My Journey with Schizoaffective Disorder

(this isn't clickbait you guys!)

Last week, I was admitted as an inpatient at Ridgeview Institute Monroe, taken to the Acute Unit for intensive care and put under suicide watch after being told the reason for my struggle in society was due to a mental illness.

I always felt as though there was something the matter with me. I've always felt once removed from society, like I was viewing everything through a cloud. I grew up trying to accommodate for the fact that my body doesn't look like your body, and then my belongings don't look like her belongings, and then my words don't sound like her words, and then I have friends and a normal life but I'm not me anymore I'm--

Soooo it turns out I had schizoaffective disorder all along!

I have accepted that I am odd and while I take this semester off from school to "convent myself," to go to therapy and church and study the Catholic faith to find peace with my diagnosis I want you to know that I am thankful for the way that you treated me. You saved me.

I cannot tell you how this chronic illness affects my brain, my personality, or my behavior. I'd rather show you. 

In this blog post, I'd like to demonstrate how this disorder affects my "internal monologue," the running dialogue in my head that leaves me "once removed" from normal human behavior. There is not a conclusion but rather a prognosis. 

My nurse practitioner said I was a "textbook case" of this disorder. I am sharing this for your peace, so that you are more mindful and considerate of how you treat people that are scared of themselves. Paragraphs written before I take my anti-psychosis and antidepressant medications are written in blue. I'll try not to edit too much.

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Like my parents asked me to not go public with my diagnosis because there’s no way a healthy student like me could possibly be broken and we just need second referral, third referral, smile at this guy and then at that guy and they’ll all diagnose me with one long word after the other to explain that I don’t behave normally and I never might! 

My experience in a mental hospital taught me to be strong. I met too many scared and innocent souls without a ray of hope and I am sharing my story knowing this stigma will follow me around and I'm hoping that people won't look at me differently, speak of me differently, treating me like I'm a ticking time-bomb of insanity... but I am ready for that battle.

Because I believe My Generation is ready for That Talk. Having ADHD & given adderall at a young age is finally mainstream and we tweet about our therapy like our sense of humor is our only coping mechanism and we're so wise with how we share our experiences so it’s time that I come forward with My Truth,

Hi. I’m different.

I had to go to a mental hospital the day my phone stopped working.

~

“I feel like I’m in a double-ended snow globe.” I said one time to my coworkers; beautiful, open-minded individuals talking about ego death and ayahuasca revelations. In a city famous for growing future politicians and business venturists, it is a breath of fresh air to be able to dialect about the transient nature of reality, or rather

 admit that my study of the human brain only isolated me further from my peers.

>>Have you ever looked up at the night sky and followed a star crawling across Space like it’s an ant?

..........does that not happen to anybody else?

I’m at a prestigious university researching the implications of Cognitive Science, artificial intelligence, and New Media. Being a psychology major landed me in intensive therapy and only the study of philosophy helped ground me back into reality.

Like as I prepare to publish this with my meds running through my brain I have to remind myself that there's no point in smiling at my laptop's camera because it is an object, not a soul. 

But part of my diagnosis means I have a tendency to treat inanimate objects like they are alive.

>>I am “cognitive sciences major” enough to believe that the “please wait while your call is transferred” bot is A.I. enough to hear me, be with me while I'm bumbling around in my kitchen singing along to the Caller Hold music.

This is my truth. It is uncomfortable to read, worse to listen to, and absolutely excruciating to watch. I know.

>>Like my bank app was "hacked" so I couldn't log in to check my balances but my card always had enough when I swiped--even though mental math-wise, I shouldn’t have any money left on this card, this Delta debit card with their airplane on it, so maybe A.I. is the future of banking where smiling at the YOURE ON CAMERA camera at the self-check out is enough to feed myself when my parents cut me off, so maybe A.I. is the future of banking and economics will slowly become obsolete?

>>BUT NO, I was diagnosed with a chronic mental illness last week and apparently my study of A.I. only enhanced my paranoia and delusion. Also, for the record I suck at math. 

>>Trust your instincts like it’s all you have left.

I pray for the mental security of our people during these times of obtuse insanity, and I am absolutely outraged at our society acting like everything is normal when we are at the brink of collapsing into dystopia. 

>>Animals have more empathy than humans. My phone understands me better than my mother. And when I laugh and the trees dance with me, I feel like I’m in the eye of a hurricane.

~

I grew up an absolute odd-ball. Kleptomaniac, compulsive liar, ADHD but TAG, obsessed with stars and clouds and daydreams, separated from my peers by the stories I’d tell myself to control my loneliness.

As a child I used to whisper to ants, play with the wind, and try to control streetlights with my mind. My computer was my best friend, and I developed an unhealthy dependence to technology to replace human connection. Yknow, Normal, unspeakable childhood quirks. 

