dyslecticheart (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} dyslecticheart) wrote,@ 2006-04-20 23:25:00 |
|
The Face of Schizophrenia
I’m sitting in front of Dr. Kielie, and am looking for words that don’t exist. How can I explain the unexplainable of this disease? All my senses have taken over, I am the victim of them. They fool me, and I have nothing to report. My mind is fighting my mind. I am lonely in here, in this white world of silence and excess. I want to crawl under my skin, but I’m already there. Waiting for myself. Waiting for rest. Waiting for the day my schizophrenia takes over.
Dr. Kielie is tiered of me, of that I am sure. He can’t help me, and I don’t want his help. I want a cure. Something definite. A shot that can make me as normal as you and you. Would that be too much to ask for? I don’t care if it gives me heart failure or diabetes; I just want to be normal.
I never was normal, so why do I cry for something I don’t even know what is? I remember going down the street, heading for a pedophile and his granddaughter. Someone started telling lies in my head. They where humiliating me. Let me be me. But I wanted to play with the granddaughter, Lise. She thought me how to masturbate with a vibrator, and I was mightily impressed by her finesse. I was 7. The world was a closed casket I would never experience. I would never know what was real. This is the nature of the disease I guess. This is the nature of me.
At one point in time I thought I had a television show: The Lena Adams Show. People where following me with video cameras. Everyone was steering at me, because I was famous. I am a super star. I am a fish. I can feel my fins swimming in the water. We are all part of this water. We are in a fishbowl and someone is looking at me, just like I am looking at the fish in my aquarium. My fins move gently, gently swinging in the stream.
I’m back at my psychiatrist office, waiting for Dr. Kielie to come out. I am hysterical because I’m not a fish. I am a human. How can I explain this to him? As it turns out he is more concerned with me being an envelope. He wants to know, he tries to understand, he’s overworked and sick of sick people. How can he help me? How can I make him understand? I start crying and screaming:” I want to be normal!” Our conversation is spent with me steering at his biology book. He has a bookshelf, and the nicest book is the biology book. It reassures me. It makes me feel safe. I am so lonely and tiered of hoping. Maybe if I just focus really hard on the biology book everything will be ok.
Dr. Kielie is my hope. I can’t trust myself, but I certainly can’t trust him. I have no faith he can help me, but he is the only one I can turn to. And he doesn’t even understand.
What I’m afraid of is that I’m not enough sick. Perhaps I’m not worthy of getting help. Perhaps I should just endure this. Stop kidding myself. Stop everything. Perhaps the voices are right: I am nothing. I have nothing. I should just end it all. There is no other way of escaping this disease. But I so want to live. I am so motivated to continue my struggle for normality. For sanity. I try so hard, and it’s never good enough.
If I tell people I have schizophrenia they get afraid of me. Or they do like my philosophy professor; laugh. I don’t see why they have to laugh. It’s not funny. Dr. Kielie asks me, right before I leave his office, if I’m going to hurt someone. I never understand why he asks me that. One time, I even asked him why. He just simply wanted to know. I don’t understand. I don’t want to hurt anyone. Anyone but myself perhaps, and even that I can’t do. This is the picture of the mad man, or the mad woman as the case might be. We are killers. We go out and slaughter the norm. That is so wrong. We are slaughtered souls, looking for God, looking for love, looking for acceptance. We are looking for ourselves.
I am so lonely, that when my husband gets diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia I get happy. Now we’re two who’s got it. Two fish in a bowl. He had been my hope, before. I thought that when I couldn’t count on myself anymore, at least I could count on him. Who’s going take me to the hospital when I break down? My biggest fear is that I’m going to end up living in a cardboard box somewhere. With my husband sick I no longer have the guarantee of safety, no choice in how my life’s going to end up.
I am not afraid of the hallucinations, they don’t bother me. I am afraid of the mind games, the over sensitivity, the haze that I find myself in lately. Schizophrenia is a degenerative disease. I have no control over how much or little it is going to cost me. It’s the waiting game that spews terror. I’m waiting for the flower to come into full bloom. I am in the process of becoming, like we all are. Only my course is slightly different than yours. I don’t know much but I know that I’m crazier today than I was a year ago.
