- [Lloyd] I was walking down the street after I'd smoked.
I was walking down the street and I saw a guy who hadn't seen me in a while because I was actually in the Department of Juvenile Justice.
So he was like, "Yo man, where you been?
I ain't seen you in a while, where you been?"
I said, "I'm doing community service."
He said, "Well, how many hours do you have?"
And I said, "80."
And in my mind the word eighty just kept echoing over and over.
It was, 80 80 80 80 80 80 80, (80 repeatedly echoing) That's kind of how my symptoms begin.
And it just transitioned into me believing that I could have conversations with people in my brain.
- [Lloyd] At the age of 16, I had just turned 16.
I had just gotten to a point where I was functioning with the voices.
It was a part of my life at this point.
Around the same time, I'm having this conversation with my mom in this third world.
What I thought to be third world.
She says, "Lloyd, my boyfriend has a problem.
Can you help him?"
But I'm like, "What's the problem?"
She said, "Well, he wants to die but he doesn't want to kill himself.
Can you help?"
And for me it was instantaneous.
"Sure.
I can do it.
No problem."
I go upstairs, and my mother said she could hear me coming up the stairs because I was talking.
At this time, even though I had the holster on my hip I did have the firearm in my back pocket.
I walk into her room.
I go over to talk to her.
She was sitting on her bed at the head of the bed.
And her boyfriend was at the foot of the bed, brushing his hair.
And I pointed the firearm and I shot twice in his direction.
He was shot once in the head, once in the neck.
And as a result of these shots, he did pass away.
My mother's, she's upset.
So she walks up to me and she's hitting me, and screaming at the same time.
And she got on the phone.
And I just remember at that point, her saying "My son did it."
And it was like, at that point, my heart just sunk.
It's one of the harder things to live with these days.
I have a eight-year-old daughter and she is the absolute best thing that's ever happened to me.
I share my story as much as I do, because if if I can help someone keep their daughter their father, their son, if I can help that then I feel like I owe that to my community, at this point, I owe that.
Shortly after, same night, I was incarcerated.
I spent the next three months in lockup.
Your lockup is seclusion, 23 hours a day lockup, one hour out a day in shackles and handcuffs to clean your room, make a phone call and take a shower.
Here I am in lockup.
And the voices for me are louder than they've ever been.
Now, there was this one correctional officer, she would come by and she would talk to me and, she wouldn't talk to me, she would listen to all of this stuff I had to say.
I know it was exhausting because she would just kinda she would just lean up against the door like this while I was talking.
So I knew she was exhausted, but she would listen, listen without any type of judgment or any type of despising who I am as a person.
She listened and she said, "You know, there's help for what you're going through."
And then her exact words were, "You don't have to do this alone," is what she said.
I can say that that was a huge pivotal moment for me just having someone to care about me.
So back in 2004, I became a certified peer support specialist.
And I worked for the South Carolina Department of Mental Health for 14 and a half years in doing so as well.
And in doing peer support, peer support is meeting with people, one on one, meeting with people in group settings, meeting with people and their families, meeting with people and their psychiatrist or psychologist.
And we stand as a bridge almost, because as I have these conversations with other people who are living in recovery, I realized that many of our experiences, both with mental illness and outside of mental illness, have been similar whether it be financial strain or relationships or schooling, it's similar.
So we can connect in a very different way.
Going into peer support, I think I was struggling with who I was.
I didn't have enough space in between the experiences that I had as a teenager and the experiences I had as a free adult to really identify myself as anything else.
I saw myself as that young guy from Georgetown, South Carolina.
So being a peer support specialist really helped me identify that it's okay to live in recovery.
It's okay to take care of myself the way I need to.
And to be that as I am moving around.
So I can live in recovery and just that alone, I'm not even talking about opening my mouth, just living in recovery alone was inspiring other people who were living in recovery.
