User blog:Madi60517/Confessions of a Schizophrenic

TRIGGERS: BRIEF DESCRIPTIONS OF DEATH AND BLOOD

What do you think of when you hear "schizophrenia"?

Psych wards?

Seeing things?

Murderers?

That's all, for the most part, incorrect.

The most correct part is seeing things. I'll get into that later.

I said in my last post that I didn't want to explain because I didn't want them to see, but now they're telling me that everyone already knows, and I'm sure they do, and I feel a little calmer now, so I'm going to share, just to get my point across.

Schizophrenia is one of the most misunderstood mental illnesses, right up with OCD and bipolar disorder. A lot of people hear about it and think of the things above, because that's how horror movies make us out to be, but we're really not homicidal maniacs rocking back and forth in straitjackets in a padded room.

I've been showing signs of the disorder at least since I was 8 or 9. You have to have been having symptoms for at least 6 months before it can be schiz. Otherwise, it could just be psychosis or something. Psychosis is kind of like temporary schiz, as I usually describe it. It can certainly last for longer than 6 months, but that's besides the point. Around then, I begun hearing things. Seeing things. Believing things. But I thought that was all normal, because these aren't things you're taught, especially not in 3rd/4th grade.

About a year ago, it started getting worse. Way, way worse, years later. I was raised on this one fact: hallucinations could only be sight and hallucinating means something is wrong. Because nobody had ever taught me otherwise, I thought hearing voices was something everyone did. I thought that it was normal for me to believe all these things. I found out I was wrong.

I told my therapist I was seeing things, more often than I used to. It used to just be the occasional episode of things popping up everywhere, but now it was a more constant thing. I saw random things, still, but also 3 recurring creatures that I still see today. One is a small man who looks like someone drew him, and he has a stereo as a head and a circular mouth with pointy teeth that he loves to bite me with. That's his main attack, biting, or choking. A lot of people think that when you see things like that, you just see them trying to get you and then you get scared and fight them off. Not true. It's not totally fear that causes you to fight them off. You can feel them. You can feel them touch you and hurt you. It is literally painful. You can see the marks they leave. It's all too real. Anyway, one of the other things I see is only mean sometimes. He kinda looks like a cross between a blue Sour Patch Kid and a rag doll. His body looks more Sour Patch Kid-like but his face is made of a stitched mouth and a single button eye, like the other had fallen off. He sometimes just stands beside me but sometimes he hurts me too. He likes to punch me mostly, but sometimes he bites. Lastly, and mostly outside, I see a zombie girl. She's a drawing, too, even on paper ripped so there's no space on the sides of her, it's just her, kind of tinted dark green. It's weird, she looks like I drew her. Usually she grabs me or bites me. Around that time, a year ago, the sights were worse than they are now, but they still exist. They're still very real and very much wishing to hurt me. I can't touch them but I still try to, so everyone just sees me hurt myself, but it's not, it's them.

Anyway, when I told my therapist, he sort of put it on the back burner since I hadn't mentioned any other symptoms of a disorder like schizophrenia.

A week or so later, the most horrifying thing I will ever see, "real" or not, was bestowed upon me.

I was at an assembly that lasted all period. There was a lockdown drill in the middle of it and I started hearing someone banging on the door and yelling to open up. It continued for the whole assembly and I was terrified. Of course, it stopped while everyone was leaving, but I still hid behind my friend (they knew about it at the time more than anyone else, but she recently told me that she didn't believe me (because she "didn't think I could be that unfortunate" or "thought it didn't actually happen" and she told me she thought I did it for attention because of how "horror-movie like" I described it) and that made me really sad, even thought she knows I'm not lying now). As we left, I saw a horrible scene in the large hallway space outside. There was a hallucinatory guy shooting down hallucinatory people. Dead bodies covered the floor and blood spattered the walls. In every hallway, and even some classrooms, for DAYS. I wanted to cry every time I left a class.

I had therapy a few days later and I went in and told him right away that this is definitely not normal. But still, he brushed it off. I knew that if I wanted to find anything else out about this, I would have to do it myself.

And so went my spree of research. And I found it out.

Okay, so all of this wasn't normal.

