@shutterbug is right. Your life may suck but sitting around just thinking about it all day isn’t going to help, it will just make things worse.
All us schizophrenics have lost a lot. But even though it’s a fact of the disease, people still do things in their life. You will never have a great, problem-free life, it just isn’t going to happen. Life is going to be a struggle but it doesn’t mean you can’t get something out of life and it doesn’t mean you give up. You have it hard, I have it hard, everybody on here has a hard life. But if you read enough threads you’re going to see positive things happening in other schizophrenics lives.
For one thing, I see lots of people have boyfriends or girlfriends. A lot of people work or go to school. If you can’t do those things than find something else.
When I first got sick at age 19 in 1980 it was horrible. I didn’t know what was happening to me, all I knew was that I was suffering terribly. I spent the first year and a half of my disease in a dirty old group home in a bad neighborhood sleeping in a tiny room on an old mattress on the floor. I had nothing; no friends, no money, no car, no job, no school and certainly no girlfriend. I saw no hope, I could never picture myself working again or even ever getting out of that house. I was psychotic and in such bad shape that I didn’t even consider getting a job or going to school.
After I got kicked out of there I was put in the hospital for 8 months. Again, more unbelievable suffering. I was a naive, unworldly 20 year old living in a hospital with 75 other patients, half who had been in jail or lived in the streets. So for months I paced around while my fellow patients spent the day, screaming and yelling at each other and arguing and fighting with one another. I kept a low profile and mainly kept to myself.
I survived the hospital and moved into a nice group home. 9 months later I got a job, three months after that I moved into supported housing. A few months later I got a car. Three months after getting my car I enrolled in college. And I got friends and had a life. But anyone who knew me those first two years of psychosis would never have thought in a million years I would ever do anything or get anything out of life. I was in sad shape in the beginning. Now you may not get everything I got but you have a chance to get something. I was in bad shape in the beginning, I often felt suicidal, hopeless and like giving up. But now I’m looking back on working almost 39 years, I only need one more class for my degree. I’ve had cars, friends, traveled a tiny bit and done all kinds of fun things.
I could sit here and think of all the things I missed out on or all the things I never had that other people have. I don’t want to discount your suffering, suffering is very real and so is loss. I could sit here and think of everything I don’t have or I could sit here and plan to get a good nights sleep, have a good breakfast, get my hair cut and then drive to my sisters house. Hey, I got problems like everybody else, I have many character defects and things I don’t like about myself, sometimes my personal problems seem worse than my schizophrenia symptoms. But I will work on them.
Maybe you have nothing now but things change. You’re going through a particularly hard time but once you gain a little acceptance of your disease and adjust to the fact that many of us face: namely we’re not going to have the three bedroom home on a nice street with the white picket fence, three kids playing in the front yard, the dream job and the degree. Plenty of people don’t get what they want, Not everybody gets what they want out of life and everybody has problems. I wish I could tell you exactly what to do to make yourself feel better but all I can say is: take your medication, talk to the doctors, try to have family support or a therapists support. Things may look hopeless now but with a little work and effort and a little luck you could change your life for the better. Good luck. I wish you well.