was over. I couldn't do anything. Don’t forget, but at that time I had been unwell for two years, without any real understanding as to why.

**

Here is how I think it was. I got sick with an organic illness. 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 a great deal by it. And then I was sick and dropped out of university. So I got the flu, but someone _leveraged_ that and used it as an excuse to blast me electronically. And then I got sick. And thoroughly so. And so I quit university. I dropped out. I had already been unwell for ages before that, for two years. Perhaps I should have stayed enrolled, recovered from the 3 or so weeks of most significant illness (I had three to six ish weeks where I was good and solidly unwell) 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. By that I meant skipping literally all of my lectures. And literally every tutorial that I could skip without failing to meet "terms" requirements. And then reading the textbook, doing some past exam papers, and then showing up to the test and hoping and praying for a pass. And then the following term or year I could have signed up for distance learning through a different university that allowed me to do distance learning. That way I keep the student allowance, accumulate a bunch of points even if I fail a paper or two, and I make a bit of progress, and above all remain an enrolled student. But I would have lost my scholarship. And it would have been a massive struggle to even manage to stay enrolled and so the “limited version” without attending anything might perhaps have been unsuccessful and ineffective anyway. And I really was very unwell. But I thought that I was better off dropping out, and hoping to recover. I felt 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.

I continued to be unwell throughout that year. I was trying hard to get well (seeing doctors and getting advice from anywhere I could get it), but I remained sick. Just to reiterate, I was still sick! During 2009, I was sick.

I was sick and dropped out of university (I got a full refund).

Please note, I had a bonded scholarship at the time, and I had to achieve at least a B+ average or better.

Sally: oh, okay. That all came out in a jumble. But let me paraphrase. You were already unwell, and then recuperated a little over a restful sunny summer in Paraparaumu, but you were still unwell. So far, so good?

David: Yes, so far, so good.

Sally: And then you got really sick and had to drop out? Keep it super simple for me.

David: Yes. If I "keep it super simple", that's the way it was. I got really sick and then I had to drop out.

Sally: But maybe some of it was a natural illness? And some of it was electronically induced?

David: Yes, that seems to have been the case.

Sally: were you worse in 2009 than in 2008 or 2007, or not as bad?

David: I was worse. I got worse, not better. But that is a story for another day.

[a note for the reader: I am sorry that the segment about dropping out of university and becoming an invalid is so weird and jumbled and unclear, but I am struggling to write well at the moment.]

**

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 I was sick. But I didn’t know what caused it. She actually did a bunch of tests, and then basically told me that there aren’t more tests. She is a bad egg. I saw her a lot of times, and I saw specialists at Wellington Hospital too, and her choice of physio at TBI. I will write about this in the next section of my life story. It is a story that spans a few years.

Why did I switch to a new clinic? 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. This why I switched to a new clinic. But I think that I chose the wrong doctors. It is probably better to choose male doctors if you are male. And to pay for doctors if you are even slightly sympathetic to libertarianism or Christianity. And so I should have chosen a white male doctor at a private clinic, and always paid money for it. There are issues relating to race, but I don’t want to go into those either.

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. And lastly, the tutorials didn’t start until term was a few weeks in.

I enjoyed my job tutoring. It was easy, and enjoyable. I received good reviews from my students. 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.

*****

*****

Notes

1-8

*****

*****

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”.

****

****

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.

****

****

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.

****

****

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.”

**

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.

****

****

But anyway, the lessons made me feel wonderful. I couldn’t explain it, but they made me feel like a human being again.

They were one of the only things I could do that would relieve my symptoms. They worked like magic. They helped me to feel so much better. They were extremely effective at relieving my symptoms and making me feel better.

***

Note: when I am at the lessons to get tension worked on (this is the goal of the technique in the first place, or at least one of the goals, “to deal with harmful and excessive patterns of tension”) they also have to pull their finger off of the button for the remote control tension. This might contribute to the “good feelings” and _tremendous relief of symptoms_ and tension associated with the lessons.

****

****

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”).

****

****

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.

****

****

Note 6:

Fatigue

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

It was noteworthy to me whenever I wasn’t fatigued and whenever I had a good night’s sleep.

For example:

I stayed at my father’s place for one night in mid 2007. I can’t remember why, but it was just easier to stay there in his spare room. I think that I was visiting from Wellington, and that I spent the afternoon and evening there to catch up with them, and then had dinner there, and then stayed the night. And I actually slept well. When I stayed that one night at Dad’s place that one time, the fatigue vanished, and I had a perfect night of sleep. They were living at 5 Chums Road at the time. That one night’s sleep was noteworthy.

