I was a bright teenager at a prestigious high school, planning on joining ROTC. I had the GPA, brains and composure of someone who would have made a good officer, but I was also a bit of a mad dog. I lifted weights, took krav maga lessons, and ran every day. The reality is that I would have likely been an officer in one the most aggressive outfits. I blame my preoccupation with violence on being molested, bullied, and surviving a near death experience as a child.
Now, in remission (I was unmedicated and an alky for a year and a half) I am a peaceful, medicated psychology student, with a full scholarship and good friends. I think schizophrenia maybe saved my life. It’s been a blessing and a curse for me- I will never take a life, instead I plan on going to graduate school and working in a mental hospital, with the hope of saving people who are just like me.
I am a completely different person- my outlook on life is the opposite of what it used to be. I was a nihilist.
I wish I knew myself at all before my break. There are a lot of lifeguards and swim coaches in my family on both sides. I did take the life guard training and I was involved with a swim team for a tiny bit before I found drugs. I was basically a surfer. If it had anything to do with the ocean, I was all for it. Still am. Swimming, surfing is one of the few things SZ has yet to take from me.
I was too far out of my head when I was in school so, I got good enough grades, but had to finish up my graduating tests while I was in hospital. Now I work for the parks and rec department of the city and I’m with landscaping and gardening. I help plan and plant gardens. I can do the job, I don’t interact that heavily with people, it’s a new place almost everyday and gardens are tranquil.
I’m 28 and I might get back into an other interest. I might teach surfing again someday, I might teach swimming again someday. I might surprise myself and do something with all the art education that my dad has poured into my head over the years.
Teaching some primary art classes at the community center would be something I would strive for. Who knows. My journey is not over.
I was a Quality Manager in one high-tech company earning 60000 dollars a year in America in 1998. The company developed advanced Voice over IP applications for some major telecom companies. My educational background has varied but at the business school in Michigan my GPA was 3.65 (of 4). But then it all started in 1998.
I had mental health problems really all my life but before schizo it was just depression mainly and social anxiety. Before schizo i was athletic, sometimes a good student, sometimes not. struggled with relationships with men and dating and women for friendships. I did run marathons though, got an honorable discharge from the military after serving 6 years,
I was much more creative, but the illness jumbled it all up over time. My illness manifested when I was a young teen so I don’t really know what I missed out on. I made up for a lot of the deficits by being smart earlier on. It’s almost as if my brain was fighting the illness, by preparing me. I took the SAT when I was 12 or 13 and passed. But over time I dropped out of HS because I was in a strict Catholic school and I was held in the office for dying my hair bright red, stupid stuff like that. I might not be as intelligent as I could have been.
i was young about 13 when i started hearing voices,
voices that where out of my own consciousness/ toughts.
and even before that i had sometimes visions daytime nightmares which could have been delusions
thinking nowadays of it.
so i cant really tell when it began, or how it changed me
I was a social butterfly. I’ve never had great grades but I was more social. I fell into a deep depression and began to find it hard to get along with others. Then I stopped doing homework and spent most of my time in my room drawing then destroying my drawings. I stopped sleeping eventually, then I started hallucinating every so often. Of course I did not understand they were hallucinations back then, when I saw the man in the corner of my room or the dead little girl following me home from one of my walks I thought they were real. I got away from that situation once I learned what was happening to me. Spent the last few years trying to hide it by getting good grades and acting happy all the time. The fact something is wrong has recently become very obvious to those around because of my fear of people, short attention span, and decreasing grades. They’ve started talking to me in that therapist voice, and it’s f@#$ing torture, it’s insulting and it frustrates me. Anyway, I’d keep going but it would take a book to accurately describe all of this, so it’s probably time that I stopped.
More social I suppose. It’s really hard to say. I don’t really recall what it felt like to be “normal”. Part f it s I’ve always been a little weird. The other part is I’ve been back and forth on the edge of sanity so long, I really don’t remember specifically how a regular old day would feel. Nowadays, a pretty normal day in my mind is probably still kinda odd to anyone else. Lol.
More normal experiences too was kind of like acting in ways too. I did quite well in the military for years, but that really wasn’t who I was. I think I thrived in that environment just because it was so structured. It’s structured down to where they tell you how to fold your underwear. Lol.
