[TRIGGER WARNING: MENTIONS OF SUICIDE]
At a point in my life, I believed I was broken in the head. I thought that my body and brain were malfunctioning, that I was a mere mistake, a glitch in this perfect, beautiful world. It had been a very dark point in my life, shadows threatening to swallow me whole.
It started in my 20s, two years after I joined college. I could feel myself changing, my thoughts and perceptions about the world transforming into something else entirely, but I could do nothing to stop it. Not when those thoughts made perfect sense to me.
I had always been someone with a bubbly, happy personality, a reddish tint creeping up my cheeks whenever someone mentioned that my smile was contagious and made them smile. The beginning of my doom had subtle signs. My grades were gradually declining, and tiredness started to wrap around my body, weakening me and preventing me from taking care of myself. I couldn’t concentrate on anything anymore– even if I could, I failed to understand or comprehend them. The things I loved doing no longer gave me pleasure– hundreds of perfect strokes on paper did not lead to the proud, happy feeling that always filled my heart after drawing. The papers ended up balled up in a garbage can, and my mental health started to go down the drain. My lips were always upturned remained in an unhappy flat line, and my desire to interact with others was negative.
I had always loved my hostel room and my university campus, but I started to feel like everything around me had changed in a strange manner. I hadn’t been able to pinpoint what was bothering me, but I had been extremely disoriented and distressed by this peculiar, new tint that had coated itself onto my surroundings. I felt lost in a place I had known like the back of my hand, lonely in the midst of my loved ones.
Everything fell apart after that.
I started to feel detached from my surroundings, spiraling inwards into my mind and my thoughts, feeling split from my reality like some barrier had wedged between the two and I was stuck inside. Though physically present, I felt like I was eons away, buried deep within. Something inside me pulled me beneath the surface, consuming me completely.
Paranoia had sunk its dirty claws into my vulnerable mind. I started to look deeply into others' actions, always jumping to the wrong conclusions that made perfect sense to me then. If my neighbor played music too loudly in the morning, I thought he had something against me, rather than that he was indifferent and unaware of it.
My beliefs lacked a logical basis. At that time, they seemed right to me. When I expressed those thoughts to others, they appeared illogical. Nothing changed my thinking no matter how much they argued with me about my stance. They felt like facts to me, and I hated the fact that no one believed me, that they invalidated my feelings. I remember feeling aghast and angry. I stopped telling others about my thoughts. But that didn’t stop those thoughts from growing out of their seeds, weed-like thoughts squashing the healthy ones and thriving by them. The density of such weed-like thoughts increased in such a manner that it no longer allowed light inside,
Those seeds of paranoia that grew had instilled themselves deep into my mind, rerouting everything I saw. Now that I looked back upon it with a healthy state of mind, all my beliefs had been false. But the state of mind I had been in then– I didn’t feel like my perceptions of things were strange. I truly believed them.
All normal events had been painted a dark shade in my head. Every time I stepped outside, I felt like the people were murmuring about me, laughing at me, following every step I took, and that every word that left my lips was somehow being recorded. I couldn’t shake off this feeling of defencelessness and fear that constantly shadowed me. It felt like I was constantly walking in a shady, dark alley, scared that someone might do something to me, terrified of my own shadow while the anticipation made me teeter along the edge.
I started to overthink everything. When a dirty red kerchief was lying in front of me on the road, I understood it to be a murder threat. When someone far from me gestured something to others– I perceived it as a signal of them both advancing upon me. If I happened to throw a toy car down and saw the news of a car accident that evening, I believed myself to be the cause. These instances and conclusions are illogical, but I was buried so deep within the web of weeds in my brain that I couldn’t look further. I couldn’t look at anything else except them; my every glance at my surroundings looked upon through a lens of paranoia.
This was also when the voices started. Indistinct murmurings filled my head, their haunting quiet whisperings following me everywhere I went. I initially assumed that they were the voices of the people around me– people I believed that they were plotting against me.
But then the noises started. I still remember the first day I heard them, and how terrified I was– I could hear banging noises and shrill screams in the middle of the night, my heart thumping wildly against my chest when I couldn’t locate the source of the banging and the angry screams but I knew it was near me. I remember backing into a dark corner of my room, my shaky hands gripping the handle of a pan as tears streamed down my cheeks, fear enveloping me. I was unwilling to call someone for help since I believed everyone around me was plotting against me. As I clung harder to the wall beside me, I heard some scratching noises coming from the wall. I remember leaping onto the floor, my shivers never ending as I curled up on the floor, holding onto my knees for a sense of comfort, the fear paralyzing me into oblivion.