David: Here’s another noteworthy time I got a good night’s sleep. I was married and living at Hathaway Avenue. I hadn’t been sleeping well, in fact my sleep quality had been quite appalling. And I had been suffering terrible fatigue all the time too. And so I slept in the spare bed for a night. I don’t know why I thought that it would work, but it did. And I had a good night’s sleep. And it was bliss, it was amazing. I thought about that one night of sleep for ages and what may have caused it. And I wanted to recapture that feeling.

At the time I had been sleeping in the same bed as Amanda (we were married after all) and not sleeping well. She tossed and turned a lot, which disturbed my sleep, and she stole blankets often, which woke me up, and there wasn’t as much space as I was used to. And so I wasn’t sleeping well. Also the bed wasn’t comfortable (someone had put some extra foam padding on top of the mattress, which was counterproductive, as it cut down on bed real estate). But the true reason that I wasn’t sleeping well was that they were frying my nervous system remotely with science fiction electromagnetic weapons. That was the cause, not that I knew it at the time. But when I slept in the spare bed, I guess that someone turned it off.

Sally: Really? One night’s worth of sleep, and it’s big deal to you? You must have been having a bad time of it.

David: Yes, things were pretty awful at the time, and I wasn’t feeling well.

The next time I had a surprisingly good night sleep was at Amanda’s Uncle Simon’s place for Christmas. They lived in the Wairarapa, and we drove there Christmas. I think that we were there for two nights, or maybe one night, I can’t recall. Anyway, it was beautiful. I had just two good nights of sleep, and I felt like a different person. 

I thought about it for years afterwards. I had no idea what it was about that place that made me feel so different. I slept properly, and I felt good. The fatigue was gone, and all of the symptoms were gone.

It was such a significant thing, such a significant experience, that I used to think about it often. I used to imagine what would be like to live there in the Wairarapa and to regain my health. I used to fantasise about it. But I couldn’t figure out why I felt better there, I couldn’t figure out what the mechanism was. I talked to Amanda and a number of other people about it. I wanted to go back! It was a place where I felt good again.

Ps: my sleep quality fell apart on the trip overseas to Europe/USA. And it never really came back. I used to say that my sleep “broke” in Europe. Or that it ruined my health being there. Anyway, from that trip onwards, I had bad fatigue and didn’t sleep well.

PPS: back when I lived at Raroa road, I actually had this weird thing where I got woken up every 90 minutes exactly. For an extended period of time. That was just one example. But I really had weirdly and absurdly bad sleep quality. For a long time. It is just one noteworthy example. That it was every 90 minutes reliably was really weird to me. I also had other issues with sleep. Like repeated night sweats. Issues with being roasting hot or freezing cold. Attacks of massive hunger at night, and so on. But we can talk about that later.

****

****

Next, I had one night staying in a place called the “under hill cottage” in the Wairarapa for Mum’s wedding, and it was glorious. I slept well. To me, it was bliss. I hadn’t slept that well in ages and I felt totally different afterwards. It was on the night of the 11th of January. I always wanted to go back there. And talked about it for quite a while.

Well those were three examples.

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

**

There was another night perhaps in 2010, but I forget exactly when. My father invited me to his place in Lower Hutt for dinner and to stay the night afterwards. Vivian made something nice for dinner (a bunch of different dishes of Chinese food), we ate, and then socialised, and then I went to sleep in one of the rooms downstairs. And I slept well! I had one beautiful, glorious, perfect night of sleep and woke up feeling refreshed. I usually didn’t wake up feeling refreshed. It was one of the symptoms of “chronic fatigue syndrome” that I experienced. But I don’t think I woke up even once that night.

**

Anyway, I know that this is a bit of a digression, but I would like to tell you a story about the time I tried to spend a full week at my dad’s place.

It's a little bit difficult to explain to you why I did this, but it was like a science experiment.

I'd had one good night's sleep in the past while staying at my father's place in Lower Hutt. And once before in Chums Road.