I was a artist, producer. I started rap battling way back when over the internet it was only text. Then I moved to audio production. I haven’t changed I still do music. SZ just made me a wiser person. I was an actively social person. Now I am reserved in manner. I tested limits. Didn’t listen to rules. My old self made my new self. I was ranked #1 in dogfighting on a Advanced Tactical Fighter simulator. My goal was to be a F-22 pilot someday. That is who I was before I became schizophrenic.
I was a psychologist prior to the onset. I was preparing myself to teach and research in the university. I still receive a number of interviews last year. But I find it too stressful I cannot manage the interviews. I did not show up. A lot of stress responses. This is something i have never seen in myself. My friends ask me if I am giving up the career. This is something that I love but I’m afraid I have run out of the ability to do it. I am not the same person anymore. I keep losing a part of me. Idk if there would be one day I really would fail to recognize myself and become something else. Idk where my disorder would take me to.
I was a kindest guy and a resourceful person in the past. I was the guy people come up with when they need some help. I think for them. I made things possible. I’m at the same time tense and sentimental. I’m a sensitive thinker. I carry a lot of burdens.
Looking back I’ve never been completely normal. Always been. A slight fantasist but I used to b confident in my abilities. I don’t know whether it’s just because I’ve isolated myself that it’s disappeared or because of my symptoms and abuse. I always remember being a dreamer at school. Still am tbh. I sometimes wish I was more practical but then if I was I wouldn’t have such great ideas I guess. Just wish I could put them into practice. So yes I wad confident and sassy but also nervous not of social situations but of being attacked by men.
I was popular and one of the best athletes in my school. I played soccer. Then in the ninth grade a group of guys started to make fun of me because they thought I wasn’t good at basketball. I used to be real confident. I guess I’m more humble now. I’m not sure how I would have been if none of this happened to me. I probably would have played soccer in college and it probably would have made me big-headed.
pro at softball all of my life, smart though alot of issues with ADD Im one of those who will not do homework til very last minute never opened book until day before test…was on academic bowl team …the symptoms did not define me or change who i was overnight but some of symptoms gradually showed starting when i was 17…all sudden in high school i refused to play 3rd year i just started to withdraw into my own life gradually after that after college, dropped friends like hotcakes and completely started making excuses after another being alone for several years with exemption of family and family friends. I still make sure i work on the holidays so i dont have to go to family events . i think ive always somehow had it within and its added to who i am gradually slowly so once radically changed the signs were always there idk how to explain it in another way
Never really been what most people would call normal. Before becoming officially mentally ill(first diagnosis schizophrenia) i was an average student in a school where people were academically above average. I was bullied by my peers and had no friends. I had and do still have problems with social interaction. I was physically and socially awkward.
I… I don’t know. I’d like to think that I’m the same person I always was, mental illness or no mental illness. I still have the same tastes in things such as music, art, books and Tv. I still have the same nature that I did before. The only thing that having a mental illness has taken away from me are friends. People refuse to accept that I’m the same Torie I always was. Most people I know have turned me away. So, I guess I was a little bit happier before I started getting voices and different personalities inside me. After I was diagnosed, very few people, even my own family, wanted me around. They felt like I was a different person and that hurt me because deep down, I’m not.
I had a pretty bad childhood and adolescence because I was coping with abuse, bullying and depression. But I still had dreams and aspirations. I wanted to be a designer or an illustrator. I guess, though I don’t want to sound egotistic, I was pretty smart. I was awful at sport and mathematics but I was good at art and writing. I wanted to get married, or at least have a loving relationship. Now I feel like I can’t have that any more.
I was a hippy Aspie (Autism Spectrum), used E’s and Acid with my friends, and spent a lot of time bullied before finding the recreation of drugs. Never went that heavily into drugs compared with anyone I knew - but had a great time for about a year, finally feeling wanted by other people.
Before that at school I’d be picked last for sports, I’d be silent instead of talking and I’d self harm and steal every day because i was unhappy. I was good at school because i had no clue how to socialize so i got good GCSE’s. Drugs gave me the means to be social, i think it felt like - just happy.
then schiz hit. paranoia. etc
hospital meds - i was 17 and I â– â– â– â– â– â– up my A levels.
I’m now a struggling triathlete homeowner wife