“Some believe me to be a sinner and monster, when in actuality, I’m just human.”

I have schizophrenia and have had symptoms starting when I was 14. Almost immediately I realised they weren’t normal as others couldn’t hear or see what I did. But I didn’t seek help until much later.

I was diagnosed at 15 with schizophrenia and anxiety. My symptoms include paranoia, auditory hallucinations, tactile hallucinations, visual hallucinations, social withdrawal, anhedonia, paranoid delusions, catatonia, confused speech and disorganized thinking, poor memory and so forth.

I knew I was queer since a young age. I am now 17 and use he/him pronouns (I am transgender) and identify as pansexual. I knew I wasn’t a straight at a young age, finding all genders attractive and fighting my feelings at the time for my girl best friend. At the time I was 13 and confused, but deep down knew it felt right to allow myself to love whoever I wanted. I was and still am in the closet and out to a few supporting individuals.

I sadly don’t live in a very accepting society of queer folk and am forced to keep my identity a secret. I was naïve when I was 13, coming out to friends who didn’t support me. Now I know better, I know that not everyone accepts me but that doesn’t matter as long as I accept myself.

I definitely questioned back and forth about my identity trying to find a fitting label. Over the years I was conflicted about my sexuality, jumping from genderfluid to agender to bisexual to omnisexual. I am most comfortable with my current labels. I’d also like to add labels aren’t for everyone and that’s okay, I like labels since they make me feel like I belong.

There is definitely an influence between my queerness and my mental health. But queerness isn’t a mental disorder like some people argue. It’s natural and I was born this way. My mental health helped me accept being queer, and vice versa. This is because both stem from minorities and have highlighted the importance of acceptance and community.

My gender is separate from my mental illness. Some argue my gender is a delusion and that I’m really a girl. This proves as a huge challenge. I disagree- my delusions cause me to feel dysphoric, however whenever I’ve talked about my gender I’ve felt euphoric. There was this one quote I really like about gender and it’s, “I never found out my gender through dysphoria, it was instead through euphoria that I found myself”. As I’m in the closet I cannot speak for every queer person. Staying closeted has allowed me to stay safe for the time being and allows me to access the same support systems as cishet people.

I view my gender and sexuality as something different to my mental illness of schizophrenia. That’s because I’ve had different experiences between both, although similar in stigma, they both changed me differently. Mental illness changed me for the worse, whereas my queerness brought me happiness and joy and probably changed me for the better.

When referring to my mental health and queerness, it is my opinion that I struggle to be open about it in general, but in the correct circles it’s as easy as breathing. It truly depends on the people and my feelings in the moment and my trust in people.

Reactions have been varied. People have left me for both my mental illness and for being queer. Some have left for one reason and not the other, but in most cases they’d abandon me for both. I find that if one is accepting of my mental health, they’re also accepting of my queerness. I definitely believe there are a lot of misconceptions and stereotypes. I’m also a target of both as some believe me to be a sinner and monster, when in actuality, I’m just human.

A delusion is a falsely held belief held by an individual. I experience delusions pretty often, for example the delusion that spies from the FBI are following me when in reality that isn’t the case. Some argue I’m delusional about being pansexual and being a boy. This is false, but even if that was the case why should you disrespect me if it’s harmless? Being a boy hurts no one and doesn’t make me any less human.

Now I’ll explain why in my case it isn’t a delusion and probably why it isn’t for most people. As someone who lives with delusions I can (1) understand when it’s not a delusion, my delusions don’t last years only for specified amount of time, and (2) delusions have never made me happy, they’ve always ruined some aspect of my life and being queer hasn’t done anything like that. If anything being queer made me more myself and happier.

Another thing is that I have a delusion that I have a robot body, that my body has been replaced by a game console or prosthetics. Sometimes I believe I’m in a video game and thus my body feels light and unreal. In my experience, body dysphoria doesn’t feel like that, body dysphoria has left me uncomfortable with my breasts, my height, my voice, not like some vague-ambiguous out of this world sort of experience. There is a distinct difference, at least with me, as I experience body euphoria from the opposite of body dysphoria. It’s a more common feeling most queer people have. Most queer folk don’t experience a feeling of a robot body and false body.