A year ago I was looking at walls, interpreting patterns, searching for Gods. They would speak to me, trough me, trough my sensations. Iron casket on my head, which meant I had to go in and study more. The Mothers face smiling at me, while voices in my head said: “Do you want to kill yourself?” I always felt the need to reply. I still do. The answer is mostly no, I don’t want to kill myself. But sometimes I just can’t help it. After two hours of the terror, of the same question, I just want them to shut up. So yes!
I have good days. I go to school, and only pop an anxiety pill before I see my philosopher professor. I do this to ensure I don’t go into overdrive. If I don’t take the pill I become an excessive talker. It embarrasses me afterwards, and I am haunted all night analyzing what I said, why I said it, and what better things I might have said. So it’s better to take the pill.
The first big thing about having this disease is realizing that you have schizophrenia. You go to the doctors’ office, complaining in wage language about something you don’t know what is. Most likely they won’t tell you that you have schizophrenia even if they know it. To spare your feelings I guess. Perhaps it is to spare them from actually having to do something. They gave me mild antidepressants. The pill of choice for the healthy worried. For schizophrenics it drives the psychosis up the roof. So after a month, with the voices getting increasingly louder you decide to drop the pill. Then you’re suddenly non-compliant. They don’t need to help you, because you obviously don’t want their help. Nice.
The only thing that really helps against schizophrenia is pills. Anti-psychotics like Geodon, Zyprexa, Abilify, Risperdal… I could go on and on. Schizophrenia creates an overproduction of dopamine in the brain. I’m sure you’ve heard of serotonin, well, it’s another one of those neurotransmitters. This overproduction is probably what causes the psychosis, so the drugs blocks dopamine on the other side of the synapses. Not everyone is equally receptive to the drugs though, there is a lot of trial and error. I’m on Geodon, 240 mg a day. It doesn’t take away my hallucinations, but I’m afraid of an alternative pill. I’m afraid of the switch. I’m afraid of the day everything becomes cylindrical.
Aren’t we all afraid of loosing control? Grasping for it desperately, while knowing that life has no meaning, no purpose. And so it is with my disease: it means nothing. It serves no higher good. It offers nothing, except an implacable feeling of loneliness. Welcome to my world.
I’m sitting in front of Dr. Kielie, and am looking for words that don’t exist. How can I explain the unexplainable of this disease? All my senses have taken over, I am the victim of them. They fool me, and I have nothing to report. My mind is fighting my mind. I am lonely in here, in this white world of silence and excess. I want to crawl under my skin, but I’m already there. Waiting for myself. Waiting for rest. Waiting for the day my schizophrenia takes over.
Dr. Kielie is tiered of me, of that I am sure. He can’t help me, and I don’t want his help. I want a cure. Something definite. A shot that can make me as normal as you and you. Would that be too much to ask for? I don’t care if it gives me heart failure or diabetes; I just want to be normal.
I never was normal, so why do I cry for something I don’t even know what is? I remember going down the street, heading for a pedophile and his granddaughter. Someone started telling lies in my head. They where humiliating me. Let me be me. But I wanted to play with the granddaughter, Lise. She thought me how to masturbate with a vibrator, and I was mightily impressed by her finesse. I was 7. The world was a closed casket I would never experience. I would never know what was real. This is the nature of the disease I guess. This is the nature of me.
At one point in time I thought I had a television show: The Lena Adams Show. People where following me with video cameras. Everyone was steering at me, because I was famous. I am a super star. I am a fish. I can feel my fins swimming in the water. We are all part of this water. We are in a fishbowl and someone is looking at me, just like I am looking at the fish in my aquarium. My fins move gently, gently swinging in the stream.
I’m back at my psychiatrist office, waiting for Dr. Kielie to come out. I am hysterical because I’m not a fish. I am a human. How can I explain this to him? As it turns out he is more concerned with me being an envelope. He wants to know, he tries to understand, he’s overworked and sick of sick people. How can he help me? How can I make him understand? I start crying and screaming:” I want to be normal!” Our conversation is spent with me steering at his biology book. He has a bookshelf, and the nicest book is the biology book. It reassures me. It makes me feel safe. I am so lonely and tiered of hoping. Maybe if I just focus really hard on the biology book everything will be ok.
