Testimony - Page 1

“Church is for good people ennit? You know the sort who wear hats and don’t smoke” I told the Preacher as he tried to convince me that Jesus actually loved me! “There is no way this Jesus loves people like us. We are not exactly Church material are we mate?” The preacher’s eyes seemed to look right into me as he replied “Jesus still loves you Steve, regardless of what you have done!”

And done it we had. Emma and I got involved in the Punk scene is the late seventies and early eighties. We were products of a rebellious, youth culture desperately searching for reality and the meaning of life. We could not stand all the ‘squares’ around us who were content with doing boring nine to five jobs and dressing in mundane fashion. We decided to counteract the blandness all around us by dying our hair, listening to angry, aggressive music and dressing like something that resembled a cross between the Adams Family and Mad Max. We were part of the Punk/Gothic movement and living the lifestyle of Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll to the extreme. Dirty leather jackets, chains, heavy make-up (for Emma that is, my make-up was always more subtle) were the dress code for the hour. The colour of everything needed to be BLACK, BLACK and more BLACK. We hung out with people who enjoyed sleeping in coffins, sleeping around and sleeping rough. We were thrilled to try the latest ‘high’ whether it be sniffing ‘poppers’, smoking pot and diving deeper into the world of LSD and speed. We even smoked banana skins once in a desperate attempt to get high.

Getting high was our goal. We needed something to elevate us from the humdrum boredom that other people called life. We were searching for excitement and enjoyment! We looked in all kinds of corridors and holes to find pleasure. By our late teens we had

had multiple sexual partners (including transvestites and Sadomasochists). We were hooked on pornography, violent films, alcohol, cigarettes and an assortment of drugs. By this time in our life Emma had tried to commit suicide twice. She suffered from anorexia and bulimia and would spend her days starving her body and vomiting up the little food she had eaten. She heard voices in her head saying that she was fat. Emma was hardly overweight weighing in at barely 6 stone (84 pounds) at one point. She could barely do a days work without bursting into floods of tears as she suffered severe panic attacks. The voices in her head continued to drive her saying “Kill yourself! Kill yourself!”

By my late teens I had got involved in a post-punk band and enjoyed exercising my massive ego by singing in front of audiences all around England. I appeared so confident on the stage to the crowd, yet inside I was empty. I just wanted to be loved. The more I tried to fill the emptiness the bigger the hole inside of me became. The more concerts I played in the band the more I needed to play. I was hooked on trying to fill a huge black hole inside of me and nothing was filling it. By nineteen I was drunk four nights a week and singing and coughing like an old man.