Please Help Me Rise Above The Haters

I was raped and misdiagnosed as having “bipolar disorder” in 1994. At the time, I had just graduated Barnard College, cum laude with distinctions in Russian Regional Studies. I was also attending Christian ministry groups that encouraged dangerous foreign mission trips and put peer pressure on attendees to “evangelize” and “spread the gospel” to unfamiliar people, who were very much against the Christian message. The so-called Christian groups I connected with, placed a big emphasis on popularity and fitting in and were also very good at isolating and rejecting people by using community networks and gossip. Many people in the community knew that I was being raped and abused by someone that I had been set up with by the community to date and “minister to.” Soon, those same Christians who encouraged these relationships moved away New York City, where we were living and left me at the mercy of someone else who drugged me and had me committed to a mental hospital. I experienced a psychotic break as a result of being given drugs and perhaps even came near death. I was not a drug user, and I was left alone, so I was unfamiliar with what was occurring.

When I awoke in the mental hospital, I realize now that I had been placed in a community of people who had been substance abusers, crime victims, criminal offenders, mentally ill and records were created to say that that was MY identity as well. Programs were being developed to help these people, but as someone who did not truly have the disorders that were being addressed- the programs were of no help to me. I had (and have) a good education and was qualified to help others, but that identity was stolen from me and I was labeled as something that I wasn’t and treated horribly. My rights as an American citizen have been totally violated and as I have reached out for justice- it has been denied repeatedly.

I am raising money now, to pay for my housing and invest in a business/ career where I am not dependent upon people who are part of a corrupt government system that keeps me in poverty and misdiagnosed with an illness I do not have. I want to rise above the hate that is in the so-called “Christian” community I have been a part of. Truthfully, I don’t think these things are truly reflective of Christ at all!