This is a question for the younger people, or those who feel like they’re at mid-life. What i’m asking is, can you see yourself going __ more years with mental illness? I’m only 20 and I cant see me going all the way to 40. I’m so lost in my mind, that I think I will eventually lose it, and not to mention suicidal thoughts. Also no meds seem to for me. Maybe i’m just in a depression, and once it passes I will feel more optimistic about the future, but for now everyday just seems long and endless.
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When I was 20, just out of hospital again, family strife, addicted again, depressed and confused again, head circus having it’s way with me fully, not feeing in control of ANYTHING… no, I was sure I’d be dead by 25 or even 21. There was no way I was going to live.
My family wasn’t going to let me give up that easily. So meds, therapy, hospitals, rehab, over and over even when I went homeless and got drug in via the cops, my family started the process of piecing me back together again.
I did hit a depression and try and leave this life… when the dust settled from that too close call, I decided I would try to at least live for a few more years. But as I got better and got a good med adjustment, and got therapy and more help… I got more optimistic…
NOW, I’m 29. I’m more lucid and stable then I have ever been. I’m catching up with the life I thought I lost and now I can easily see myself living to a much older age. I’m looking for 50. When I get to 50, depending on my health, I’ll look for 60.
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When I was depressed, my expectations for the future were very bleak. I figured I would be dead by age 30.
Now I’m 31, and not depressed. I have much higher expectations for my future. I plan on living as long as possible!
I know when you’re depressed, it’s hard to be positive. But if you can get the right treatment, and get out of this depression, you’ll find that you can live a rich, long life.
Things CAN and WILL get better.
Blessings,
Anthony
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The time has a way of passing. When I was in my early thirties and on Haldol I used to lay in bed fifteen hours a day and daydream of easy ways to commit suicide. When they put me on Geodon and Seroquel things got a lot better. Now I’m 55 and I’m starting to see myself as kicking the bucket in about twenty years. In a way, I am a little eager for it to happen, but I figure I can stick out the time. Keep working with your med’s. You’ll find the right combination.
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I’m forty-seven now. Things started getting weird on me early in my twenties and I was diagnosed around age twenty-four. I think. Those years are a bit jumbled in my head as I wasn’t doing well. Lots of visits to the hospital. Lots of med changes. Lots of side-effect problems with meds. Lots of depression and suicidal thinking. Long stretches where I was so non-functional I wasn’t even toileting myself properly or attending to personal hygiene.
Making everything worse, I actually had doctors writing me off and telling me my illness was so severe that I would never get that much better. They would be able to use medication to make me more comfortable with all the crap in my head, but I would never be free from it. Also, they told me I would never have a ‘normal’ life where I could have a spouse, kids, education, and employment like everyone else. It left me wanting to just not exist.
Now, in my forties, all the gloom and doom I was feeling and others dumped on me turns out to have been unwarranted. Yeah, I had some bad years until I found some meds that worked for me and got my thinking untwisted. Met a woman, fell in love, have a kid who is about to turn thirteen. I got some education and had one career that I didn’t enjoy so much, currently working on a different career I think I will enjoy a lot more (photography). [Apr 03/16 Edit: Driving a bulk fuel delivery truck to make up for low photography income at present.] I’ve had success with both the old career and the new one.
I won’t shine you on and tell you everything is perfect because it’s not. I have bad days. Sometimes I have bad weeks. I still have to take my meds and I occasionally have problems with symptoms. All that being said, my life has not turned out to be the sh*t sandwich I thought it was going to be. Anything but, actually. Pretty glad to be where I am now and in the company of the people I’m sharing the ride with. Much better than I would have wished for.
That’s my story, and I’m nothing special. If things can turn out all right for me then they can turn out all right for you, too! Don’t give up hope. 
- Note 1: Edited for bad grammar and typos.
- Note 2: Edited to update age to 47. Employment updated to reflect current full-time bulk fuel delivery position. Still doing photography part-time (the economy is soft right now and no one considers portraits ‘essential’.)
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I’m 44, and I have to admit that it seems silly to me now when I think back at how, as a young man, I never thought I’d live to be 30. I remember that before 30 I thought about it a lot, but when 30 came I was like, “um…yeah…um…ok”. Never thought like that again.
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i turn 20 in a few days and there is no way im gunna make 40 at this rate.
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Haha you and me both.
Well I’m 33, I don’t know if I’ll make it to 66, but I’m pretty sure I will since I’m prone to struggle and death would be easy. The voices tried to convince me I’d die on my 33rd birthday, I don’t know why. I survived my birthday and now I’m just waiting to see if I make through the rest of the year. I am not suicidal but I’m not afraid of death either. I’m just tired of being depressed and constantly struggling to get by.
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That was a very cool… thank you for posting.
I’m glad some good things are coming your way.
Yeah, pixel, good to hear that you are living a life and you must still have hope for the future. I wish you luck for your sake and mine and others.
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Sorry if I come across as bragging, btw. Don’t mean to. Just find it frustrating that there is so much negative posted about living with this illness and so few positives. Trying to spread positive messages where I can.
10-96
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Oh, dear… I didn’t take it as a brag.
You’ve worked hard and you have a second lease on life. Good things have come your way, and rightfully so with all the hard work, and working at kicking this illness.
I really hope my congratulations didn’t come off as a swipe. I really liked how you wrote that post and how after all this time, you sound content and with a life you enjoy.
I continue to hope the best for you and your family.
What helps me is focusing only on each day. Looking down the long winding road can be scary even if you aren’t schizophrenic. You will have bad days during which you think you won’t make it and you will have good days when the horrible times seem like nothing but a far off dream, a half remembered whisp of smoke.
Most importantly is you don’t know what is going to happen. Who knows where you or the treatment of schizophrenia itself will be in even ten years. Bill Gates once made a proclamation no one would ever need more than 32 Megabytes of data. Now I have a little device connected to my key chain that holds more than a thousand times that much. He has enough money to buy the moon if he wanted to and even he was so blatantly wrong. No one knows what is going to happen. The future is so very wide open. So when things are at there worst just remember to hold on. Better is always a possibility and it is always worth waiting for.
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What medications have worked for you? Did you believe people could hear your thoughts?
Depending on what day you ask me it’s yes and no.
Some days I feel another year is gonna be brutal.
Other days I feel optomistic and want to go to 60.
I’m 28 I feel like 60 is attainable as long as I have overarching long term goals. Which I do. So that is what give me some drive even if life is total ■■■■ at times.
There’s good times and bad times ahead that’s what people forget that life ain’t all lollipops and rainbows.
When I get to 60 then we will talk lol then I’ll keep Goin 
Double my life - How old was Methuselah? I’d be 126. I can’t afford financially to live near that long. I’m glad they’re working on medicines for negative symptoms which are the ones that bother me. I always wanted to live to experience a cure - with or without meds.