The good news is it isn't fatal. The bad news is it's chronic.

I was diagnosed with chronic, undifferentiated schizophrenia when I was almost 19 years old. It was a relief for me. Some people don’t understand this point, so I want to make it very carefully. After spending 5 years in a black, gaping maw of desensitizing hell, my monster finally had a name! After spending my days crying in a corner (not having eaten, or slept, or showered, or changed clothes for maybe weeks), screaming at a wall with snot in my hair, someone stepped up to the plate with not only information, but a treatment plan that didn’t blame the victim. I relaxed in the doctor’s stiff-backed chair. My mother cried, releasing her overwhelming grief.

For me, the diagnosis was a string of big words that said I wasn’t making it up, or doing any of this on purpose. For my mother it meant that her child would never be able to live up to a few, unspoken, parental expectations. These included “being normal”, which may not sound like a big deal to those of us who live on the fringes of society, but to a parent it is devastating. And she had some pretty big hopes for me. I guess every mother who cradles a newborn has some enormous hopes for their child, even if they remain hidden and locked inside a secret place in the heart. The one most often spoken, however, is “… as long as she’s healthy.” So schizophrenia cracked my mother’s heart.

The up-side is that you have to break a heart to open it. Immediately Mom checked out almost every book in the library about schizophrenia, joined NAMI, began lobbying for rights to protect the mentally ill, and started raising money for various charities for research. Need I say I have an awesome mom?

At home, things were different. Having a beautiful pair of Mexican, Catholic grandparents who doted on my every move, I began hearing different tactics to “make it all go away.” Grandmother: Who are you talking to? Me: Myself. I hear voices, Gramma. Grandmother: Ay! I thought you grew out of that!

Another time, I received this: “Maybe if you just prayed to God the voices would go away?” My snarky response: “Someone else to talk to that isn’t there? Great.”

So things were tense there. My wonderful Grandma died in 1998, but I don’t think in those years we had with my illness in between us, she ever really understood. This doesn’t go away.

Susan