I had a friend ask me not long after I told her about my schizophrenia, "What is the hardest part?" Well, by hard do you mean the symptoms? Do you mean the anger and hatred I sometimes feel towards myself for having this disorder? Do you mean social things like the reactions I get from people?
For me, my toughest symptom to work through is disorganization. When I am not doing to well sometimes I get to where I can't even make complete sentences. I can't carry out conversations. Not because I don't want to, but because my brain won't let me. I have a thought and it moves on or races on really. That causes my memory to be bad. I might do something and then completely forget that I even did it. It could be something as simple as walking to a room or saying something to a person. I sometimes repeat the same things to a person minutes after I have already told them. Here recently, my symptoms are manageable so I haven't been having that tough a time.
Another hard part is when people don't understand. I don't care how many degrees you have or how much knowledge you think you have, you don't know anything and can't understand until you are going through it. Guess what? Even when you are going through it, you still may not understand. I know I have wrote post on here saying to try to understand. The key word is "try." When someone is patient and trying it makes things so much easier. I can't even explain how I feel at times. So alone and misunderstood. So hated and confused. The emptiness sometimes feels so overwhelming that there is no way anyone could understand except for God himself. Sometimes I wonder if people with the same disorder even can understand. I hate myself for it at times. I get so angry and beat myself up. I've done self harm over that before and also because hallucinations tell me to. That also makes me angry at myself. I wonder what I did to get it and why I am such a screw up. Why do I cause so many problems? What is wrong or so different about me that I had to be the one to get this disease?
When I am having a rough day people can notice. I can't tell them, "Sorry. I don't feel well. I am schizophrenic." I can't always tell my teachers that the reason I didn't go to class is because I was hallucinating. I would like to think that it is 2015 and people are open minded, but I'm not that naive. People are people and people are douches sometimes. I can't always tell my boss the reason I am crying is because I am depressed or the voices won't leave me alone. Do you know where that gets you? A psych ward. But, why should I have to go to a psych ward for 1 bad day? Schizophrenics have bad symptomatic days. If I went to a ward every time I had a bad day full of bothersome symptoms, I would never get out of the hospital and God knows what medications I would be on or how much.
I don't know what the single hardest part is because it is all hard for me right now. In the future I may have a different response, but for now this is my answer.
Love, a schizophrenic.
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