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As I age, I am finding it difficult to connect with people. It could be a personal problem. It is never my intention to blame a behavior flaw on my mental illness in an effort to make excuses. I hate when people ask others to be empathetic towards them because they have a mental illness. I don’t believe in special treatment; I believe in special abilities.
But I am lucky that I have made a few friends who have paranoid schizophrenia. How I am lucky? Because most people with schizophrenia don’t know anyone who can relate to them at all and some don’t have friends.
I can ask them things. We talk about our issues and our accomplishments and our brains. I walked with a friend once through a California college campus, trading stories about Seroquel and chatting about the physical ramifications of nicotine on a schizophrenic’s brain.
We don’t get to do stuff like this. It’s not anxiety or depression or bipolar disorder where there are advocates on every corner talking to each other. Very few schizophrenics want other people to know we have schizophrenia. We hide in the shadows, waiting for the next reporter to define a mass shooter as schizophrenic on national television. We don't say things like "I have schizophrenia!"
I am lucky that I get to ask them, “Do you hate people?” and the answer is “Yes.”
Let me back up. We don’t hate people. We just… can’t, with people. Not all people, but a lot of them.
Our brains are not designed to deal with the pressure that loved ones put on each other. Our experiences with our illness as it relates to society have caused us to run away from people and avoid making any type of real connection with them, in fear of judgment or condemnation.
It is easier for us to just stay away. To be alone. To not insert ourselves into any situation or relationship that will cause us stress, ultimately pulling us from the sanity we have enclosed ourselves in and dropping us six feet beneath the red ball of insanity.
We do not have the capacity to deal with the everyday life of those who smile all the time and we live in fear of that next bout with psychosis every minute. What will it be like? How bad? How long will it last? Will it kill me?
Please don’t kill me.
I see you on Facebook, congratulating me on my recent accomplishment with my advocacy. I would like to do that. I would like to "comment" instead of "like" but then I’m gonna get a bunch of notifications and my phone is going to blow up and it’s going to stress me out. I would like to be like the girl I work with who is kind and seems happy to see everyone all the time. I would like for people not to think that I am analytical without a sense of humor or personality. I don’t want to appear dry and bitchy. I want to smile more. I want to text my friends more to see how they are doing.
But I am afraid. I am afraid that they are not doing so well and they are going to bring me down with them. I am the sin eater. They will bury me with their problems and I will never be able to dig myself out. I need to protect myself.
It is not that I—we—don’t care. We just… can’t. We need stress-free lives to survive and no one’s life is stress-free anymore. There is always something. People can’t just go out and have a good time anymore. The kids are at home and we miss them or someone is mad at their sister or they are suffering from depression or there’s no money in the bank. There is always fucking something, and we can’t deal with it. It’s too much.
The schizophrenic in your life does care. They would like to be there for you and comment on your posts more and text you to ask you how you’re doing and how your kids are and go out with you more often but they just can’t. Everything is 10 times more intense to a schizophrenic. There are 10 things that could go wrong by going to the grocery store. It’s easier to just order the groceries.
There is some bullshit inspirational quote out there about how you shouldn’t take the easy way out, I am sure, but if you’re schizophrenic, that is the only way out. The only way out of the voices and the people not really being there and the zombification that comes with the amount of medication we are actually supposed to take.
It’s psychosis or reality for us, while our brains pull us to its natural state of psychosis any chance it gets. We have to fight for our reality every day and you better believe that we will do anything we can to hold on to it.
Please don’t kill me.