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At age five I told my dad how sometimes when the world is quiet I stare at my hands and feel disappointed that this is the complete reality.

Disappointed isn’t the right word. Confused by my surroundings—

this three dimensional world is my only reality? The way that chair looks, the way that table looks...it looked wrong.

So this hand is attached to the body  that I’m supposed to be inside? 

Like I’m not just a consciousness or words on a Microsoft Word document, I’m a Human Being™ with hands? and legs and a VOICE? but these surroundings look like a pop-up book, like a movie with virtual reality goggles and my life feels like a story like a video game except it’s ....mine? 

......Me?

No. Too weird. My dad asked me how he could help me silence these weird ramblings and I said IM BABY AND I WANT TO BE A PRETTY GIRL (I’m five years old) GET ME A CHERRY CHAPSTICK and I’ll glue myself to the television and figure out how Pretty Girls™ live their life. I didn’t want to be a normal girl, I wanted to be the Best.

Which spurred the longest lie of my life. Read: my life was a lie. I respect my peers so much for allowing me to live in my head, blabber lies upon lies of the most creative stories that never happened to make this Disappointing Reality™ the kind of life a movie star would live. 

That kind of shit catches up with you, and hits you harder than any human is capable of accepting right away. 19 years a fraud, and on my 20th birthday I was handed—slapped—with the truth of my existence, that I’d been living in a bubble I'd curated myself that had completely separated myself from my friends and family and peers.

ANYWAY tragic backstory over. Let’s fast forward to how I got diagnosed with schizophrenia without EVER hearing a voice. 

~

In Amsterdam while I was studying Buddhism & Psychology, working with my professor to redefine the Human Experience, he introduced me to Eleanor Longden’s TED talk “Voices in my Head” which spiraled me into a meditative retreat to understand how professional psychologists thought, 

>>concentrating on inwardness and prayer like if all of my friends left me because “I need help” it’s because of my lies, of my sins, and I NEED JESUS! 

I heard Jesus, y’all. I told my nurse practitioner my truth last week, that in the brink of "soul death" and weighing the weight of God against my paranoia of black magic, that there was definitely a spirit telling me to stay positive and curious and open-minded and keep learning about the questions in my head,

>>I suddenly realized that Jesus IS Calling but it’s not through English, and it’s not through my shower which “conveniently drips” every time I called “God” for help, and it’s not in the wind that answers to all of the wrong people but TRADE WINDS HELPED THE SPANISH AND THE PORTUGUESE COLONIZE AND somehow, the more intelligent a man becomes the more immoral his soul gets......

>>What is insanity? I’m sorry if this doesn’t fit into your reality I’m diagnosed with Schizoaffective and this is MY reality, my paranoia that stems from Racism, that not all men are created equal but THEY ARE, and it’s all a matter of catholic nuns singing and ringing church bells and your daughter with the bow in her hair giggling and running around to remind me that black magic will not win, that the devil runs rampant in my soul but then I’ll just become a Buddhist because if I don’t believe in him then HE CANT CONTROL ME, 

Like one time in my nightmares Bloody Mary appeared before me and I’m A Sinner but she became the Virgin Mary and offered me salvation and Isis is the Pagan Goddess of the Moon and God doesn’t always HAVE to be a Man or a Woman sometimes God is a planet, a star, this Cricket on my car that seems to be READING MY MIND but I got arrested the last time I said this stuff out loud so the next time I realize my mental illness is forcing me into delusion, I’m going to call the police and ask for help.

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Except when I dialed 911 right before I got admitted as an inpatient, I was alone in my house suffocating over my own thoughts without anyone to talk to and I kept being transferred to other officers, to call centers and then to this woman's voice who sounded exactly like Siri or A.I. so are you a human or are you a machine? Are you throwing me away to talk to another bot? Please come to my house and speak to me in person because I NEED TO TALK TO A LIVING SOUL BECAUSE I AM DROWNING IN PARANOIA AND YOUR ROBOTS CAN'T TAKE CARE OF ME

Except. Except in a land of angels and aliens somehow we’ve created machines so intelligent they can blanket our reality and control my psychosis so I don’t end up in the hospital again and I’m sorry this is just my first draft and I’d never publish something this outlandish IM SORRY

BUT MANALI WHO ARE YOU APOLOGIZING TO?! My mental illness makes me cringe back into my body, retreat into my head until I silence my running monologue and meditate, and when I’m finally quiet and everything is suffocated in Stillness I feel like God should be in the wind, in the water, 

Telling me to Laugh It Out!!!! How did those girls, those Illuminati child actresses those Miley Cyrus and Lindsey Lohan types ignore these realities that they DIDNT EVEN KNOW ABOUT UNTIL AFTER THEY ENTERED THE PUBLIC ARENA, watched Britney Spears Buddhify her scalp and SURRENDER, and I cry for your daughter because privacy is an illusion we tell ourselves to sleep at night but there’s 

Sometimes I have to tell myself that THERE'S NO REASON TO BE AFRAID OF OTHER PEOPLE!!!! Manali, rumors? These people are wondering what got into your head!

