Firstly, hi - if you are reading this then I thank you, whether you respond or not. Secondly, I am relatively sure I do not have schizophrenia. I am pretty confident I don’t hallucinate, audibly, visually or otherwise, and to my knowledge I have no family history or the illness. Nevertheless, lately life has been perplexing me with ever greatening intensity, particularly the last few weeks, and something like schizophrenia or psychosis could in theory, I have had to accept, be something that is occurring to me. Really, what I need right now is some assurance that what is happening in my head is not serious and is just a normal part of living, questions that everyone ponders from time to time and that maybe I have gotten unhealthily obsessed with lately. Unfortunately I don’t trust my doctor, my psychiatrist, or any of my family or friends with knowledge of any of this, for fear of being thought of as… something, I don’t know, stereotypes are out there, sadly, I’m sure many of you will be much more familiar with the associated prejudices that persist through society.
I am struggling, and I don’t know how to cope. I’ve suffered with depression, with anxiety, for a long time now – I thought I was getting a handle on it, until about six months ago. Since then some rather peculiar things have been happening to me. I’ve never thought of myself as being particularly narcissistic, but I have been self-obsessing lately, over everything, I just…
I don’t know how to properly explain the events that are taking place right now. My only coping strategy seems to be to just not deal with anything in a mature or adult way, to simply ignore everything and pretend it isn’t happening because if I do try to understand it, I seem able to deduce only that I don’t know if I am actually alive or not. I have this notion in my head, that I am either dead, or dying, or in a coma, or having some incredibly protracted near death hallucination most likely as a result of an overdose of sleeping pills… I took over 200 approximately two years ago seemingly without suffering any ill effects at all, apart from a week tubed up in hospital and a lifetime of humiliation. One of the conclusions I have arrived at is that I am now living in some kind of hell / limbo (I’m atheistic, so I’ve rationalised this as being some sort of mental construct of my own subconscious design, or some similarly bullshit explanation), of which my only option to escape it is to finish the job, so to speak. And for the last few months I have been obsessing, much like Freddy Mercury in the infamous Queen song, over whether this is real life, or just fantasy.
I have many reasons to suspect such a thing – in fact, nearly everything that happens these days only seems to confirm it. I will attempt to describe some, without order, importance, rhyme or reason, for now.
Number one. Everyone I know seems to be so pure, so innocent, so altruistic in their intentions. Without fail, people are nice to me, regardless of whether or not I am nice to them – yet I know that inside me, there are only dark motives, I am fuelled by my own selfish desires and I truly am taking advantage of everyone around me, without any feelings of guilt, only fear of being discovered. Only in a fictional construct could it seem possible that there be such a vast dichotomy between my own morals and the morals of those whom with I associate.
Number two, part A. I think people around me are all working together to gaslight me. I don’t feel that my thoughts are private, that I’m somehow giving off clear indications as to my actual thoughts. My thoughts being as unpleasant and malicious as they often are, this results in regular humiliation and discomfort on my part as I try to play this ridiculous game of covering my conversational tracks. Seeing as I am pretty much never called out on anything, it seems unlikely that other people are happy to be around me, much more likely that they are all engaged in a collective effort to unsettle me and play me for a fool.
Number two, part B. This is difficult to explain. The other conclusion that makes sense is that I am actually completely transparent in my malevolence, that I am existing on a plane of social idiocy while those around me treat me like an idiot, like a child incapable of anything but the most basic of human functions, eat, sleep don’t kill yourself. That other people seem capable of communicating between one another non-verbally without my knowledge, even as I partake in conversation with them, there must me some other method of communication which I am not capable of this, possibly telepathic or possibly through some secret pre-agreed upon visual language, working subtly below my level of perception.
Number three. I take medication, namely mirtazapine, escitalopram, risperidone. These I am sure are working to keep me docile, numb, and remain in this existence. They are working in tandem with various psychiatrists to keep me from understanding what is really going on here. I smoked a few puffs of a joint with some friends about 6 months ago, and I became overwhelmed with a feeling of understanding, thought at the time my conclusion was that those around me were working to destabilise my mental state, possibly intrinsically, possibly extrinsically – I felt that they were stealing my life away from me, I could see clearly that it was them against me, and the only way to be free of this confusion was to either kill myself to escape it all, or to kill all of them, then I would be able to exist as my own person without this constant stream of non-talk and banality. These thoughts I found somewhat distasteful, I have not smoked since, though I feel that perhaps the answer to everything lies in that drug that seemed to open my eyes to all the inconsistencies, this would make sense, it being the polar opposite to my prescribed medication intended to keep me placated. I am yet to decide what to do about this, the thought of experiencing it again does admittedly scare me, though I am close to having no other recourse.
Number four. Everyone working together as they are, it is not possible for me to confide any of these insecurities in any one person, councillor, psychiatrist, etc. for then everyone will know the truth, I can’t let that happen. I am able to write here with some degree of anonymity through the use or tor and ip proxies, though I admit that my computer or internet could still be bugged, as it is beyond my technical expertise to rule it out. Of course if it is all a construct then my thoughts were always known to everyone to begin with, and so it would not matter. Nonetheless, I have started to talk, sometimes, but whenever I do I feel this intense feeling of… it feels like giving up, like surrendering and losing. I have to figure this out on my own, particularly as it is impossible to trust the motives of others. Especially the psychs. Everyone seems to be trying to keep me around, keep me existing in this hell of co-incidence and implausibility.
Number five. Sometimes I feel like I am some sort of puppet master, that I can make people do things just by thinking about it. It seems that way so much of the time. Then of course, I wonder if I am even remembering my thoughts correctly, if maybe my memories are being changed by the very events that are taking place.
I will stop now. As I say, any help in deciphering whether these are normal insecurities, questions about our existence… I feel that there may be some parallels drawn to religious experiences, that perhaps this is all some atheistic interpretation of similar beliefs going a bit wrong. What worries me is how everything seems to place me at the centre of the universe, my perception of myself seems somewhat distorted, this seems to have some grounding in psychosis / schizophrenia, and rightly concerns me, as I certainly do not feel like I aren’t of sound mind, so to speak. I hope I haven’t offended anyone by posting here without a diagnosis or anything, this is really just speculative on my part. Thank you for any help or advice you can offer.