Dr. Kielie is my hope. I can’t trust myself, but I certainly can’t trust him. I have no faith he can help me, but he is the only one I can turn to. And he doesn’t even understand.
What I’m afraid of is that I’m not enough sick. Perhaps I’m not worthy of getting help. Perhaps I should just endure this. Stop kidding myself. Stop everything. Perhaps the voices are right: I am nothing. I have nothing. I should just end it all. There is no other way of escaping this disease. But I so want to live. I am so motivated to continue my struggle for normality. For sanity. I try so hard, and it’s never good enough.
If I tell people I have schizophrenia they get afraid of me. Or they do like my philosophy professor; laugh. I don’t see why they have to laugh. It’s not funny. Dr. Kielie asks me, right before I leave his office, if I’m going to hurt someone. I never understand why he asks me that. One time, I even asked him why. He just simply wanted to know. I don’t understand. I don’t want to hurt anyone. Anyone but myself perhaps, and even that I can’t do. This is the picture of the mad man, or the mad woman as the case might be. We are killers. We go out and slaughter the norm. That is so wrong. We are slaughtered souls, looking for God, looking for love, looking for acceptance. We are looking for ourselves.
I am so lonely, that when my husband gets diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia I get happy. Now we’re two who’s got it. Two fish in a bowl. He had been my hope, before. I thought that when I couldn’t count on myself anymore, at least I could count on him. Who’s going take me to the hospital when I break down? My biggest fear is that I’m going to end up living in a cardboard box somewhere. With my husband sick I no longer have the guarantee of safety, no choice in how my life’s going to end up.
I am not afraid of the hallucinations, they don’t bother me. I am afraid of the mind games, the over sensitivity, the haze that I find myself in lately. Schizophrenia is a degenerative disease. I have no control over how much or little it is going to cost me. It’s the waiting game that spews terror. I’m waiting for the flower to come into full bloom. I am in the process of becoming, like we all are. Only my course is slightly different than yours. I don’t know much but I know that I’m crazier today than I was a year ago.
A year ago I was looking at walls, interpreting patterns, searching for Gods. They would speak to me, trough me, trough my sensations. Iron casket on my head, which meant I had to go in and study more. The Mothers face smiling at me, while voices in my head said: “Do you want to kill yourself?” I always felt the need to reply. I still do. The answer is mostly no, I don’t want to kill myself. But sometimes I just can’t help it. After two hours of the terror, of the same question, I just want them to shut up. So yes!
I have good days. I go to school, and only pop an anxiety pill before I see my philosopher professor. I do this to ensure I don’t go into overdrive. If I don’t take the pill I become an excessive talker. It embarrasses me afterwards, and I am haunted all night analyzing what I said, why I said it, and what better things I might have said. So it’s better to take the pill.
The first big thing about having this disease is realizing that you have schizophrenia. You go to the doctors’ office, complaining in wage language about something you don’t know what is. Most likely they won’t tell you that you have schizophrenia even if they know it. To spare your feelings I guess. Perhaps it is to spare them from actually having to do something. They gave me mild antidepressants. The pill of choice for the healthy worried. For schizophrenics it drives the psychosis up the roof. So after a month, with the voices getting increasingly louder you decide to drop the pill. Then you’re suddenly non-compliant. They don’t need to help you, because you obviously don’t want their help. Nice.
The only thing that really helps against schizophrenia is pills. Anti-psychotics like Geodon, Zyprexa, Abilify, Risperdal… I could go on and on. Schizophrenia creates an overproduction of dopamine in the brain. I’m sure you’ve heard of serotonin, well, it’s another one of those neurotransmitters. This overproduction is probably what causes the psychosis, so the drugs blocks dopamine on the other side of the synapses. Not everyone is equally receptive to the drugs though, there is a lot of trial and error. I’m on Geodon, 240 mg a day. It doesn’t take away my hallucinations, but I’m afraid of an alternative pill. I’m afraid of the switch. I’m afraid of the day everything becomes cylindrical.
Aren’t we all afraid of loosing control? Grasping for it desperately, while knowing that life has no meaning, no purpose. And so it is with my disease: it means nothing. It serves no higher good. It offers nothing, except an implacable feeling of loneliness. Welcome to my world.
