Not originally what the post was going to be about, but maybe someone will read it.
-As a child, I was nervous, OCD, and certain subtle things would bother me very easily: eating sounds in particular.
-Around the age of 12, I started getting depressed. Hated my parents because they would make me feel worse, but I never actually told them how I was feeling.
-Eventually I became too paranoid to leave my house if I wasnt forced to, fearing mainly embarrassment
-From time to time, I would have auditory hallucinations, and I would find myself talking to myself in my head constantly but thought everyone did that.
-At 15, when I finally admitted I was depressed, (when I was constantly suicidal), my mom started taking me to a psychologist-therapist person. She put me on Prozac, which didn’t do anything.
-They made me take an IQ test, there were two numbers for scores. The higher was the visual/motor skills at 132 or 136. The verbal was something around 120.
-A few weeks later, I tried to jump off a bridge, but got scared at the last second and jumped towards the higher end of the ground, twisted my ankle and bruised my whole side but walked away from it.
-Then I was in the mental hospital for two weeks. Getting put on every medication and feeling anything but natural.
-In there, one doctor diagnosed me with Psychosis. This is when I found out that it wasn’t normal to be having conversations with myself in my head. I also told him how I was hearing screaming whenever I was alone at night.
-Got 2 new doctors when I was out, both were great people. Unfortunately, I was testing a new medication every two weeks.
-I started getting more psychotic symptoms around this time. Twice as paranoid, the meds had my hands shaking constantly, I would hear a faint mix of violent screaming voices in my head if I were to doze off. Eventually that turned into small visual hallucinations as well. Seeing groups of people near me that weren’t there was almost clockwork when I was in study hall sitting in silence, and in the noisy cafeteria with the constant noise.
-My psychiatrist suggested that the previous doctor was right and I may be schizophrenic. I could tell he always thought so, and he knew my parents didn’t want to hear that. Surely enough, the bastards got me a new psychiatrist who didn’t think so.
-This guy put me on enough medication to put a horse to sleep. If I felt like telling him I had a problem, he doubled one of them to get me even more hooked and had me come back sooner than I would have. I can still see his face smirking at me when I told him I was having hallucinations. He didn’t like me, and took me for a liar.
-That reminds me. I have never been socially awkward, with the rare exception of being confused at times if I was hallucinating, being shy, or drugged from Klonopin. I seem like a normal kid, and to my psychiatrist (and now my parents), a kid who wanted attention.
-I ended up developing bad habits. Started smoking cigarettes, spray painted a cop car at one point, sleeping with a different girl every few days and then disappearing, just figuring I would kill myself if I would ever get in too much trouble.
-This was when I was 16-17. I was still hearing and seeing things. I stopped telling anyone about it because they didn’t want to believe I was schizophrenic. They just figured I was being an ■■■■■■■. I finished high school right before turning 17, it was easy, but I had a B- C+ average because I never had patience to do homework. I really graduated early because I couldn’t stand anyone around me. Kids my age were way too stupid for me to relate, and usually still are. I fast tracked the minimum classes to graduate and got out.
-I started working at a coffee shop and rarely had problems while I was working if I was busy.
-One of my meds started giving me small seizures that would leave me in a daze afterwords.
-I was walking to work one day, I had a quick seizure and fell on the grass. I decided to sit and wait a little bit for the headache to die down, but ended up getting completely disoriented.
-I walked back home scared for my life thinking that something had just happened, when I looked down at my arms, they were covered in blood. Somehow I knew they weren’t and calmed myself down after a while.
-After a while symptoms slowed down, I was off the seizure causing pill, and my hallucinations were more recognizable.
-When I turned 18, in light of my parents threatening to kick me out or bring me to the homeless shelter, I got on a bus to live with my friend in New York. I took myself off the medications cold turkey. I had to smoke a lot of weed but I got through it with pretty much no problems.
Ever since, I have been better than I could’ve imagined. I started working a retail job and loved every minute of it. I felt normal again without the medicines and stress. And I have ever since been the happiest, most outgoing person I know.
I still have hallucinations, but because I’m generally less nervous, they’re less scary. When someone is speaking too loudly, it might fill my head and bounce back and forth. I hear faint echoing screaming when I doze off long enough, but i gotta tell you, its a hell of a lot better when you’re always in a good mood.
My only issues today are that I can’t remember any of my adolescence, and my finances. My parents had me on too much drugs because of their own stupidity. Because of them, I never got proper treatment for schizophrenia. The drugs made it hard to remember the previous day at the time, now looking back I still don’t remember almost anything.
Although I’m not financially capable of living a healthy lifestyle right now, I’m already happier, smarter, and better looking than any ■■■■■■■ that ever crossed me.
Stay positive and live free.