Hi, I've been kinding of lurking on this page, but with there being just a week left I figured it was time I introduced myself.
First and foremost, I really want to thank all of you for what you do. It really is awesome how you take time out of your days to help people like me who sometimes really do have no one else to turn to. You have made many of my days easier and I really appreciate it. I owe you guys a lot.
Ever since seeing a tv program about possible ways the world could end on the Discovery channel when I was a child I have had this phobia. I also have OCD so it is magnified that much more, to the point that sometimes on bad days I get so obsessive that all I can do is imagine how everything around me would crumble during the apocalypse.
I had gotten alot better with time, until when I was 17 I met this guy and I began a relationship with him that very quickly became emotionally and mentally abusive. His family are all New Agers who believe in astrology, conspiracy theories (spending a lot of time on sites like godlikeproductions), the Dreamspell, NWO and the like. Most of them have spent some time taking hallucinogenic drugs. They literally have books on 2012 in their houses. Since he knew so much on the subject, he spent the two years we were together controlling me using my weakest point, my crippling fear. He would tell me that we needed to learn survival skills to live in the woods. He told me all the governments were lying to me, all about chemtrails and FEMA camps. He would make me sit and watch Ancient Aliens and presented the Annunaki to me as if it were a verifiable scientific fact. When I said how scared I was of the 2012 movie, he told me not to worry because the east coast would be like the Japan part of the movie, a giant tidal wave, and the huge rush of water would kill me quickly. He took me on a boat tour down the Hudson River, and while I was finally relaxing and having a good time he pointed to West Point and told me that the whole east coast, starting at that point, was going to be nuked and that the only thing I could do was move inland- when I started to cry and asked what about my family he told me that we'd have to leave them behind since they didn't believe. He would talk doom and destruction to scare me and then he would try to backpedal and use the "new era" excuse that things were just going to change for the better to calm me down, then go back to what he was doing before. This stuff became so drilled into my head that I was literally afraid to do anything without him because I thought he was the only one who "knew the truth" and how to survive. He convinced me that flouride in the water would control my mind, convinced me to stop taking my antidepressents that I take for my OCD (his family and him don't believe in medications - only essential oils as herbal remedies and NO vaccinations) I withdrew from all my friends (he said they were "unnecessary"), I gained twenty pounds, I basically stopped caring about my appearance completely and hardly even showered. I failed all my college classes and my coworkers thought was a terrible employee and I almost lost my job - really it was because I work at a mall where we get many international customers, and all I could do was think about were they scared, and what would happen to their country, and how would they die. I know I sound like an idiot, but my thoughts, especially without my medication, consumed me 24-7. I would look at the NYC skyline and imagine the buildings crumbling in an earthquake, a huge mushroom cloud, a 3000 ft tidal wave… and I just couldn't see the point of doing homework, or showing up and working my retail job, or dressing in clean clothes, for that matter.
The internet was sort of my haven at the time - I would spend hours on it at night because I couldn't sleep. I used to keep the RSOE Disaster Map up in one tab to track every earthquake, flood, and biological hazard in real time while in another tab scouring new age sites and becoming increasingly panicked. It was during one of these nights that I found this site. At first I kind of shrugged it off - I mean, I "knew" the government was covering things up, and even if they weren't, "science used to think the earth was flat! that the sun orbited earth! they don't know everything!". But one day, I decided I would read it. And I read through the entire page, every single link and debunking, looking up things I didn't fully understand, even though it took hours. I did this every day for probably a week. And, slowly, of course, but with time - I didn't feel so hopeless. Right around that time was when the show Doomsday Preppers premiered. I watched it one night, and episode where the people had a fully sustainable tilapia farm in their yard and forced their children to eat it breakfast lunch and dinner every day- and that is when it really hit me - if I didn't get out of this, that was going to be my life. I would end up married to him, and if i had kids, my kids would never know the joy of a normal childhood - they'd live in fear just the way I did. They'd never go to school (he wanted US to "teach them"), or play with friends, and without vaccinations or medical treatment, they might not grow up at all. And so, just a few weeks after finding this site, I mustered every ounce of courage I had and ended the relationship. It wasn't easy, he followed me around for quite awhile, showing up outside my classes, leaving a card with pictures of skulls and an ominous message on my register at work, coming to my house at 5 am and ringing the doorbell (the police said I couldn't obtain a restraining order without a threat). But eventually it stopped, and I deleted all of his bookmarks, emails, family members and mutual conspiracy loving friends off of facebook until there was no trace of 2012 in my life. And without this site, I don't know if that would have been the case.
I now have good days and bad days, which I guess can be expected as things don't go away over night. My anxiety has returned a bit in these last few months of the year, and reports I hear (like the recent "UFOs" in San Francisco and Brooklyn) sometimes keep me up at night, but when I am up at night, I know where to go.
So for that I thank you <3
( and thanks for reading this if you did - i know it was long and sort of irrelevant)
-Lindsay.