Mundane Life of a Schizophrenic Grad Student

I have not written anything lately because I am a pretty uninteresting person. I wake up, feed the cat, go to campus, attend classes, do assignments, meet and greet people, and go about my way. I don't walk around talking to myself or shouting at the voices. Yes, I have heard voices, but they are abstractions of my fear that I recognize as Not Real. I just really cannot stand to listen to them, which is why I have been so good about keeping up with my anti-psychotic medicine. With anti-psychotics I become anti-psychotic, which means that I have no delusions of grandeur, no ideas of persecution, no audio or visual hallucinations. I can blend in with the Normals. It's been about 5 years now since I was last in the mental hospital. I have worked very hard to keep myself out. I meditate, I am always questioning my perceptions, I stay busy volunteering or working or going to class, I make social bonds with Normals. I have a boring life. So boring everyone accuses me of faking mental illness! The last disability evaluater called my doctor an idiot and said I couldn't possibly be schizophrenic. My current therapist does not accept my schizo-affective diagnosis and says instead that I am only bipolar. Society has become confused as to what to do with the crazy woman who has been in and out of hospitals since age 19 (I'm 30 years old now). Now that I seem better people are too eager to assume I was misdiagnosed. I was not. I am partially schizophrenic. I have excessive amounts of dopamine. I cannot filter out everyday stimuli like the rest of you and my mind gets flooded with input---all of it somehow meaningful and cryptic. A car that drives by is not just a car it is a message of some kind, some kind of decipherable message that I must decode. That is the nature of psychosis: we live in lands of coded meanings, everything jumbled, word salads, neologisms (made up words), clanging words (nonsense rhymes).

The loose associations, the ever-present paranoia, the moments of manic euphoria, the unwavering certainty that my webcam has been hacked---this is my schizophrenia and I am okay with that. I am learning to live with the coded meanings, to ignore old habits, to build new habits based on concrete reality. However, despite being a recovered mental patient, I am still that dehumanized mental patient, roughed up in the hospitals, mistreated, hurt, attacked, restrained. There is no undoing what was done to me in those hospitals, but I can redo myself and my attitude and I chose to do so.

I want a new life with hope and financial stability. Three years ago I wanted a new life with a college education and I achieved that in 2012. Now I am expanding my hopes and dreams. I want to have a real career. I want to travel the world. I want to make so much money I could buy the expensive pharmaceutical drugs I need to maintain. I want to donate money to impoverished schools and help make the world a more educated place. The worst thing anyone ever did to me was steal my hope by telling me that I had a grave disease with no future. It was worse than the sexual assault I experienced in the hospital. Nothing is as depressing as being told that nothing will ever, ever get better and that you will always, always be on government aid. Yes, that is what they told me was my future.

Now I am a Master's degree student in my last full semester (I have to finish up my thesis next semester). I have a social life with Normal friends. I was working a part-time job as well and volunteering on the side, but I quit so that I could design a thesis study. Things are different, mostly in good ways.

If you have ever been told by a doctor, counselor, social worker, or anyone else that your life will not change, that you will always be unable to take care of yourself, and that you need nothing but "rest" and no stress, you're not alone. I was there, too. My doctor advised me to drop out of the community college to avoid the stress. Obviously, I didn't listen to him, as I transferred to a University and enrolled in the post-grad program. I want you to know that there is always hope, there is always something new, even a good night's sleep will alter your brain chemistry for the better. Don't let anyone make you feel hopelessness. That is the greatest crime the system has done to us mentally ill patients. It is not the patient dumping or restraints, it is the psychological destruction of a person's precious hope that is the worst torture of all. 

I Passed the Qualifying Exam

I studied with my friend twice a week for a month in order to prepare for a qualifying exam. The qualifying exam is required to continue in the program as an official graduate student in the Master's program. I took it. I passed it. My friend did not. I am depressed for her, and for me.

