I don’t know if it’s just me. Did having schizophrenia alter the way you see people? I think being in the position of needing help altars the way I see people. It’s almost a physical change. I think I see the general public in a weird way. I see them as nicer than they really are. Maybe they really are mean but maybe they take it easy on me because I’m not a threat to anyone.
When I was doing drugs I hung out in the worst places. I got my drugs reguarly from the town with the highest murder rate in California. I was there two or three times a week or more and I would drive there at night to buy and smoke crack and I would let perfect strangers into my car to buy crack and drive all over. It is a good way to get assaulted or worse.
I spent whole nights in crack houses with 7 or 8 people I didn’t know. But I escaped serious harm for 3 1/2 years except for getting knocked around a bit. Ignorance is bliss I guess. But when I got clean I did lots of stuff and it made me wonder how naive I am.
When I first got sick some of my first symptoms were being afraid to walk 5 minutes to the store. Walking down the block to get the mail was an ordeal. I didn’t say two words to anyone in school. Yet here I was in my thirties walking downtown by myself, taking buses to hell and gone. Living in the worst neighborhood in San Jose and walking by myself to the bus stop at night and then down the deserted street back home at 10:00 pm. Was I just an ignorant lucky fool? Now that my symptoms have subsided I think i see people more realistically. I go to the same downtown now but man, these people are serious. How did I feel so safe twenty years ago? Did I change?
Did people change?
I feel the exact same way. When I was doing drugs and drinking I used to love walking on the streets at night with no problem with it. I used to walk alone or with someone, meet people out of nowhere, talk to strangers and smoke joints in parks with strangers…
Now I don’t get out much, it’s difficult for me to engage in conversations with strangers and I don’t meet many new people.
I never had a stranger talking crazy intercept me until the voices started for me on 30th birthday in company of someone messed up. I lived clean, supported self & healthy + stable adult life…Later, went to try living in another city and their local kids have groups over 10+ kids verbally harass adults (who are psychotic and locals are beginning to hear you coming basically)…Answer angrily or get aggressive and even the military will run away being messed with as much as these kids will throw at you, keep quiet if confronted and it’s not bad later. Things in the poorer areas worked pretty good if you lived with a relationship, do not get into the arguments or drug resistance. People are nice, life is pretty good if you just keep your possessions/lifestyle basic and work…Hard to keep the kids away from the drugs, you know what I mean.
Never knew anything like this earlier in life except keep quiet if the gangsters at school were threatening people (in front of deaf teachers) and look at ground if I didn’t want to deal with it…
It’s a lot different after you hit paranoid and get to deal with crazy strangers.
From 1990-1995 I lived in a Board & Care home in the East Side. I didn’t have a car; I walked or took the bus everywhere for 5 years. I try to avoid bad neighborhoods if I can but occasionally I have to go there for various reasons. I now live in Downtown San Jose. OK, now you are going tell me that you lived in worse places.
Because i was just remembering a post a few months ago when I told you that a few mental health workers used to threaten to send us to Napa when we acted up. I remember that you chided me and that that you toured it and that being threatened to be sent there does not compare to seeing it in person. Which is true but being threatened to be sent there was quiet scary for us.
Yeah you know this is the story of my life too. I don’t think people changed… I think people like you and I just don’t ever want to go back or “get sucked back in”. Especially after you’ve tasted what’s actually good in this world.
You know it’s like you don’t know you’re “eating garbage” (figuratively speaking) and living in hell until you escape it- and once you do… you never wanna get sucked back into it again.
I didn’t know.
I just was referring to the fact that it was the murder capital of CA, and for awhile in the late "80s of the nation.
My Brother has lived in Stockton for many years, quite the scary place.