This became a nightly routine ever since. But something changed– the murmurings I heard turned into loud, clear, demanding voices that wormed their way into my mind, targeting my vulnerabilities. Their rasping voices filled my head every second of every day, reminding me of how pathetic I was and how the world was better if I wasn’t around. When I was alone, the voices demanded me to end myself, their loudness and pitch increasing to the very limit. But when I was around other people, they sprinkled water on my weeds of paranoia– telling me about others' ill intentions and suggesting that I should hurt them to protect myself. I started seeing dark shadows that followed me everywhere, their sadistic laughs overwhelming me.
I didn’t feel safe outside in the presence of thousands of people, I didn’t feel safe inside my own room, and I stopped feeling safe with myself. I was scared to be with other people, but I was terrified of being alone, scared of the treacherous thoughts that filled my mind and threatened to pull me within. I was scared of the sinister places my mind tended to wander in the absence of others. I could feel a dark void opening up in the back of my mind, and I was petrified of what it would do to me if it consumed me.
At some point throughout it all, I completely stopped speaking to others. Even if I did, my sentences didn’t make sense anymore. The mumblings that left my lips were a string of words that made no sense when put together, perfectly representing the chaos of thoughts in my head.
I was slowly retreating into a damp, dark corner in her mind, and I could no longer take it anymore. I felt like giving up. One painful moment and I’d be suspended into nothingness in this huge world. I wouldn’t feel like I was teetering on a delicate rope between sanity and insanity. I could no longer live with this ugly feeling of paranoia that followed me around like a bad, stinky smell, could no longer tolerate the loneliness that threatened to break me and the sense of defencelessness that crippled me. I didn’t want to be in a mind that was a mesh of jumbled wires that can never be unwound.
The voices in my head encouraged me to end myself, to relieve the world of the sickness that was me. I had been outside when this overwhelming feeling had crept over me. I was rushing back to my room, finally finding the courage to free myself from this miserable excuse of a life I was living in. Someone had bumped into me on their way, and I had snapped.
At that moment, when I was walking back, I was so petrified of the loud voices booming in my ears, chanting to end myself. I was terrified of the shadow-like creatures that seemed to close in on me, overwhelmed by the people around me, and their eyes following me. I knew that they wanted to kill me. And I wanted to do it myself before they did it.
That was when I bumped into someone. Fear and hysteria like I had never experienced took over me, making me scream shrilly. I remember locking myself into one of the public bathroom stalls, screaming, ‘They’re here, they’re going to kill me.’ I truly believed that. Somebody called the ambulance. At some point after that, I was in a hospital.
It had been a rocky process. It took time for me to open up to my therapist, and I had initially been very hesitant to take my medication since I believed they were poisonous. As I started to trust the therapy process and take the meds, my symptoms began to improve.
I am now able to live with schizophrenia instead of letting it dictate and control my life. It does get overwhelming sometimes, but I refuse to hand over the reins of my life to something else. I decide the pace of my life, refusing to be overwhelmed by anything else, and I’m proud of myself for it. I am no longer afraid of my own mind and my thoughts, and I no longer believe that I’m broken. Rather, I believe I possess a unique, strong, and beautiful mind that no one has ever understood in my past.
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This is a glimpse of someone who has Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness that affects how a person thinks, behaves, and feels. They feel like they have lost touch with reality. The symptoms of this disorder make it extremely difficult for someone to live their daily life and participate in everyday activities. People who receive treatment can continue to engage in their daily routine, achieve independence and enjoy personal relationships. Schizophrenia is manifested differently in different people– all people with Schizophrenia do not have the same symptoms.
Schizophrenia is a very misunderstood illness. People fail to understand what someone with Schizophrenia is going through, which is why this disorder is highly stigmatized. It is high time that we understand what exactly it is and what a person goes through.
If you feel like the above article accurately describes your feelings, do not hesitate to reach out for help. If you relate to the experiences depicted in this blog and feel like everything is too much, seek professional help from experts. Asking for help doesn’t mean you are weak.
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– Chandana Bonagiri
*Check out the first part of the 'Living with' series here: https://www.psychophilics.com/post/living-with-depression
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