northern

Recently, someone here was asking me about schizophrenia.

They said they had heard it described as feeling like you were just waking from a dream, and wondered if that was how I'd describe it.


Describing schizophrenia has always been difficult for me. It's like trying to describe the colour blue.

I can describe symptoms, but it's hard to convey just how real they are.


But the idea that it was like waking from a dream was interesting, and in talking about it, I was able to clarify it. At least clarify it to me.

I think that that description is talking about that brief moment you experience when you wake up - you're no longer asleep, but you're not exactly awake either. It's especially noticable if you have a lucid dream.


You wake up, momentarily questioning whether what you just dreamed was just a dream or whether it actually happened. Or perhaps knowing it was a dream, but not being sure of just how much of it was a dream. That feeling that it was real.

You have a great dream, maybe about meeting that special someone, and spending a wonderful evening together, and it feels so real. You can feel their touch, you can feel their breath. You can feel the emotions involved as though you were actually experiencing that evening for real.




Now change the word 'dream' to 'nightmare'.

You wake with a start, breathing hard, sweating, your heart racing, a moment or two of frantically trying to figure out what the hell is happening and making sure you're actually safe.




Now change the 'just waking' part to being wide awake. Being out shopping, or at work, or watching tv.

And you don't wake from that nightmare, because you're already awake.




It's at this point that the practical part of me wants to remind you that everyone is different, and no two people will experience the exact same symptoms, or even necessarily the same way of experiencing them. This may only be me.




When I was undiagnosed and untreated, the symptoms came gradually.

I became more paranoid. Yes, I was probably always a bit paranoid, but I suppose many people are.

But the paranoia became stronger over time.

It's one reason why so many schizophrenics don't get the help they need as soon as they could use it. No one wants to say they're hearing things or seeing things. So if you're really paranoid, do you want to tell someone that, knowing that they could legally have you locked up and drugged?

Anyways, my hallucinations have primarily been audio, but sometimes visual.

Hallucinations are hearing or seeing things that aren't there.

Or are they there?

When you dream, it seems real enough. The passion of a romantic dream, the thrill of an adventurous dream, the terror of a horrible nightmare. At the time, they all seem very real. Your body, and not just your mind, experience them in much the same way as if they were actually happening.




I was certain that people could hear my thoughts. The closer they were to me, the louder my thoughts were being transmitted. The longer they were near me, the clearer those transmissions became.

And they weren't just listening to me - they were judging me. To them, my thoughts confirmed all suspicions that I was scum of the earth. I was a sexual deviant. I was a waste of peoples' time. I was evil. I was better off dead.

And some of them may decide to take matters into their own hands.




I could hear them whispering to each other outside my window. I could never quite make out what they were saying, but I knew it was the final stage of the plot to kill me, or at least arrest and torture me.

Torture....

I already knew what to expect when they came for me.

I would lie in bed, in agony, as hundreds of blades of surgical steel were being drawn along the bottoms of my feet.

The pain was real. I would thrash around, trying to move my feet, but the scalpels would follow my every move.

Not really deep cuts, but hundreds of small slits, over and over.

I could feel the pain.

I was wide awake.

These feelings became stronger.

I would feel them, no longer just in the privacy of my bedroom, but while out grocery shopping, or while watching a movie at the theatre.

These were nightmares I was experiencing but I was wide awake. There was no way of waking up and being done with them.




I was getting into arguments.

I had never been argumentive, combative. I might debate something. But I didn't get into confrontations.

Now I had to. If I backed down, I would be showing weakness. Weakness that would be taken advantage of. Weakness that would give the other person the upper hand, and they would use it to kill or injure me. So I couldn't back down.

My life was at stake.




At times, I could even see them. Not clearly, never clearly.

But someone in the shadows, in the stereotypical trenchcoat, would be waiting for me.

I can see them open their coat and raise the shotgun, level to my chest.

I was lucky though. They never pulled the trigger.

Something always distracted both of us, and when I'd look at them again, they were gone.




I rarely showered. That was when I could more easily be taken. I'd be naked and wet. I wouldn't hear them because of the rushing water.

But I could hear them. That's what saved me. They knew that I knew they were right outside the bathroom door, and so they couldn't use that to their advantage.




Every move I made was being watched, scrutinized, evaluated. Looking for things to condemn me for.

Thoughts, actions, didn't matter.

They just had to build up the case against me.

Then it'd be off to whatever hellhole they reserve for worthless pieces of shit like me.

To be tortured for their amusement.




I have to stop now.

Describing these symptoms becomes quite stressful. It begins to feel a bit too real.

I usually talk about my symptoms, my hallucinations of hearing people, my delusions of plots against me, in a more clinical way.

I've tried writing this before, and given up.

I've put off writing this entry, because I knew it had to be this topic while still fresh in my mind. But I knew it might make me anxious.

I should say that what I've described are untreated symptoms.

With medication, my symptoms still exist to a degree, but they are easy to dismiss. Easy to identify as being symptoms and not being real.

In that sense, under treatment, schizophrenia is like being in a state of just waking from a nightmare.

You see or hear the nightmare, but it's gone in a flash.

It just happens repeatedly the whole day.

I've been getting treatment for about ten years now, and have never gone off my meds, and have never experienced the inability to 'wake up' from these hallucinations since.

There's more I want to say, but I'll save it for a future entry.

Hope I haven't scared too many of you away.