So I thought I would try it again, but this time I would stay for a week, just to see what happened. Now please bear in mind that I didn't know what was wrong with me and when you don't know what is wrong with your health, you try anything, and you might end up grasping at straws. But I had this theory that the bed (or mattress) had something to do with it. I had had a good night sleep when I stayed in the spare room back in 2007 at 5 Chums Road. And then again when I was in Lower Hutt in 2010 or so. So I thought I'd try an experiment where I stayed at my father's house for a week.

And so I did.

I organised to stay there for a week.

And this is how it went.

I showed planning to stay for a week. We had nice food the first night I was there. Vivian did "banquet style" Chinese. We played Catan. My father had a young, male, Chinese homestay student living there at the time who joined us in playing Catan. Anyway, so we played board games and then went to bed.

The experiment was not a success. I was supposed to be there for a week, but I went home after only 2-3 days.

I just wasn't sleeping well at all. It was a total bust. Also, I was freezing cold and couldn't get warm! (And I didn't know why). My digestion was horrible, and I also got hit with some weird symptoms. They just made me feel bad.

What next? So I went home to my (I thought at the time) loving wife. Who made me lasagne for dinner. I had to take two trains to get home, and then get picked up at the station. I wasn't well at the time. No energy. It was all a bit miserable. The experiment was not a success.

**

Another story

I wanted to do another experiment, so I tried to borrow a bed from Dad’s place. One of the ones that might have contributed to my sleeping well in the past. But it didn't work out. I had the bed, I borrowed it, but it didn't help. I slept in it, but I think they did something to me with electronic symptoms. Which made me feel that the mattress was no good. Which is sad.

I'll talk about that story more sometime. It was all a part of my ongoing quest to get a decent night sleep...

I was always having problems with beds and sleep.

****

****

Note 7: I also had a scholarship, which I lost because of these people. It was a “bonded merit” scholarship. This scholarship meant that I had to keep my grades above a certain level to keep it. Which meant that if my grades dropped below this level I would lose it. The scholarship was worth $3000 per year. My fees were about $6500 per year.

****

****

Note 8: I am exhausted at the moment and I can hardly function. Sometimes it takes hours to write even a couple of paragraphs.

****

****

Note 9: my social life in university

I didn’t have a very good social life in university. I didn’t meet very many people at university and I didn’t make many friends. I met Scott Thompson. He and I became friends. I met Martin Turner, Chris King, Thu, Liz and Yi.

Scott Thompson and I became friends and he came to my wedding. I sometimes asked him advice about my health. But he wasn’t very helpful. I also invited him along to a Greg Laurie outreach meeting (the harvest). To be honest, he could quite simply have told me what was causing my symptoms. He could have just told me it was cell towers. He was the only friend I made at university. Tomoe Takahashi also came to the Harvest Outreach meeting with Greg Laurie.

*

A brief digression on one of my lecturers

Martin Turner used to have after class meetups once every week and I would go to these. I thought that they were worthwhile. You got to talk to your lecturer.

I also met him once or twice to talk in his office. I told Martin Turner about my health problems, and the worries I had relating to them. He lied(?) and told me that when he was in university he had health issues, and fatigue issues similar to “chronic fatigue syndrome”, and that they only went away when he finished university, got hired by a company and moved into a hotel (the company paid for it) or something, and he had no responsibilities but work, and he said something about a girlfriend that helped him recover. Apparently his employer paid for him to live in a hotel full time, so that he could focus on work. But I don’t know which things are clues and which things are just nonsense.

I also ended up working for him! First I did some marking for ACCY001: Bookkeeping, and then I got to do some work for him doing some spreadsheets, which I mentioned earlier in this piece.

He was doing a PhD on “how people learn”. And so years later on I asked him to send me a copy of his PhD. And I told him I was sick and had dropped out. Actually he knew about that because I kept in touch with him. But nothing came of it. I think I put a copy of that email elsewhere on my website.

*

Chris King

I also got to know Chris King a little bit. He was my tutor. He lent me some good books about finance and accounting. He was a tutor for Martin Turner’s class.

*

Thu, Liz and Yi were in my study/class group. I spent a little bit of time with them.

****

****

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 Hathaway Avenue, and then another one from the wedding. And one of my making roast chicken at the apartment in Mt Cook, Wellington. And then some stuff about marks in university (and high school). I hope to tidy up these photos and captions a bit later. But I probably won’t!

Below: Raroa Road and stairs

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

Below: wedding 19th January

Above: Amanda and I on honeymoon in Australia

Below: My father’s wedding

**

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

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

Below: 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.

****

****

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