Let’s skip to the part of my life inside schizoaffective disorder
Trigger Warning: Mention of self-harm and suicidal thoughts.
Let’s skip to the part where we’re close friends – past the pleasantries and smiling faces. We’re in high school, sitting on the floor of my living room softly speaking about the realities of our lives. I would tell you about how I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. And that I felt safest with horses and my closest friends, but that neither had any power over my desire to self-harm or the way my thoughts wandered around the idea of taking my life, dragging toes, but always leaving the door open.
Let’s skip to the part when things first turned.
At first I brushed it off because I thought it was just the usual let down I feel after major events. But then things got harder. You would set up plans, and I was okay with that and enjoyed being there. I would go to my job and you would stop in to visit and I seemed fine. We would laugh, and we danced in the town square when the band played salsa music. I wore flowers in my hair so frequently that it will be my signature look of years.
But there was a part you didn’t see.
You never saw me lying on the couch, limbs feeling too heavy and joints too inflexible to move. You didn’t feel that gaping void of nothingness. And you weren’t there as my thoughts shifted from complacency to realizing that if this kept up, I would not be able to keep hiding the fact that something was wrong.
Let’s skip to the part where we are alone in one of our rooms, swapping stories that bleed together in my head.
I hesitate, then finally blurt it out – “I have to tell you guys something, but please don’t freak out.”
You didn’t feel the pressure of the panic on the inside of my skull, pounding the walls, screaming.
“I have schizophrenia.”
You are supportive and kind, but this is where the amount that I share really begins to dwindle.
It’s a combination of me not feeling comfortable sharing and me not even understanding what’s happening in the first place.
I try to be a good friend, but I feel like I’m drowning. I know you see it, and you try your hardest to help, but I know you don’t always know what to do. And I don’t know what to ask for. You didn’t feel the chaos in my brain. You weren’t haunted by things that weren’t real but terrified me regardless. I am grateful for your help with schoolwork that went from simple to rocket science-level challenging for me seemingly overnight. You hug me. But despite your best efforts, I felt like the distance between us stretched further and further.
Let’s skip to the part where I’m acting erratically.
I’m back with that guy but only kind of because he’s with someone new. In the middle of classes, I’m leaving to go hide in the art classroom, sketching to make sense of my thoughts and working on my portfolio. I’m making last minute decisions to go places and you aren’t sure what is going on. You didn’t see the messages I received and you weren’t there when I was pinned to the floor. You didn’t feel the cold touch of a razor at your throat and his breath on the back of your neck as he boasted about trust. I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing or what my life was even worth.
Let’s skip to the part where it’s time to take our next steps.
The peacock blue dye is slowly fading from my bangs and it’s hot summer days again, but now we part ways. You don’t know that I’m going to cling to our friendship like a life raft for years. Sometimes I feel like I never left high school – a time I had thought was rough only to realize that that was merely the tip of the iceberg. There are days where I would give anything to go back.
Let’s skip to the part where we’re in college and you live in the dorms too.
Maybe you’re impressed by my ability to function despite the illness I randomly revealed in a conversation in an awkward effort to build a support system. Maybe you are confused by the way my mind seems to bounce around or go blank and the things that I say that don’t always come out right. But I spend most of my time with my boyfriend, becoming clingier and clingier.
You didn’t know how unsafe I felt. How could you? I never said a word. You saw the strong persona, or something to that effect, but inside I was childlike. I could not handle the heavy weight of academics on top of the weight of my updated diagnosis, schizoaffective disorder, and the downpour of symptoms that drenched me during those four years. Everyone was trying to prove themselves. But I needed to prove that I was capable not just to others, but to myself. I had to win my worth as a human by bringing home high grades. I didn’t always, and you didn’t see just how much that truly hurt me.
Let’s skip to the part where I’m at the front of a classroom and you’re a sheriff deputy in uniform on the final day of Crisis Intervention Training.
You hear myself and others talk. I smile. I’m upbeat, yet serious as I share my experiences with schizoaffective disorder – the people that followed me, the cat with pale eyes who made me feel safe, or the delusion that people could read my thoughts. You listen closely, and take it all in. Maybe you have a question for me. Maybe you stop to talk to me after the panel wraps up. Or perhaps you just take it in quietly. But you will never know the true depths of my struggle and what happens in my mind. A lifetime of mental illness with thirteen years of skipping back and forth across the line dividing psychosis and reality cannot fit into 15 minutes or four years of college or the lifetime before that.
It is not possible for me to tell you everything that goes on inside of my head and heart.
No matter how close your involvement with me or how open I am with you, there is too much to share and too much that I don’t understand for minutes, days, months, and things that I still haven’t figured out years later. There are feelings that I do not have words for. And there are things that I am just not ready to share at a given time. When you interact with me, and, I’m willing to bet many others living with psychosis, you will never get the full story because it is so difficult to access, untangle, and sometimes too frightening to share. The story I typically tell is important, but this time, I wanted to tell this story. This time, I wanted you to see the inside.
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