One thing I learned while patiently waiting for the voices to kill me--how ordinary my life is. How I will live and die and not make much of a mark on this planet.
When we are younger, we have much larger aspirations, thinking this will somehow guard us from death.
I, instead, have succumb to an ordinary, plain, average life.
What makes the total of a life? Some people the greatest they contribute to this planet is their children.
Some of us have this realization, and battle it at certain points throughout our lives, we call it "midlife crisis," or other terms. WE wake up one day, and wonder where all the time has went, and you understand that the flexibility to be anyone you want to be, go anywhere you want to go--is closing. LIfe feels set. Bad choices. Good choices. Here you are. Try moving with kids, mortgage, with high unemployment rates, with a marriage.
For some of us it doesn't take "voices" screaming that they are going to kill you to ponder this.
I haven't paved my way for myself in a long time. Was prostitution and dancing an act of desperation? IN the beginning, it was, although I came to enjoy it. Losing dreams means settling for less than even second best. It means conforming to other's wants and expectations. When you sit in a hospital with raging "voices" your priorities re-align. You're stuck on survival, not kicking the world's ass. Your brain is taking hostage.
I wish I could say that I put up more a fight, but the vast majority of the time, I was ignorant of my delusions and paranoia. I can only be proud that I avoided the shower room at STanford while the voices were trying to make me hang there.
I lost nine months to illness, a psychotic break (stopping only when the voices disappeared completely). It was not my longest episode, but clearly my most severe and insidious. A few people knew there was something wrong with me, but no one knew how severely I was affected--including myself. Always previously, I was all informed of my own condition, and could help seek on my own without anyone prompting me.
The voices were sometimes pleasant, but you never remember that stuff. A large part of their banter was about my IQ, how smart or how stupid I was. I read a research article that says they can't find a link between auditory hallucinations and previous history of trauma. I can't figure out why the voices went after my IQ level unless it's just something I'm especially sensitive about. Again, this goes back to my ordinary status. My IQ is probably above average, but it's not genius level--the voices argued about this too.
After going through what I went through, I have a new sense of humility. I feel beaten down even though the voices are gone.
Sanity is thinner, the ice covered pond we all skate on. WE watch others fall through, our hands dipping into the cold water in hopes of helping, thinking we will never be there ourselves.
Schizophrenia besides HIV is the only disease that scares me. NOw I join it's family with Schizoaffective Disorder.
I was under water. The person I talked to the most, RAndy yelling and screaming at me because he didn't understand that I was experiencing delusions. I didn't know who he was. Capgras delusion. In a world in which everyone was unrecognizable.
The treatment to come back to the edge of the pond, safe and sound, was impersonal. I barely noticed it happening in the beginning except that it worked, and that it was Zyprexa. The people were just people rotating in and out of my room. NO one stood out. In return, I never made a great connection with any of the doctors during either visit. I was left to sit in my room and ponder health and illness. Open my mouth for the meds. Close. Therapy done.
I had no relative idea of how sick I was, and still don't to this day. The doctors seem to take it all in without affect.
Would they show it on their faces if I was dying? NO.
I didn't look at the other patients. Or talk to them. I wondered if they heard voices too.
I was at STanford. To this day, I wondered, even as a patient, if I belonged at STanford as student. Sick students end up there too. One of them was my roommate. The doctors didn't seem particularly concerned about my cognitive abilities or if I was high functioning or not. None of them gave me a pep talk on the way out, either visit. I would have to do the pep talk on my own. Or just do it. LIfe. Be the success story.
LIving the ordinary life is okay if you have love. If you married the greatest guy in the world to you. Then, an ordinary life isn't so ordinary, and your priorities change.
I wait patiently for MOrpheus to call, and I know he will. I have my script ready. I will address the fact that I asked him to marry me (while being completely psychotic). I will tell him about my bipolar symptoms (ignoring the diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder since it's too complicated at this point), and address the fact that I went to his house while his wife and family were there.
It's been over three months since we've talked to each other since I expect he will show up in one form or another soon.
I'm not looking forward to fighting about the no sex before separation papers rule.
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