Schizophrenia Diaries

At the age of 22 I was a happy wealthy healthy girl in a 3 year relationship which ended after nine years. At 22 I was making 400 to 800 per day. I was gEtting tattoos, concert tickets, and new cars. I was truly in love. We had evolved past a death and an abortion which lead to greater financial freedom. At that time we had my boyfriend’s best friend living with us and it felt like a good situation.

I was raised with the option to study the metaphysical. And I did from age 13 to 22. I had 3 tarot decks which I didn’t use much. One night, I decided to open up a deck and read into my roommate and his girl friends life. It blatantly said she was pregnant and 2 days later we found out she was. It was the night of the tarot that I heard a voice. It seemed calming and had a lot to say which I wrote down to the best of my abilities. After the first night it got hard to accept and believed it was all spiritual. It was a womans voice and I thought it was an angel. Its when it said I can help you drive that I felt crazy. And the voice did drive me to feeling extremely anxious. No one knew at this time. It got to the point of me feeling violated. Nothing would ever be the same.

I live in Ontario, Canada. I started being sick in the summer of 2005. It was a long process of learning that you’re sick, acceptance that you have the sickness and then getting help.

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

It all started after my best friend died in a car wreck involving a drunk driver. I was so crushed, that the anxiety was still prominent a year after he died. In fact, it was getting worse. I started not sleeping, I went almost two weeks with no sleep,and when I did sleep, I was plagued by nightmares of my friend dying. The panic attacks were getting worse and I was beginning to experience visual hallucinations. There were people and things that apparently only I saw, and a nearly continuous whispering in my head. The first time I heard a voice, it was telling me nasty things. This voice has developed into a character called Francis, who tries his hardeest to make me miserable. I was waiting on my ride after a school play and I was crying and going into hysterics. People just stepped over me and kept walking. I didn’t know what was going on.

I tried a counselor, who refered me to a psychologist, who refered me to a psychiatrist. At first, they treated me for anxiety, but as time wore on, it became apparent that anxiety was not my only issue. Other characters developed, including Cyanide, my closest friend.

Right now, I am taking 600 mg of Seroquel for Schizophrenia and sleep disorders (we’ve tried Zyprexa and Abilify) 150mg of trazodone for anxiety and sleep disorders, and 10 mg of Lexapro, for depression. Except for the occasion seemingly random outburst during class, and one real scare when I had a hallucination one of my friends being shot in the head, I have gotten pretty good at ignoring Francis.

Now, Cyanide takes over and controls my body occasionally. No one really notices, and if they notice something different, they have no idea what is going on.

No one knows what is going on.