In between blogging, checking my emails, chatting via myspace and yahoo messenger, I am mentally preparing myself to go to graduate school at a state university. For most, this would be a task in and of itself, but for someone who has paranoid schizophrenia this can be quite a challenge on top of a challenge.
I have to make sure I comply with treatment. I have to let my case worker keep tabs on me by dropping by and chatting about my ups and downs and future goals. I have to make all my therapy appointments. I have to take all medications as prescribed and show up periodically to let the doctor poke at my mind for 20 minutes.
Sanity comes in three medications, refilled only three times before I have to return to the doctor. I feel like Cinderella: I must return before midnight or my ride turns into a pumpkin and my mind turns nuts. I must think of it as just a routine, like paying my cell phone bill or internet bill. Keeping up with treatment is just another obligation. Or so I would like to think.
While everyone else is preparing for qualifying exams and their thesis, I am preparing for random spurts of paranoid delusions spurred on by episodes of mania. So it goes...(as Kurt Vonnegut Jr., the great modern American writer wrote...so it goes).
My therapist congratulated me for graduating from university. She said the percentage of people diagnosed with schizophrenia who go on to get a Bachelor's degree from an accredited university is rather meager. On the one hand, I know this, on the other hand, I want to be more normal than normal. I want to exude normalcy from my pores so that everyone thinks, "how can she be so composed and clear headed?" I want to achieve what a normal person achieves. I want education, I want employment, I want success, I want to change people's lives for the better!
I hope that one day there is a paranoid schizophrenic surfing the internet, debating whether s/he should even bother with enrolling at university---then accidentally clicks on this blog and reads this little entry. Then, s/he will say, "if this person can do it, of course I can do it, too!" That would make me thrilled! If you are that person, I wish you the best! Hang in there, little kitty!
Thank you for reading, and please be gentle with me! I am like a fragile dish that cannot be put in the dishwasher. :/
I have to make sure I comply with treatment. I have to let my case worker keep tabs on me by dropping by and chatting about my ups and downs and future goals. I have to make all my therapy appointments. I have to take all medications as prescribed and show up periodically to let the doctor poke at my mind for 20 minutes.
Sanity comes in three medications, refilled only three times before I have to return to the doctor. I feel like Cinderella: I must return before midnight or my ride turns into a pumpkin and my mind turns nuts. I must think of it as just a routine, like paying my cell phone bill or internet bill. Keeping up with treatment is just another obligation. Or so I would like to think.
While everyone else is preparing for qualifying exams and their thesis, I am preparing for random spurts of paranoid delusions spurred on by episodes of mania. So it goes...(as Kurt Vonnegut Jr., the great modern American writer wrote...so it goes).
My therapist congratulated me for graduating from university. She said the percentage of people diagnosed with schizophrenia who go on to get a Bachelor's degree from an accredited university is rather meager. On the one hand, I know this, on the other hand, I want to be more normal than normal. I want to exude normalcy from my pores so that everyone thinks, "how can she be so composed and clear headed?" I want to achieve what a normal person achieves. I want education, I want employment, I want success, I want to change people's lives for the better!
I hope that one day there is a paranoid schizophrenic surfing the internet, debating whether s/he should even bother with enrolling at university---then accidentally clicks on this blog and reads this little entry. Then, s/he will say, "if this person can do it, of course I can do it, too!" That would make me thrilled! If you are that person, I wish you the best! Hang in there, little kitty!
Thank you for reading, and please be gentle with me! I am like a fragile dish that cannot be put in the dishwasher. :/
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