Ghost in the Machine

I have to admit, I'm not always happy with what I write here. Sometimes, I feel badly about what I wrote while in a bad mood, or while in a manic state. Then again, I try to promote understanding about mental illness by opening up my private thoughts to cyberspace. Not all mentally ill people are all horrible monsters, or incompetent people who cannot be trusted to work. Many of us live and let live, some succeed, others fail, some are only burdened by their illness, others find a special talent in it.

Myself, I love to paint, but I only paint when I am mentally ill. Painting allows me to express myself in a way that relates to my horrifying experience of hearing voices or feeling persecuted. Talking about these things would be deemed as "freakish," "bizarre," or "scary." But when I paint what I want to say rather than say it, I get praise and compliments from even total strangers. Painting allows me to communicate, to escape my mind for a while, and to establish a connection with the outside world, within the "appropriate" parameters. If it were not for my schizo-affective disorder, I really doubt I would have ever picked up a paint brush.

Now that I am "sane," and have been out of the hospital for the last 3-4 years, I find that I am not really compelled to paint as I once was. I find instead that I gravitate towards technical books on science, math, and computer programming. I can no longer tolerate the uncertainty of a blank canvas. Now that my head is clear and some of my personality has returned (note: mental illness can often cause disruptions in one's personality and the development of one's personality), I am more interested in the art of programming rather than the art of Picasso. I am still eternally indebted to the world of art for maintaining me through my ordeals, but now I can go pursue the goals and passions from before my mental illness struck in my late teenage years.

It is tragic that schizophrenia often hits right at the onset of adulthood. Likely, the pre-psychotic symptoms have been in the individual through their adolescence, inhibiting their true personality from proper development.

Sometimes I still feel like I am only 18 years old. That is around the time when my mind started to mutate, to become unbalanced. Sometimes, when I laugh at something hysterically funny, I forget how old I am (29). In that moment, it is like I got my early years back and I'm a new, young adult again. Then, I remember that I'm almost 30, and I have to keep from feeling let down.

Despite this, I can feel proud of myself because I have found some measure of stability in a time when little treatment is available to people like myself. There is no magic wand, no magic fairy that can turn back the clock or make you a success overnight, but the fact that I have accomplished some of my goals on my own without the help of a magic fairy ---like. earning my Bachelor's degree, entering a graduate program, taking science classes, volunteering, and earning financial aid and so forth ---- that is enough to get me through the hard times I know I will have down the line. At some point, my illness will no longer be the "ghost in the machine," the apparition that haunts me while I type into cyberspace, it may very well become a reality, but until then, I am happy. I hope you are happy, too!

Am I Normal Yet?

Dear public, online diary,

today I was walking on campus when I realized that I didn't stand out from the crowd. I  mean that in a good way. I was not sticking out like a crazy sore thumb. I just was one in a thousand on campus. It felt surprisingly freeing to not feel stigmatized, degraded, devalued, and hated. Just for a moment, I envisioned a society where the talents and eccentricities of non-violent mentally ill people can be appreciated. One can dream....
****************************************************************************

I am doing just fine in my classes. I am pursuing a Masters degree. I am also taking several undergraduate level science courses in my secret pursuit of a Bachelors in Science. I have not officially declared that I am attempting a second Bachelors, which is why it is secret. Also, if I fail miserably, only my graduate mentor and myself will know about it.

In my private life, I am very private. I have no significant other. My previous boyfriend had no idea that I was schizo-affective. I kind of liked it that way. Well, maybe I didn't like it that way, but I had done a pretty good job convincing myself that I liked it that way. I just told myself it was because I liked my privacy. However, I believe that being honest is a very important to the mental health movement. I want to live up to the kind of life that Elyn R. Saks created for herself. I also seek to pursue higher education despite my illness.

Education is like a safe-haven. In academia, one can engage with people in a field and they would rarely question your private life---all that matters is how much you know in your field. One can hide illness there. Or at least I have convinced myself that I am able to hide my illness. Who knows? Either way, I guess I'll never know what my professors and fellow classmates are really thinking. It's probably for the best, because if I can't know what they are thinking, then it is likely that they can't know what I am thinking and that soothes my paranoid mind.

I still have to complete one homework problem for precalculus. I spent forty minutes on one problem, after breezing through the other 14 problems. Once I got to that problem, I get getting everything except one number right. It was really irritating. The professor gives us infinite attempts until the deadline, but it was to no avail, as I attempted so many times it is nearly the deadline and I still haven't answered question 15.

In my illness, there was a lot of unreality, a lot of fear, a lot of uncertains. In math, there are only facts, logic, symmetry, structure, and calculated asymmetry. There are no uncertains. Everything is hidden under layers of proofs. Kernels of certainty embedded in what appears to be ciphers. It is kind of relaxing to take this precalculus class. Or it was relaxing until I got to question 15.