TESTIMONY

I am Dilan, hailing from Tuticorin, South Tamilnadu.  I am twenty-three years old.

Although I was gifted with a wonderful God-fearing and Catholic upbringing and was even privileged to have few God experiences when I just 5-6 years old, I was enticed by the worldly acts of my childhood friends which I had no idea about. One day I prayed to God and said, “I am not interested in being a good person as my parents taught me to be. Rather, I want to be like my friends.” I just went my way and then on, I started living like my friends and I desired to make my friends happy. I loved being with them and I even preferred to be with them rejecting the caring presence of my parents.

Downfall

Days went on and nothing changed much in my character. During my adolescence, I gave into the emotions and feelings of my body rather than me controlling it. I desired the pleasure of watching filthy movies which brought me nothing but sexual arousal. Later, I started using my body as an instrument for sexual pleasure. I became dreadfully addicted to pornography and masturbation, so much so that I would almost faint after indulging in both multiple times within a very short span. Then, I understood that, even if I try to reduce the frequency of such bad habits, I wasn’t able to. I stood helpless and hopeless, trying to fight them by myself. I ran into depression as I was doing the very thing I wanted to stop.

I remained a victim of these bad habits for about five years Eventually, my wonderful photographic memory power went to a point that I would forget what I ate that morning. I was physically, mentally and spiritually impacted. It was at that time my father (who was healed of certain illnesses by God during a retreat at Divine Retreat Center (DRC), Kerala in 2004) began to fall ill again  after ten years, and my mother fell sick too. My family started to become more and more financially burdened that we literally had to take loans in order to pay the monthly interests/dues to private financiers and banks. I could not accept it. I wanted to run away from this reality.

I went to college. There, I got into flirting and immoral relationships. My study habits deteriorated. My grades fell.

Thoughts of Suicide

In October 2017, I just managed to pass in a subject in which I should have done well. Had I failed, I would have had to discontinue my studies. The reason was that I had taken an educational loan, which included a condition that I should not fail even in one paper.

I felt so vulnerable and depressed that I started thinking of suicide. I almost took that tragic step.


M DILAN

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