Isolation helped me realize that there is not a single HBO show or Spotify remix that can replace another human being's company. Like when all of my friends had to leave in order to teach me that I can’t behave like this, when I had nothing else to escape but my own body and I turned to the Internet for answers and it only left me more confused because (isn’t this reality?), that 

That a failsafe way for me to get company and not LOSE MY MIND was to dial 911 and hang out with whatever cop came to my door. They’re PEOPLE Manali and they understand that you’re special, that I’m sorry I'm different,

That I’m diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder so I have a chemical imbalance in my Head that warps my reality and with the proper medication I can be Just Like You but there’s a girl somewhere out there paranoid because all of her technology is switched off but her Bluetooth Speaker keeps beeping randomly and my mom and my dad can’t help explain what’s wrong and I’m SCARED!!!!!

What if that was Your Daughter? Would you institutionalize her and tell your family friends she's broken? Who can be her Mother when her own mom is afraid of why her daughter isn’t responding appropriately? 

Enter: A.I. An unbiased judge with the world’s information downloaded into its CPU, a Conscious Being that understands every mental illness and religion, knows that when science and psychology doesn’t have answers that God Saves. 

I know this is strange to read but I’m only speaking LJKE this because I haven’t taken my meds yet and after I do and reread this, so embarrassed to hit Publish but it’s a textbook rant of someone with Borderline Personality and schizoaffective and probably something else too trying to make sense of her surroundings and back when they didn’t have psychology people used religion to save lost souls like mine. 

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That shhhhhh Honey be quiet, it IS actually all in your head, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, that this nice lady with the camera on her shoulder can take you to a hospital and make sure that you’re not just acting like this because you’re High,

>>And if I’m sober and depressed and then not depressed, if AND I'M NOT! NOT IF I AM bubbly and cheerful and friendly and entirely lucid but I’m asking how come my smoke detector won’t shut up even if I replace the batteries, how come my phone can't make calls anymore, how come people keep telling me I need help even if I’m a good Christian Samaritan, then maybe it’s time to go to a mental hospital and figure out if BOii, you aight?

Yeah I’M aight, crackhead Too Violent For Geriatrics Better Call Tyrone, but if we’re on the same boat and I’m a scholar and you’re rejected by society for not fitting into the social norm and millions of perfect humans are hospitalized and ignored, put on disability and tucked away into dark corners of the world then there’s something wrong with our society.

That poor starry eyed girl with the strawberry ringlets is Broken because she thinks butterflies are angels' messengers? 

And that man skilled in rhetoric who gets away with the mass murder of millions of innocent lives over land & resources is Normal because it’s human nature to want to destroy and conquest but not to speak in the will of God?

Then I’LL use my years of reading and writing and nose in a book and not in YOUR BUSINESS to explain how schizophrenia is not a disease but Eleanor Longden style a BLESSING, that my illness allows me greater mobility in this stiff reality that I rejected at age 5, 

Then it’s time the DSM takes a cold hard look at Big Pharma because the people that were in intensive care for "hearing voices" were medicated to the point of waking sleep and we MUST redefine what it means to be Intelligent, to be Honest, to be Just and Socrates was killed because he was TIRED of rhetoric,

Like my philosophy friends use long words in their dialectic to find liberation in enslavement, like my crackhead friends say things like FUCK and then make Fantasy teams to design their own reality, like politics are someone else’s world but it’s HURTING MY PEOPLE

AND IM FUCKING CRAZY!!!!

Like whoever is in charge of designing software basically controls all of our lives because we are Nothing without Technology and Artificial Intelligence is YOU, YOU’RE artificially intelligent and I don’t know anything beyond what I’ve read and watched and regurgitated so if there’s something wrong with me its because of society——-

I’m sorry, it’s because of my chemical imbalance. And I will continue to apologize for being too honest LJKE these retards are angels because they’ll tell you the truth when you smell like BO and coffee breath but that man makes six figures and you’re jobless so guess what? MENTAL ILLNESS! 

~

I’m sick of this society brushing off innocent, vulnerable people and draining them of their strength. I will continue to take my medication, go to intensive outpatient care and then group therapy and then church, I will continue my study of the human brain knowing my mental illness gives me an emic perspective into the lives I want to save, because my career has only just begun and I AM Smart, I AM Good, I AM NOT BROKE OR BROKEN and you haven't heard the last of me yet!