I am depressed because I have so many 5250's on my record that I might never be a community college teacher, or have a career at all. I have been "out" for three years without incident. By "out" I mean socially re-integrated and normal enough to avoid the psychiatric in-patient facilities. I can never erase those 5250's though. They appear on my background check. I have NEVER been charged with a crime, yet I feel like a criminal for being schizo-affective. It is not fair that 5250's appear like a felony would on a background check. They should prevent this because 1) being sick is not a crime, and 2) it violates the medical privacy policies that the U.S. has in place.

If I had spare time I would rally the NAMI supporters and propose a law that states that a doctor's note can over-ride an employment disqualification due to 5250's. But I am a graduate student taking 5 classes. I have no time. I  have no life. I might not even have prospects.

It is moments like these when I close my eyes and seek a higher force. Nothing comes. I open my eyes. Tears come to my eyes, not a benevolent, omnipotent being. I feel empty and hopeless. Stigma has killed my joy. Just earlier today I was enthusiastically blathering on about my studies. Now, I feel that I have made a horrible mistake. I shouldn't bother with graduate school since nobody will hire me because they don't want mental patients working. They want us in bed, laying prone for days on end, growing plump like veal, spending our meager disability check on little art supplies so we can create art that nobody will buy.

I write. I write and apparently somebody stops by to read. Why? Who am I? What am I worth in this society? Why do I keep living when others do not?

This was supposed to be a happy post---I passed a difficult exam with flying colors. I am fully admitted to the University. I have already begun research for my term papers. Yet I am filled with ambivalence and sadness. My friend is normal, no 5150's on her record, nothing on her record. Yet she failed and I passed.

Don't worry, I do not have any plans to stop attending school or to slip further into this depression. I just needed to vent. I must accept that this is a risk I am taking---to pay a lot of money for diplomas that I might never use. Fancy, fancy diplomas. An Associate's Degree diploma. A Bachelor's Degree diploma. Soon, perhaps a Master's degree diploma will join the others on top of my tall bookcase, collecting dust, something to show off to the few friends I may have down the road.....

Or maybe I will just run away to Amsterdam and live in the Red Light district, smoking in the cafes, wandering the streets looking for menial jobs, and writing terrible poetry in the back alleys of potshops. 

Schizo-affective: what do I do now that I am improved?

Now that there is a calm inside me rather than a storm of chaos, I do not know what to do with myself.

I am part of an online forum board for people with a mental illness. I won't say which website. I once requested resources relating to the dopamine theory of schizophrenia. I also mentioned the quirk within schizophrenic brains of a higher than normal rate of increased ventricle size. If you don't believe me, google "schizophrenia and ventricles." Just FYI, a ventricle is a little piece of the human brain. The response rather shocked me. Rather than getting resources I got a response that referred me to a diagnosis center (ironic, considering I AM schizo-affective, but NOT delusional when it comes to the biology of schizophrenia!) and the suggestion that I not listen to what is said on the internet.

What bugged me the most was that the responders clearly had never done any research on their own disease! Then I started thinking, how many others are out there who do not have the slightest clue as to the science behind their illness, or the illness of their family members? It is not very hard. A simple stop at the local library can get one started on understanding schizophrenia. If you have access to a University library there is often more detailed, academic resources available to research the illness than there is at the public library. I strongly encourage everyone, diagnosed or not, to learn. I know, for example, that the trembling associated with Parkinson's Disease is due to a lack of dopamine activity in the brain---and I am not afflicted with Parkinson's Disease, I just happened to get curious one day when I stumbled on the subject. Even if you do not have schizophrenia you can search for the topic on wikipedia and it will only take a minute to read the information there.

As for the website, I have stopped posting there. I feel a little out of place. I am not actively mentally ill. I have not been psychotic for the past 1.5-2 years. Now that I am well I find there is little place for me. I can interact fine with classmates and friends but they do not know I am schizophrenic. It almost seems moot to state I am a schizo-affective because I do not display any significant symptoms. 

I do not live off SSI or spend my days in my pajamas with nothing to do. It seems like a lot of fellow schizophrenics are giving up on the idea of living a normal life with work, family, and responsibilities. That seems like a shame. Maybe for some people, work can be too stressful, but for the majority I strongly believe reintegration is a possibility.