“I have this love-hate relationship with my brain.”

I have schizophrenia and had symptoms starting at 14. Almost immediately I realised they weren’t normaI, 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, visual hallucinations, tactile hallucinations, social withdrawal, anhedonia, paranoid delusions, catatonia, confused speech and disorganised thinking, memory problems and so forth.

I hallucinate visually, seeing demons/monsters, lights, ghosts, and people. I usually feel scared and confused, as if I have access to another dimension which can trigger delusions like, “I’m dead’ or, ”I’m in a videogame'”.

I hallucinate friendly voices to bad ones, laughing to screaming, crying, and bomb shells and thunder. I feel at ease with my good voices but when I hallucinate the others I feel terrified and severely depressed. The whole point of hallucinations is that they feel real, and they really do feel real. I have this love-hate relationship with my brain because of this.

As for delusions I’ve ripped apart books, called people stalkers and spent 29 hours awake scared I’m being recorded in my own home. Delusions vary in strength, but now I have a permanent fear someone is out to get me whether it be a ghost or person. I’m always on edge and afraid.

I’ve been prescribed medication and am grateful for not being sent to be an inpatient facility. My relationships have suffered greatly, my friends suffer and so do my family, so now I isolate myself to protect others. I have one true friend in addition to my family who all try their best to help. That said, they aren’t perfect, so they do trigger me sometimes and it dampens the relationship in the sense that I’m seen as less human and as something wrong.

For romantic relationships, I’ve never experienced dating since my mental illness scared away many interested people so I’ve been stuck in the friend zone all my life. School relationships suffer a lot, teachers don’t understand me, so naturally it leads to misunderstandings, same applies to my peers. I’ve come off as unapproachable and scary and vulnerable, so rarely anyone wants to engage with me. And if they do I assume its out of pity.

The only other person I know with schizophrenia is my uncle who passed away years back due to suicide. It pains me to have never really met him, especially since we were both diagnosed. I get support from therapy and support systems such as friends, family, doctors and online communities on discord and Tiktok. I’ve met many wonderful people who don’t necessarily have mental illnesses, but we help each other and its reassuring to know I’m not alone.

I wish people knew that schizophrenia is complex and is different for everyone and that recovery isn’t linear. I’m not a monster either, I’m human like everyone else. I have this belief that we are human before we are anything else, like we are human before we are a wife, we are human before we are brother, we are human before we are a label, so treat me like a human because I am one.

I’m not perfect but I’m not imperfect either. People often associate people with schizophrenia as failures but we aren’t, we’re challenged. We’re not failures, or homeless people, we aren’t ‘crazy’ and ‘schizos’, we are human.

I feel hopeful about the future, meeting so many people has made me see life through many new perspectives, and I know it does get better.