A Quiet Mind

Tomorrow marks 7 months without a hospitalization. I can't believe how far I've come. I still have far to go but I am on the right path.

I think the most exciting thing to me right now is that my paranoia and psychosis have been gone for about a week. Just gone. Left my mind. Sayonara. Au revoir. Ciao. Adios.

I can't pinpoint a day that they stopped, because it took a bit of time for me to realize they were gone. All of a sudden, I was like "why is my mind so quiet?"

My mind has been quiet for the last week or so. No hallucinations or paranoia. It feels so different. I didn't even realize how rampant the hallucinations were in my mind until they were gone for a few days. For the past few months, I have had hallucinations and paranoia every day. You tend to get used to it. And you tend to blur reality and unreality. You start to believe the unreal is real.

If you've ever seen "A Beautiful Mind," it's a lot like that.

When I was having the hallucinations, I thought they were real. But now that they've been gone, I have started to realize that it wasn't happening. To think I spent the last few months "in an unreal world" is interesting to me. I want to celebrate the fact that I am almost done with my last semester of graduate school (for awhile) even despite being schizophrenic, even despite dealing with hallucinations and paranoia on a daily basis. I think that's something to celebrate.

It feels like my mind has been quieted. Silenced. The voices gone. The visual hallucinations gone. I am in reality again. My confusion has turned into relief. My paranoia has turned into peace.

A quiet mind.

Conscience

“Conscience is a compelling feeling of obligation that is always based in our proclivity to bond with others, our (nearly) universal ability to love. Once we understand the true nature of conscience, we can appreciate that it is precisely our capacity to form emotional attachments that gives rise to moral character.”

-Martha Stout, The Paranoia Switch

Reading this quote, I find it interesting that one of the first things that is affected by my paranoia is my conscience. The voices that I hear when I’m psychotic tell me I’m an awful person,  that I don’t deserve to live, etc. It doesn't help that the voices I hear are those of people I've known.

It’s like my conscience is on overdrive.

In one of my hospitalizations, I walked around to all the other patients and told them I was sorry for hurting them. I remember one woman telling me, "But you helped me."

After awhile, I tend to believe the voices though. Maybe I am a bad person.

A few weeks ago, my mom and I were talking on the phone and she kept reminding me that I’m a good person. She also reminded me that others are generally good people, and they would not be spreading rumors or trying to make my paranoia worse.

I genuinely care about others. I believe we are put on this earth to help others along our path.

It bothers me that people are homeless when there are so many vacant homes. It bothers me that I have enough food to eat when others are starving. It bothers me that I have shoes to wear and others are walking around without shoes. It bothers me that I am free and there are millions of slaves around the world.

I want to do something to help. That’s why I’ve walked nearly 600 miles this summer for different charities. That's why I donated my hair to cancer patients. That's why I've donated blood four times this year and I'm going to try again tomorrow.

I want to be the change I wish to see. I want to make a real difference.

I want to spread love.

I may have gone through a lot of obstacles in my life, but I am very fortunate. I want to help others because I feel so blessed. A pastor said to me when I was younger, “You’re going to be a lover of people.”

I want to testify to the love that we can find in God, the love that I’ve found in Him. The love that carries me through difficult times. The love that knows no bounds. Endless love. The love that gives life meaning.

Not So Quick to Judge

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am reading a book called Perfect Chaos. It is written by a mother and a daughter telling the daughter's journey with bipolar disorder. Reading this book has opened my eyes to what it feels like to be a mother with a daughter who has mental illness. Reading the daughter's story has also made me realize that I am not alone in this fight.

I wanted to talk about a few quotes that really spoke to me as I read yesterday.

"I recognized some of the patients as men and women whom I have passed on street corners, under freeway overpasses , in the city parks... The world of the nameless mentally ill and the life of my beautiful daughter were one and the same."
-Cinda Johnson, Perfect Chaos

Like the mother, Cinda, when I entered my first hospitalization in a major city (Syracuse), I realized how many of the other patients were homeless. I was so different than them, being a student, yet our worlds were very similar in that we all are battling mental illness. 

Psych units are definitely interesting places. I've been inpatient 9 times in psych units, two child and seven adult. I feel like I have seen everything. It's a different world. I had to get used to realizing that what I was experiencing was not normal. I remember talking to a girl about her hearing voices and hoping I never would hear voices. A few years later, I started to hear voices.

My new world was full of medications, hospital bills, inpatient stays and outright frustration. 

My first hospitalization ever was in a child psych unit and it was pretty calm, except for the occasional tantrum. I still remember watching a young child be "shot in the butt" after a psychotic breakdown.

I realized that I was entering a new world, full of confusion, terror and the unknown.

"Mental illness doesn't care if you are rich or poor, well connected or not, loved or deserted."
-Cinda Johnson, Perfect Chaos

This quote also struck me, because I think so many people think that all mentally ill people are homeless or they have other misconceptions about mentally ill people.

Mentally ill people are people. We didn't ask to be mentally ill. We didn't ask for our brains to go haywire. But our brains did and we have to deal with the repercussions. We have to fight every day against awful thoughts, hallucinations and psychosis.

It is not an easy fight but it's worth it.

If anything, I wish that people were not so quick to judge those who are mentally ill. We have enough to deal with without the stigmas.

An Intriguing Puzzle

"The content of the voices and visions constitutes a hazardous nuisance to someone like me to so likes to figure out puzzles."
-Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So

I still remember my time in the hospital in a catatonic state like it was yesterday. For most of that time, I was in my bed curled up in a ball, hearing voices. To say I was terrified is a grave understatement.

The first time I became "crazy" was when the unreal became blurred with the real. It's weird when people say what you are experiencing is not actually happening. It's downright confusing.

I battle every day to know what's real and what's not. I continually search for the truth in my experiences.

Are people after me? Am I in trouble with the FBI?

The voices are not just voices. When I was catatonic, they scared me to the point of not talking for 3 days. I thought they were reading my mind. They tormented me. They taunted me. They blamed me. I did not talk for 3 days, yet I talked to the voices for those 3 days in my head. I had conversations with them, just like I talk to people on the phone. The voices were so real, because they were voices of people I've known.

Psychosis is very interesting in a lot of ways- how the mind can create such realistic hallucinations that are not real yet everything pieces together so nicely. As someone who has studied the brain, my mental illnesses are very intriguing to me at times.

The Voices That Speak

This is a poem that I just wrote that I felt called to write. It is a poem about my experience being psychotic and paranoid. I hope that it helps others to understand what it is like to have a mental illness.

The Voices That Speak

i look

they stare

they laugh

what do they know?

what do they see?

are they after me?

the voices speak to me

in whispers

in loud voices

confusion invades

the very essence of who i am

who are they?

i recognize their voices

voices loud and clear

near and far

pointing fingers

blaming me

killing me

i say the lord’s prayer

and forgive those who trespass against us

Lord, please make them stop

invasion of my mind

confusion in my soul

chaos in my being

i take the medications

want the voices to stop

desperate

want the people to stop killing me

slowly the voices fade

i escape

but not without a fight

they stop killing me with their words

their accusations

i emerge

and become whole again

the person i was before the voices

their voices become just a memory

the experience a distant nightmare

the confusion fades

the chaos ends

and i am me again