Experiences of Schizophrenia: Relationships, Schizophrenia, and Psychosis

Living with Schizophrenia: Relationships, Family, and Fitting in

I liked my ex-girlfriend. She had a wicked sense of humor, three sisters, and a mother named Gail. Her father had bipolar disorder (so it was reported).

Her parents divorced when she was young, but I sensed she still felt heartache and sadness about the divorce, even in her mid-twenties when we were dating.

I've heard people who experienced the divorce of their parents in childhood show a similar hurt and grief in adulthood before, and I’m not sure it can be fully resolved. My dad, Bill, (for example) spoke of his parents’ divorce with a distant and vulnerable composure, even into his eighties; his grief was so deep.

The Good, Bad, and Ordinary

The two relationships I had were short-lived. They ended in difficult ways, but for the most part, I remember them as more good than bad.

And even though difficult relationships are an ordinary experience no one is immune to, I imagine, anyway, what a lasting relationship would be like, even with potential hazards to my health.

Distrust and Self-Directed Danger

Most of my energy living with schizophrenia has gone to simple survival (the greatest threat to it, often, my preoccupation with suicide).

Having the space and uninterrupted time without an endemic sense of self-directed danger would help. The knot at the base of my neck might loosen up, and I could learn to be still. It’s difficult to be good company when paranoia informs how I feel about others.

Experiences of Schizophrenia: What Does Psychosis Feel Like?

I’m destined in this place to suffer and vacillate in anguish. My body is being pulled apart in a chair that tightens if I rest, as a clutter of voices overcomes my hearing. I struggle against what feels like shards pushing around my body, attempting to break free.

I’m taken to a separate place, but moments of rest are broken by internal overwhelm and external torments.

I imagine myself at the center of God, the appearance of my eyelids and dark room so black it becomes radiant. I surpass my understanding of lifeless and living things, my breath a far, transparent, echoing cloud, my mind and body silent and formless.

Note to Self

I’ve heard that schizophrenia has occurred with fair consistency throughout all time and geographical space.

It may be the oldest mental disorder, stretching back to the origin of humans (or so said my psychology professor).

Strangely, a force of non-reason has survived that long, tied up in the DNA of people like me. I can’t comprehend my ancestors living secluded from reality, knowing and feeling what they do because of hallucination and delusion.

What thoughts and experiences of theirs might I recognize as passed on to me if I could see and hear as they did?

I regard their condition with sympathy and a mystic sense of history, much vaster than I.