Sometime in the summer of 2005 I was getting very nervous or I had symptoms of anxiety. I had headache, very nervous, and sweaty and I can easily smell myself even though I just had a shower. One afternoon I went home from work, I thought I was having flu. One thing that I couldn’t understand was I was shaking very much. I was very nervous for no particular reason. I thought something bad is happening to my family back home.

Then finally I have this thought that people have been following me around every where I go, even my work they were there watching me. I didn’t know why: it was driving me crazy. I thought I was a subject of a study and these people following me were students and researchers of Mental illness and they are trying to humiliate me to put me to hospital because somehow they know me and all my personal emails were being hacked. They were humiliating me through broadcasting everything I say in the radio.
I thought I was a fish that they were trying to fish. Everytime I hear radio they sing to me and it’s all about me. Even articles in the newspaper have hidden meaning and the subject were about me. They were humiliating me to drive me crazy so that they can put me to the hospital.

Then I started having these ideas that some articles and comics stories in the newspaper have hidden meaning so that all people can’t understand it. They make fun of you in the radio or newspaper and they hide it. Newspapers are afraid to be racist so they hide it through their comic stories and words.
Everything I read started to have different meanings.

I stopped listening to radio and I stopped watching TV because I felt that everything they talk about is offensive. It was hard for me and making me very angry that people were talking about me and laughing at me and listening to me. I started becoming weak and very depressed. I started calling for God, I asked why are they doing these to me. I stayed in my room a lot.

Finally I moved back home to my parents house and my mom was so worry because of my crazy stories. She ended up calling for help. A social worker and a police officer picked me up in my house to put me to the hospital.

I was diagnosed with schizo-effective disorder. I was even more depressed when they told me I had mental illness. I didn’t believe it, instead I thought it was just a bad events in my life and God is trying to call me or some spiritual calling. I had some spiritual longing in my heart and due to the sickness it became distorted. I started hearing voices and hallucination: I thought I was special.
The voices were telling me what to do, even telling me some stories. I thought I was having telepathy because I can hear my friends’ voice while I’m locked up in the hospital. I didn’t know whose voices I was hearing I thought I was talking to ghosts. At night I was so afraid to sleep because I was afraid the devil will get me.

I’ve been in the hospital 5 times before I realized and accepted that I was really sick. I been in in few medication but because of side effects I didn’t take them properly. It took about 3 years before I’m back to myself again. I feel lucky because I stopped my medication and I am well now, I don’t hear voices anymore. All my paranoia is gone. I feel better now. It’s like a miracle.

Having mental illness have many stages:
First stage– not knowing you’re sick, getting the symptoms
Second– sickness getting worst so you ended up in the hospital for treatment
Third– getting diagnosed
Fourth– YOu don’t accept that you have mental illness because of stigma so you don’t want to get proper help so you have relapses or you get sicker
Fifth– Acceptance that you’re sick
Sixth– Getting theraphy and and taking your treatment seriously
Seventh– relapses because you stop taking your medication
Eigth– Being sick again
Nineth– some people have to stay in medication a lifetime to stay well, some get lucky and be well after few years of taking medication

No one saw things as I did. No one believed the things I thought were happening to me. The longer this continued, the worse it
became. Before long, I thought my house was being wire-tapped and that my food could possibly be poisened. Now living at home with my parents, I did not want to endanger them so I kept things to myself.

My parents sent me to a psychiatrist. They were worried because I was not working. I graduated from college while working part-time
as well as being involved in college clubs. Now, I was sleeping in until ten or eleven o’clock in the morning and often not working.
The psychiatrist offered to prescribe me an anti-depressant, because I never told him what I thought was really happening to me. If I
talked, things would surely get worse.

Eventually, it became intolerable. I believed my neighbors were plotting against me. I left notes in their mailboxes demanding that
they leave me alone. “Enough is enough,” I wrote. One of the neighbors was an FBI agent. I thought he was behind the wire-tapping. One of the other neighbors caught me, and the next day I was given the choice of going to the Crisis Center or going to jail. I chose the Crisis Center and was hospitalized.

During my stay at the hospital, I was prescribed Risperdal. At that time, it was a new medication and I was told I responded well to
it. I no longer believed people were out to get me. The hospital staff was pleased with me because I showered every day and attended
all the patient activities. I was the only patient that wore street clothes. They said I might be able to hold a job.

After getting out, I was determined to be normal. I found a part-time job as a sales associate in a department store, then worked
full-time for a lumber retail store chain. I did not mind the jobs, but wanted to use my college education. Writing always appealed to
me, so I enrolled in a few classes at a local university and worked as a “stringer” at a weekly newspaper. The position went well, and
I was hired by a daily newspaper.

The job did not last long. I stopped taking the medication because I had a difficult time keeping up. I was also extremely self-
conscious because I was approaching my thirties and was not on my own yet. People at work teased me about things I could do nothing
about. As a result of being off the medication, I turned in articles that made little sense and quoted people as saying things they never said. The managing editor had a meeting with me and told me he was concerned. He said he contacted the editor of the weekly
where I worked as a stringer and and my past professors about my ability to do the job. I denied there was anything wrong and was
soon fired.

After that, I refused to take the medication. I worked through labor temporary services and factories. The longest I held a job
was for nine months. It was on the “grave yard shift” for a a plastics factory. I managed to get my own place, but young people
moved in next door and were having parties every weekend. On my days away from the job, it made it difficult to sleep. I asked them
to stop a few times, and they became angry.

One evening, they did not have a party. Three of them cornered me and swore at me. They would not let me in my place. I was afraid
and confused. No one was that mad at me before. A fight broke out and I could not get away from them. The police broke it up and I
was sent to the hospital with an eye swollen shut and they were sent to jail.

After getting out of the hospital, I did not want to go back to the apartment. I returned to my parents’ house, but they did not want
me back without the medication. After repeated talks and my refusal to take the medication, they locked me out. I would wait on the
porch for them for hours, and they would let me back in. We argued and I was eventually hospitalized again.

Following the hospitalization, I was sent to a halfway house. My days and evenings were spent with other people that had mental
illness. During this time, I had to accept the that I was sick and that my life would be different. There was no where to go and no
one to do things with that did not have a mental illness. I heard many peoples’ experiences and it helped me not to fight or ignore
the fact that I was mentally ill.

For the past four years, I have been working at an agency that houses the homeless and mentally ill. It is the longest I have held
a job since I graduated college almost fifteen years ago. I worked part-time for two years and was then hired into a full-time
position. It was hard not to bounce around when things were not going well or I wished they were different, but it has been very
rewarding. I get to see people come and go rather than leaving and starting over again.