name: Sarah Shepherd
email: milk.fur@gmail.com
Schizophrenic stories have always interested me, understanding their mind but have found few stories that actually show you how the mind worked and am hoping for those curious my own story will be of some interest to those who where not looking for just a story about medications and how someone felt but how I saw the world.
+A note I have never used drugs strongly or frequently, tried once did not enjoy, schizophrenia is on both sides of my family+
As a child something was wrong. Being rushed to the midnight doctor by my parents screaming terrified as I could see cracks forming in the roof. This was before I started school and things only increased from there on in.
The monsters under my bed where real, I could see them and feel them and would refuse to go into my bedroom for months at a time.
False memories of an alien coming out of my ceiling light in the lounge room. And the so very sure feeling my dad could read my mind which made me try n avoid being near him for months on end.
I had recurring dreams about the creatures that lived underneath my house and still do to this day. But at about aged 15 I got the crushing blow when I realized a lot of my childhood memories weren\’t even real.
Longer over time I lost all interest in friends, I couldn\’t speak to them anymore just couldn\’t connect and didn\’t feel the need to connect with them anyway. I soon left school and soon knew no one outside my family other than one single person, literally.
Paranoid thoughts worsened and so did hallucinations. I began keeping numerous scattered journals trying to recap everything that happened not understanding any of it. False convictions people could hear my thoughts. A rush of noises at first which turned into voices pounding my head. Catching a strangers eye was the most horrible feeling. It would throw me into a paranoid fit for a whole day even. On the train if I thought about someone I was looking at and they looked back (most likely cause I was probably staring) I would spend the entire day in a utter panic. I would shake I would be so terrified they had heard my thoughts, the feeling someone could just so easily walk into somewhere thats meant to be impossible for anyone else to enter but you, your mind undone by a stranger.
I remembered back to a few times my mother had confronted me and asked \”do you ever hear voices?because if you do you can come to me at any time\” of course I denied. But soon when found out what schizophrenia was from a friend who had it I sought a doctor.
I had been seeing my doctor for a while for depression but had cut back on visits to her for a couple of months and told her \”I think I have schizophrenia\” Of course she did the standard questions \”what makes you think that?\” \”do you think/feel/hear this\” etc.
I denied some things as when I imagined my saying something out loud such as \”yes I think people hear my thoughts\” I realized just how stupid I sounded, how…. crazy.
But I told her other things, the voices, the tall lingering monsters I saw. The everything else….and she stared at me with a look on her face like pure horror. I thought id done something wrong, that she must think of me as a monster she went to get up then she sat back down, thought then looked at me.
\”I want to hospitalize you\” Fear just washed over me at that thought, it would mean my family would know (something I still have not and will not tell them) something I did not want to do, something I was too afraid to do.
I negotiated medication with her and tried risperdal for some time. But the affects of the medication where not working quickly enough and the side effects bad. At college I would have to ring someone to come help me down the stairs at the library as I was so dizzy I could barley stand.
I soon went off the medication and stopped seeing my doctor which was not a good choice for what was going to come.
For some time things would come and go, a good day a bad day, turning into a terrible month an even worse 5 months and so forth.
Things got worse.
Voices became terrifying, like that of a demons sometimes so scared my knees would buckle and I now understood why in movies your screaming at that stupid girl to run from the monster but she just stands there. I understand so well now why on earth she can\’t just run.
Waking to feeling the hot breath of something on your neck, horrible words talking in your mind \”they\’re going to kill you\”.
Images would become stuck in my mind so clear, of arms being cut open and the flesh pulled out and I would feel it happening to my self.
One night I was sitting on my bed alone in the dark, waiting for now my only friend to come online. I had note they\’d gone out for the night with some friends and at the time where living kinda far from my house so seeing them was beginning to be difficult.
I recall feeling like I couldn\’t move and seeing a man dressed as an old surgeon standing above my bed. I didn\’t feel scared but even action he preformed on me felt so real. He took a chisel and put it into one side of my head, still I could not move, nor make a sound nor do anything… took it out I felt it drawn from my crushed bits of skull and done again to the other side, he then left and I could move.
All I could do was cry, the pain was overwhelming but left quickly when he did, why I had more hallucinations than other people I could not work out or why I had it so much as a child which is not as common once again I did not understand.
All I wanted was for it to be gone and for me to be gone. Suicide had been attempted and thankfully never fully worked.
For the next year things eased up a little. Hallucinations became lighter but paranoia become much worse. I could not stand in a kitchen with someone holding a knife assured they where going to harm me I would even at times ready my self with my own knife n ready to attack if they came near me. Something I am glad never turned out as horrible as it could have, so many times I sit here now so thankful nothing happened.
I took a lot of stress out of my life which caused much of the worsening of my symptoms.
But even at all this time I could not quite accept what was wrong with me. I think logically about what had happened n could put it down to schizophrenia, a doctor had confirmed it, I had been on medications for it and it was on both sides of my family. But when my mind played up I saw no logic I saw demons I felt terrified and I could not pass these so real things as just my mind.
So after a few years of lighter symptoms after taking some bad people out of my life, staying out of stress causing places things looked a bit better. I felt better, I met someone great who helped me.
Then I recall that bloody day on the train. We got on and looked for an available seat, the carriage wasn\’t so crowded so we picked one I got the window seat. The first thing I noticed when stepping on the train tho was a man, rocking back n forth quietly muttering and drawing rapidly with his finger on the seat infront of him and the window.
I was utterly amazed, first at how no one in the carriage was even staring at him or saying anything or acting uncomfortable secondly mental illness just fascinated me so we got a seat 2 seats infront of him.
I watched him the whole train trip in the reflection of the window but time to get off realised hed left the carriage without me noticing. Soon going to get on the escalator he got infront of us. I studied him short cut grey hair, clean kept but he had sandles showing his long yellow toenails. I felt like I wanted to cry to hug this utter stranger and tell him things would be ok that I knew too how it felt to have a mind this tortureous. I recall my boyfriend saying \”i love you\” to me on the escalator down and this man infront of me I was studying looked uncomfortable when my boyfriend talked so I told him to shoosh. My boyfriend didnt get it and I got snappy telling him when we had now gone a different way off the escalator to not be so inconsiderate as clearly it was upsetting the man.
Boyfriend: \”what man?\”
Myself: \”the one infront of us! the one on the carriage! you where upsetting him when you talked\”
The conversation went along like that for a while, my temper flared at how he could have not noticed he was right in front of us.
When my boyfriend continued to tell me \”there was no one on that seat where he was meant to be\” \”The man infront of us was a asian man in a suit\”
After a long and bitter argument that lasted days yet another crushing blow to realize it wasn\’t real. Finally I could accept I did have schizophrenia. But accepting it was painful. Months of depression that non of it was real, that I was fooled by my own mind.
How could I trust anything else? What else was not real? who else was not real? The feeling of helplessness as if you did not even own your own mind.
Yet my boyfriend stayed by my side, He was there if I went out in public to help me when I felt every single person was staring at me. He was still there in the morning when I utterly chewed him out in an argument. He was still forgiving her was still there every night I would cry into his chest that I was being told I was going to die. He was there when I couldn\’t cope.
And even the other day he was there when being around people for the first time in years. It took a lot of tries just to get me out of his bedroom and into the lounge room to meet his house mates but he stayed next to me the whole time checked every now n again to make sure I wasn\’t too scared.
I am still not medicated and I would not class this as a success story. I know I will be this way for the rest of my life, but at least having him there has helped me tremendously and will be the thing to help me continue.
