Health

When you say the word, “schizophrenic,” it automatically implies words like: dangerous, unstable, and stupid. I got diagnosed with paranoid schizophreniform last year, and I rarely talk about it because whenever I do, people tend to have a different view towards me.

I’m unsure if I was always schizophrenic or if it manifested last year after my overdose on my antidepressants. To overcome it, I’ve been working on writing and creating different budgets for my independent projects.

I have now created seven budgets and eight different scripts. Two of the scripts I'm still working on. As a schizophrenic, I immediately devalue everything about myself. My mind constantly wanders, and I can be physically present in the moment while I write (so I can type sentences and words with my hands), but my mind can be replaying different movie scenes, memories, or creating different fantasies in my own world.

Classifying it as a mental health disorder makes me feel like less of a human. I feel incapable of love, of a normal life, and incapable of being tolerated. I wish that more people could be more understanding and patient.

I personally hate myself more than anyone else ever could, so people being irritated with me, not being able to follow my train of thought, or commenting on how I constantly jump just makes me retreat further.

Also, trying to differentiate whether something is real, a manifestation, or someone else fucking with you is extremely difficult.

I have to learn how I feel in the moment and what I’m thinking, which is something that others might not struggle with, but I find it extremely difficult. Feelings aren’t black and white, they aren’t simple. You don’t just love someone, you are obsessed with them and those emotions overwhelm you (and sometimes them).

Schizophrenics, on average, tend to have a shorter life span due to our suicidal tendencies, I personally have had three attempts, and the only other schizophrenic in this small town that I know of killed himself last year.

I feel ashamed to be alive, I feel like less of a human being, adding the fact that I’m gay and black, it’s a triple threat. I wish people would stop treating schizophrenia like a danger and try and understand it, would try to understand me.

If someone actually sat down and asked me to tell them what was going through my mind, I would actually cry. My therapy sessions are generally helpful at first; but then after further reflection, I realize that they aren’t because my mind constantly jumps from topic to topic. I just wish more people would be more open to treating us like humans instead of being apprehensive.

Feeling like you are unable to properly communicate with your friends, family, and loved ones about how you don't feel like yourself. How you feel like a monster, you feel like nothing you do is correct, that you feel ashamed to even exist, words cannot express it.

This is what my mind is like, this is my life. My mind is poison and anyone in my life, I have to push them out of it, because people don't stay in my life. No one wants or likes me, and because of that, isolation is the only solution.

Working on projects and activities is the only thing that keeps me going, because if I stop, then I am forced to stop running and my mind overloads and I just want to scream.

Feeling like no one can truly understand me or be with me without hating me is what being a monster feels like. I remember growing up, whenever I would see my mother (however rare that was) she would lecture me about little things, and I would take it more personally than I should have from her point of view.

I had tons of imaginary friends when I was younger, but being an adult having them, you feel stupid. You feel like you can't communicate with what you see because people either won't believe you, will mock you, or will think that you're a monster. So, silence is better because when you're unsure if something is real or not, not saying anything is better than feeling like a freak.

You isolate yourself because that's the only way that you can be safe. You know that you can't leave yourself, so being by yourself isn't that hard. It's when people want to come into your life that's difficult because you realize the obstacles that they have to jump over; most of the time, it isn't worth it for them.

Feelings of being unlovable is what it means to me being schizophrenic. I hate my mind, I hate my abilities, how could anyone else love the darkest parts of you? The depths that you reach, others can only dream of reaching; but it's not because you are a deep person, it's because your mind constantly questions the way the world works. The only way that you can survive in the world and contribute to society is by creating your own world; hence why writing is such a necessity for me for my passions, and survival.

Health is something that everyone struggles with, I'm just glad that I can create my own world to cope.