My gratitude and a personal story of perseverance

My gratitude and a personal story of perseverance

Hey friends and readers,

Last night my blog got the Substack “bestseller” mark, which was one of my biggest goals to achieve. However, without friends, family and my readers this would not have been possible, not even close.

It’s amazing for me to see how many friends and readers supported me.

Just to make you understand more what this means to me, I will share some very private stuff that happened to us in the past few years. After reading the story you’ll be able to further understand how important this achievement is to me.

Most of this story takes place after the issue with my son’s heart and if you haven’t read about that, I’ll attach the link on the bottom.

Years back, my wife and I started saving to buy a place. Since we homeschool our son and are both small business owners, we created a schedule where we’d split the work hours. It took us about 5 years of hard work and saving to have enough to be able to start looking.

As we were looking at places, the war in Ukraine begun. A relative was murdered, her kids shot and became invalids, friends killed, my grandma passed away. It was tough to focus on buying a place as you can imagine. My stress levels were through the roof. Everyone in the family were also so stressed and then finally we decided on a place, an apartment near the big city. This was suppose to be a blessing that would bring some relief during that situation, but instead it became one of the toughest trials. When I said that my stress levels were through the roof, I really had no idea yet.

The apartment we got was on the second floor of three. Little did we know that below us was a gang member and above us was schizophrenic 40 year old with 20 years worth of criminal record.

As a side note - this is around when I started taking blogging seriously and was starting to grow on the previous platform I used before Substack.

Anyway, it was during the first week that we already got warning signs. The guy above would blast crazy music late at night and slamming the floor with who knows what. My, at the time, 5 year old son was freaked out and no longer wanted to sleep in his room alone.

One of the nights I knocked on the ceiling and a minute later a knock came on the door with:

“That better not have been for me!”

Being Ukrainian and a boxer to boot, I instantly opened the door and was face to face with this guy. I could right away see the fear in his eyes as he went back upstairs, but obviously, considering this was a madman, things were just getting started.

I won’t even mention much about the guy below and his ms13 gang buddies who lived in the next building, but one thing that happened was one of them saying at one point that they’ll cut off my head. Lovely, right?

Back to the crazy guy upstairs. Every other night he started to throw furniture or hammer the floors, he would also drop large metal objects on the floor. I already have sleeping issues, and he would do these things from around midnight to 4 am. Some weeks it would be 4-5 nights in a row. Most of these nights my wife couldn’t sleep through either. Thank God my son was able to sleep in our bed with us through most of that noise, but some nights he was up as well, terrified.

About few months into this, with HOA and police not doing much, he damaged water pipes and was flooding us.

I made serious complaints to HOA stating that if they continue to do nothing I’ll sue. At this time my wife and I decided to bring the crazy guy food and see if we can calm him down. He exchanged phone number with me and apologized about the flooding. However, few days after he texted me saying that he can’t let anyone fix pipes because “world rulers” will install cameras to watch him.

After authorities finally got inside they said the apartment was completely messed up and that he was growing plants in toilet, bath and sinks. Yes you read that correctly, the roots of the plants were destroying the pipes. He was forced to fix the leak, but this made him more angry.

The sounds at night and his screaming got even worse. Some days I went two straight nights without sleeping and having to go to work at 6 am.

Yes, you guessed it, things got worse after that again. He started leaving strange things with writings at our door and eventually txted me saying that the voices in his head told him that my son could not be kept alive.

This horrified us and I had to cancel all my night time clients so my family would not be alone and started brining them to my parents house often. My son was starting to have visible signs of ptsd developing, a 5 year old. The police STILL did nothing.

After that I confronted  him again in person and he told me that the voices tell him he must kill me and my son.

Once again after talking to police and asking “Are you waiting for him to actually try to kill me?”, they still did nothing.

The budget got tight, my eyes were getting bad, and on top of this I have an enlarged spleen condition and I was in constant pain from the stress making it worse.

