Schizophrenia Diaries

A couple of years ago, my older brother was a quiet, shy, not so confident guy. Whenever someone asked me about my brother, I could never quite describe him. I would usually say something along the lines of.. a really nice guy, quiet, smart & a gentle giant. Paul was the quiet angel of our family, whereas I was the moody, screaming teenager.
I don’t mean to talk about him in past tense, like he isn’t here. He well and truly is, at age 24, still living at home with our dad, after my mum made him move out.
In about late 2006, he was diagnosed with Disorganized typed Schizophrenia. A shock to my parents, but not so much to me, as I always knew he was a bit ‘different’.
It all started with him hanging out with a group of friends he was close with since primary school. They had a band and played on weekends, usually at one of their houses. There they drank and I’m assuming smoked a fair bit too from what my brother told me. I never thought my brother would try that stuff, after the way my mother brought us up. She was very disapproving of drugs, I suppose like most parents, and he wasn’t the type to go against what mum had to say, or let her down.
He started becoming very withdrawn from his friends, he was chatting with them on Facebook & Myspace quite a lot, but just stopped, and stopped communicating with them.
This is when it all started.
He started saying really strange things, like ” My friend is plotting things against me” and “Do you think I could take over the world with facebook”, and he would just come out with the strangest things. Mum & I would just get so angry with him because I suppose we didn’t get it.
He started to walk around the house alot. He would just do laps of the house, open every single door and turn the heater up, leave lights on etc. Very very annoying. He also started to have about 5-10 showers a day, all half hour ones too.
He would walk around in a beenie, gloves and jacket on hot days. I knew there was something unnatural going on in his brain to make him act like that, I knew he couldnt help it, but it was just so frustrating. Where did my big brother go?
He would also study maths every day, he said it was because he needed to keep his skills up which he learnt in his Diploma of Engineering. This is definetely a good thing I suppose.
I always thought he was excellent at Math, as he used to teach me. But after recently reading his school reports, he actually had quite low scores in Math. But ask him what 100 minus 23 is and jhe ust wouldnt know, but ask him a really long algebra equation and I bet he would know how to do it. Strange huh?
After about a year of this kind of stuff and seeing counsellors etc, he was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. Much to our relief, as I could better understand him, and know it was not his fault, but the illness itself.
Mum thought she understood. I know now that she just couldn’t deal with it anymore, so she asked him to move to my dads place, 5 minutes away. I guess it didn’t help that all of this started when mum had anothe rbaby with her partner or 6 years. She was trying to look after two kids at once I suppose. She still sees him once a week or so, but I wish she would care alot more and show him she loves him. I know she does, but I don’t know if he knows that.
So after two years or so, his condition has dramatically improved. He has finally got a job three days a week as a cleaner, something he knows well after working under my mums business. And he is also studying Literacy & Numeracy. I see him once every two weeks or so, but sometimes it can just be draining trying to make conversation and taking the lead in everything. I love my brother, but I just miss the way he used to be. He isn’t the same person anymore, he was my big brother, now I feel like his big sister.