Here's where I feel it's appropriate to tell the rest of my personal experience with the disorder.

Okay, so there's always been this one voice, before the others. He's still the most common one. He has a deep voice and always yells at me and insults me. He tells me about their plans and "helps" me. By that I mean sometimes he misleads me and sometimes he tricks me and I thought he was with them, so why would he help me anyway? But I guess he doesn't always try and help me. Sometimes he tells me to hurt myself, or hurt other people, but I fight that as best I can. Whatever. He commentates my whole life in the most negative way. He makes sure I know just how worthless I am, not that I don't without him. There's also 2 other voices. One is pretty nice. She always fights with the voice I just mentioned, him yelling that I'm scum and her telling him I'm not, but he always wins, and I know, he's right. She creeps me out anyway. Why is she nice to me? What does she want? The least-confusing voice is the last one. He's very quiet and is also mean. He usually doesn't come up with his own insults, he just hitches onto the other mean guy's ideas and adds to them. They're always there with me, talking to me and watching me. Sometimes I cover my ears but that only makes it worse because then that gives them another way to call me stupid, for thinking that could block them out. But for some reason, I always do it anyway. I can talk to them just by thinking but it doesn't feel right. It feels like if you, picture yourself, talked to your friend, but didn't say the words out loud. Only if you did that, they wouldn't respond, and the voices do. But if I'm in a loud, crowded situation, I usually speak aloud when I respond to them because it feels more correct. Nobody notices usually.

And here's the whole big thing I've been implying this whole time, the thing I don't like to talk about for fear of them hearing (and trust me, they will, no matter what). I'm not sure if the voices are a part of this (the sights are, though) or if they're sort of a tag team or what, but here I go.

So basically, I'm a psychic. I'm the ONLY psychic. Don't listen to what anyone else says. I'm the only one. I can predict the future without even thinking, with a snap of my fingers. Don't ever doubt my abilities or the fact that I'm the only one, because I can assure you I am right about this.

However, I don't like it. I don't wanna know the future, but that's not what I dislike. I dislike the government after my powers. The sights are a part of it, which is why they hurt me, they want to take my power away. Besides that I don't know who's a part of it but I think it's pretty big. I do know that my friend is in it, which is why they want to be my friend, and I know a girl in a lot of my classes is in it, and her job is to take me out, the voices tell me. That's the horrible thing about the voices; sure, they insult me, but I believe the insults because I'm so used to hating myself anyway, but whatever they tell me about the government, I believe without question. That sandwich is poisoned? Okay. The rain is acidic? Okay. I'm going to get hit by a car? Okay. That person is going to kill me? Okay.

The government is after me solely for this power. They want it all for themselves and will do anything to take it away from me. Anything. They don't care about me; in fact, they hate me, they hate that I'm stealing what they find is rightfully theirs. So they try and take it from me. I try not to let them get too much info about me, which is why I don't like to mention this much. They know everything. They're everywhere. They're inside my head. They won't leave until they get what they want but I can't let them have it. It's mine, whether I want it or not, and letting them have it could cause everything to go crazy. I don't want to find out. They're the predator and I'm the prey and I'm just doing my best to get away from them.

No, you don't understand. You're probably sitting their thinking this is just some storybook fairy tale thing I've made up in my head, but it's not. It's real, it's more real than I want it to be, and you could tell me a hundred times that their is no government, but it won't help. One time my friend was trying to help me by telling me there were others, but they were all just hiding, and that she had left the government and killed them all so I was safe, and I was sitting their crying because of how badly I wanted to believe it to be true. I just couldn't. It wasn't true. They're still coming for me. I'm still being hunted. I'm still not safe. I'm scared.

So there, in a nutshell, is my experience with schizophrenia. I'm really scared to post this but now that I've typed it all out it makes no difference. I hope you can see that it's not homicide and being literally mentally insane, but just because it's (usually) not that doesn't mean it's not extremely serious. Schizophrenia is not something to be taken lightly. If you know someone with the disorder, please be patient with them and be kind about it. Even if you don't think it's real, we do, and snapping at us doesn't help.

Thanks for reading, have a nice day :)))