Few more months passed of this and finally the day came when he assaulted me with a metal pipe, trying to strike me on the head multiple times. I believe my guardian angel was there with me that night, as I only had some damage on the arm and neck.

For the first time police took some action and arrested him, however, he was out on bail after a few days, having a rich dad.

We went to court and judge issued an order. He was told if he continues to do those things he will be in violation and be arrested.

He was arrested two more times shortly after, violating the order. One of the nights I saw inside his apartment as many officers came to arrest him, as he was particularly crazy that night. The whole apartment was empty with holes all over white walls and floors, there were crazy writings all over the place.   

Anyway. This did not deter his behavior.  He threw large object from the balcony, broke things on the property, and continued with crazy sounds at night, each time police came again, he would obviously simply not open.

Believe it or not, it’s during these months that I was growing my blog on the previous platform. Often at night as I’d hear the guy above scratching the floor and screaming I’d put chant music and write. I had hope that through hard work I could help us get out eventually. It was growing rapidly.

During this time I also had to quit my photography and sell my camera because of tight budget. Something that still pains me today at times.

Several more months passed, my mind and body were totally exhausted. I was praying a lot. One of the mornings after not sleeping for 2 straight days I was hearing him banging stuff and was pretty delirious, as I argued with my family I punches a wooden stand and broke my hand in three places.

It was all adding up. And then, after gathering 10 thousand followers and subs on my previous blog, they shadow banned me. All of my hard work, erased. It was like a powerful gut punch. I wrote about Jesus and faith, but if you look around at some places today, you’d see why that can be “controversial.” Prayers kept me going. I was so worried about my son and wife.

The next point of escalation came close to a year of being there, when he stood on his balcony watching us walking and said while holding a knife; “I’m ready to spill blood.”

When we got inside, we saw water coming in through a closet from above, he literally made a hole in the ceiling and was pouring water in to flood us.

Police and many others came, magistrate gave an order for his arrest once again.

When he was arrested a few days after that, caught on the street, we were desperate to get out and sold the place super fast at a huge loss. Basically losing all of our investments, but safety of our son was a priority.

Having lost everything financially, being shadow banned on the blog, having broken hand, and getting help from friends and family to move into a rental…crazy combination of things.

Despite this we thanked God when we got out and that is when my journey on Substack begun. Basically almost starting over from scratch.

So, you can imagine how much it means to me to reach this point on Substack now, and to see the brighter future ahead. There is a lot of work left to be done, but through God’s help and your kindness, I am able to persevere.

This week we also celebrate my son finally getting over his trauma of fear about sleeping alone because of that experience and he is now doing it.

I thank you all once more. I actually left out a lot of details from the story, but you get the point, I’m pretty sure. In general I hate to bore you with this, but I felt like I owe you guys this story as you supported me and my writing so much.

Thanks for reading and supporting me once again.  Thanks for sharing hope and faith with me.

I will do my best to keep up the work!

Blessings.

I also want to now give some special mentions to a few people who are on Substack and have played a big role in all this.

First, my wife,

Fernanda Semenyuk

. Thank you for being so strong and fighting hard, having such great faith. Our relationship only got stronger in these hardships.

My sister,

Victoria Rader

, we would not have been able to make without your support and care. You are always there for your family no matter what. Thank you so much.

To my Lighthouse team, you are amazing writers and wonderful human beings.

And to

Janet Goh

, who not only was my reader and friend on previous blog, but also found me on Substack later on and actually it was her who became my 100th paid subscriber. It surely was meant to be that way.

Also, to some very important people who do not have a blog here:

My mom and dad, who constantly helped us in the times of need anyway they could, and helped my son be happier.

And to my friends, who always supported me and my writing, it means a lot.

Here is the story of my son’s heart;

https://alexandersemenyuk.substack.com/p/sasha-and-his-miracle-heart-a-true