By Shauna Jemmott
He tried to end his life, twice, but after one contact with the group called Prevention of Teenage Suicide (POTS), he sees life differently and is now one of the counsellors saving the lives of teenagers who have thought of ending their lives. “I took carbon (tablet) one time because that’s what was available in the house, and I also took gramaxone once,” says Dwayne.
At the time, the emotional pain was the most excruciating he ever felt, surpassing whatever physical suffering he was experiencing.
“The most I was doing was crying; and I felt as if it (life) should end.”
Dwayne had troubles that grew overbearing.
“I had my troubles with my family and I had school troubles and that pushed me. My father was not around. He left me when I was six.
“My Mom and I moved from place to place to place. We moved all over the place and I came to have numerous step-fathers.
“It was hard for me and I was seeing my mother being abused brutally by these step-fathers and there was nothing I could have done.”
He was still a child at the time, and as he struggled to be his Mom’s defender, he too became victim of an abusive stepfather. He never quite understood what was happening but complained to his Mom that the man had sexually abused him, but she chose to believe her lover, calling her child a liar.
“I was 12; that was one of my mother’s guys. When these things happen and then you explain to your parents and they don’t believe you, that puts you in a depressed state, and I just couldn’t believe that she didn’t believe me; (that) she didn’t understand!”
Dwayne attempted a smile, but he felt insulted. His manhood was grabbed at a tender age by a grown man. He matured with the idea that he was the guilty one.
In school he was teased to the point at which he emptied all his belongings into the garbage bin, ran away from school and made his first attempt, drinking a carbon tablet.
“People didn’t really understand me. I was different from everyone else.
“That was so hard! I was teased a lot, called names, troubled, picked on. It came to a point when I just took all my school stuff, dumped it into a garbage bin and just ran up the road and I was so upset. I was so furious and I ran up the road and I ran home.”
It happened early 2004.
Some months after, he drank the herbicide gramoxone. Dwayne and his Mom had an argument and she physically pushed him, resulting in him hitting his head on an iron pipe, falling unconscious. The evidence remains on his forehead – a healed laceration.
“When I awoke, she came and she said ‘You’re not my son.’
“There was a terrible argument and I said well if I’m not your son then I don’t deserve to be here.”
Dwayne became epileptic somewhere along the line of events and as a result, was plunged into a deeper state of depression after his own family began insulting him regularly.
“I was diagnosed with chronic epilepsy and I’m the only person in the family with that. When I found out that I had chronic epilepsy, my family shunned me and they told me that my sickness is an embarrassment to the family and that I am bringing down the family’s name due to me having chronic epilepsy.”
It was so bad that during one of his attacks, a relative dragged him into a yard away from their home while it rained, and left him there unconscious, the young man said. At the time, he was sitting Caribbean Secondary Examination Certificate (CSEC).
“He (his uncle) dragged my unconscious body across the road; it was like two houses away from where I live, and that caused my whole butt to be injured from the dragging, and then he dumped my unconscious body in an empty yard which was two houses away from ours and I was lying there.
“When I became conscious and the only thing I could have done was go inside and show my grandfather.”
He said he couldn’t understand why his family treated him that way after they took his mother to court and were successful in a custody battle for him.
While his dad was away, he was left in the care of his grandparents and his father’s siblings.
In October 2015, while on campus at the University of Guyana, where he is reading for his first degree, he had his latest epilepsy attack. Dwayne said after someone telephoned his grandmother and informed her about what happened, the woman called him on his cellular phone telling him that his “sickness is an embarrassment to the family and that I should stop with this embarrassment.”
“Due to that, I felt it was my fault.
“It’s only now they would call me and ask if I took my medication.”
Dwayne was introduced to POTS Guyana, the organization managed by Miss Guyana World Lisa Punch.
“I thank Lisa a lot because when I was going through a rough tine I would just message them and say, ‘can’t really take this anymore, this place is crazy.’ And she came, she spoke to me and she helped me go through what I was going through. And now I’m here I’m a member of the organization. I’m the operations advisor and I am willing to help others.”
“I told Lisa that I can’t leave the organization. At this point the organization is keeping me going. If I am out of this organization, I’m afraid of what will happen. Even though I was a volunteer for this organization, I was still having problems.”