30 Days of Mental Illness Awareness Challenge: Day Eight

Question: At what age were you diagnosed? At what age do you think your symptoms began?

 

I’m going to answer this question backward (as is my inalienable right as a willing participant), because my brain is malfunctioning lately and these things seem to happen outside of chronological order for me when I write in this condition.

Like every kid, I had imaginary friends. The difference between my friends and I was that I would talk to these imaginary pals openly, in front of everyone, up until the age of … well, I guess I never stopped. That’s the chief difference: mine didn’t go away. When others’ imaginary friends “moved away” or “disappeared” or lost their “magic”, mine continued in intensity and frequency. (Except the ones who died. For example, I watched “Katy” burn to death when I was 4, and even my older sister couldn’t convince me it didn’t happen and wasn’t real. It was extremely graphic – especially for my age – and I was a bit emotionally scarred by it. But this is another story.)

I’ve been talking to The People in My Head since I began to talk. I have no idea when this all began. It’s always been a part of, a piece of who I am, like an arm or a freckle. Around the age of 12 or 13, I started to believe I could see ghosts. I was special because I could communicate with the dead. Even celebrities joined in the mix. By the time I was 14, I was totally lost and batshit off-the-wall delusional. Three sheets to the wind psychotic. I lost my “real” friends (the few I had), because there was just no relating to me and the nonsense babbling I did about the chaos of my mind. I spent 5 years in the hole of schizophrenia without a diagnosis. My parents searched the house frantically for any drugs I might be taking, but of course found none. (I was actually so clean it hurt. I never had a big attraction to drugs, though I did try pot a few times in high school. All it did was make me paranoid, and I couldn’t understand why people deliberately made themselves paranoid and delusional, so I left it as a novel footnote to my existence. I pursued drugs no farther than that. Just in case you were wondering.)

Just a few days shy of my 19^th birthday, my mother drew a proverbial “line of death” in the sand of our household. It was demanded I see a psychiatrist. He diagnosed me with “schizophreniform” almost immediately. He gave me an anti-psychotic. It made me tired, but

THE WORLD WENT QUIET.

The official diagnosis of full-on schizophrenia followed in 6 months.

PTSD took a little longer. I had no memories of what I had endured as a teen (either because I was so out of it with the Crazies, or because the truth of it was too terrible, or a combination of the two). When I finally found a therapist I could trust, I opened up. This was about 2 years ago now, and she told me I did indeed suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

GAH.

It’s so sad to me, because I was so smart! I could’ve done almost anything! I could’ve BEEN almost anything! So here’s a poem I wrote some time ago that sums up some of my despondency over What Might’ve Been:

"The Sense of Senselessness"

You had too many faces in the first place.

You moved too quickly.

You had me neatly packed into you.

Your calloused fingers were nastily possessive from the start.

I was tied too tightly to the ligature of your doubt

so no one could pull us apart.

Now without you, I splinter into anonymity,

as if someone spliced through my ocean

but the water of me is undeterred.

I belong to no one.

I am no longer cohesive,

my holy seal broken

as you seethe and break in tantrums and traumas.

You used to be the air all around me,

but now I am too big for toys.

Seeking out my center

I have given you away, removed you from my diameter.

But here is a turning point,

a twist in the plot:

however sleep comes,

we still glide together

where the ice in your iris contracts

where you make more black space for hatred.

Your light was ingratiating and I folded like ash beneath its boot.

You’ve never been fair.

Like me, you’ve grown beyond opposites.

I was two halves of a single snapshot, imposed

by your impartial retina.

I split in the center of your eye.

Your image is stenciled in the black of my typeface,

an optical illusion.

And if I thought the world was equally weighted,

I would have measured myself

by my name tag.

And if I paid deferment to a deity,

I may have hidden behind my incomes and outcomes.

But no one ever wins a war between two.

My god! You were always in me.

 

I've hit rock bottom and have started to dig.

Well, that's not exactly accurate, but I'm getting there.

I am sooooo tired, friends. Tired and need to sleep. The Horrible Hands make this impossible tonight. I've had a busy day, so there was a bit of hiatus on Day 7 of 30MIAC. It'll pop up soon, I promise.

I was trying to sleep when The Hands started up. I was being used. Strangely, after being used, I was rejected. My "Fantasy Man" (the current guy in the mental Rolodex my fantasies have fixated on), left me for dead. I couldn't stop the delusion. In the psychosis I was killed while pregnant with his child, and he didn't care.

Pencil sketch of Self, circa 2004

I keep having little loops of delusions (they're almost like .gif files that go horribly wrong inside my head). In them lately, I am almost always killed while pregnant. And it reminded me of the child I can never have because I am too sick. Too sick and unable to be so selfish as to bring a helpless being into my world of insanity and lethargy. I love my imaginary/potential child too much to have it. I hope that makes sense. Anyway, to plow on into the world I inhabit when no one is looking, I thought the child was a Me, a Self I was trying to form. But no. This one is so literal and so obvious I missed it.

I grieve for a motherhood I cannot have. And Fantasy Man? I grieve the impossibility of him, too. And then my thoughts connected in that strange way they do when one is almost asleep. It startled me awake. I have always been rejected by the guys I am attracted to. I was always put down by them as well. (I was that nerdy kid who brought a massive poster of the Millennium Falcon to summer camp, instead of photos of her family.) And then THAT thought connected to something else: my hatred for compliments, and why I have trouble accepting them.

Compliments hurt. Now I know why, and this is important: it's because I know they're TRUE. I can feel you shaking your heads across the ether in misunderstanding, so I'll clear it up. I know they're true deep inside, but I am still rejected by the people who I want to see all those "wonderful things" the most. If it's true that I'm nice and compassionate and funny and intelligent and fun to be around, why am I always teased and put down by men? Especially the ones I really like, and who I want to like me back? I may be all those incredible things people want to be, but -- here's the clincher -- most people don't give me a chance to show them how incredibly cool I can be. I'm dismissed and invisible.

Which brings me back to Fantasy Man. In my psychoses and delusions, he never never ever gives me even the slightest chance to prove myself. He assumes, and then leaves (but not before he kills the child I want so badly). And then I discovered what is so depressing about all of the baby-wanting thing: I would feel like my life meant something if I could pass on a piece of myself to a kid. (I know that's damn selfish, which is why I persist with rigid birth control. I do have a conscience.) It was a shock to discover in myself that I put so much massive meaning on motherhood. But I do, and that is why I had to type all this out. I had to so I wouldn't cry anymore tonight. I'm tired of hurting.