Long before he was cycling through the isolation cells of the Marion County Jail, James T. Kirk Vidican was crowned homecoming king at Belleview High School. Popular, smart, and athletic, James had written a high school montage about his dream to pursue a psychology degree, hoping his future would be “enriched with a lot of colors.”
But by the time he turned 18, a severe psychiatric crisis took hold. He signed himself out of high school and began a rapid, tragic descent.
Then came the delusions. His family watched in horror as James stayed up all night, weeping over an open Bible and claiming every word in it was written about him. He hallucinated that the backyard was water and tried to “swim” in the dry grass. He broke his grandmother’s furniture and tossed it into the yard of the family’s multi-generational home. He believed former President Barack Obama was his biological father, that television hosts were speaking directly to him, and eventually, that he was Jesus Christ…