Adventures (An Essay)

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I have been through quite the journey. It’s quite the adventure.

Living with mental illness is a very fascinating and troubling thing. I have schizoaffective disorder with bipolar, which means I have schizophrenic symptoms, such as delusions and paranoia, with the bipolar tendencies of depression and extreme mood variation.

I was diagnosed when I was a teenager. Being a teen is already hard enough. You are trying to fit in in school and discover yourself. You’re trying to decide what you want to do with your life. I still sometimes feel as though being diagnosed when I was a teenager took away from the experience of being a teen. I feel as though I did not get the true experience in a lot of ways, because of my diagnosis. It is something that still haunts me even today, though I would say that through time, I have found myself and become more grounded in what I am trying to do, and I’m living my life.

But it definitely wasn’t a cakewalk. People at school never treated me the same way again, and even though mental illness can be caused by genetics and trauma, people do not understand it, and they were very judgmental towards me. I myself was never the same after my experiences in high school.

Yet mental illness is out of your control, at least at the acute, crisis level. I didn’t understand my circumstances at the time, definitely not as a kid. I didn’t know what was going on, I just had to live with it somehow. I remember telling one of my friends on the phone that I was in the mental hospital, and that was not a fun experience, to have to admit where you were and how much you were struggling. Taking medications in the hospital was horrible, because the side effects were unbearable starting out, and while I don’t want to see myself as a victim in any way, I still nonetheless felt as though my situation was unfair (how do you understand something like that at that age?), and I didn’t know what to do with it at the time.

But there were things that I wanted to do, and when I got on a very strong medication called Clozaril, I was stable for a few years, and I remember working at Kmart and going to college and listening to rock music, and I did okay for awhile. That was with a lot of struggle, but ultimately, the medications helped me. But the medications were powerful, and I couldn’t be on them long-term, because they were messing with my body, and I ultimately had to get on medications that were less dangerous.

I did not like taking medications, however, and when I was still in college, I made the decision to not take my medications. I did this for a lot of reasons, one because I didn’t like taking them, but also because I was paranoid that the medications were poisonous and that they were making me sick. The authorities around me did not understand this, but it was one of the reasons for me not taking the medication that I was supposed to. It seemed as though I wasn’t going to be able to recover, as for several months, I struggled with suicidal thoughts and psychosis, and I was not myself, and I know this now.

I often joke with myself that you don’t start to understand yourself and your place in the world and who you are, until you are at least twenty-five years old. For a few years, then, I have managed to build my life the way that I have wanted to. I work at a treatment facility for those struggling with addiction, and I write and publish my books, which includes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. I would say that life has treated me well the past seven or so years, and I would say that I still had a decent college experience, because towards the end of it, I was much more stable and self-aware of my diagnosis and what this would mean for my life. It took a long time for me to figure that out, but I was able to through time, with much effort and diligence.

But mental illness is a very difficult thing, and I wouldn’t want anyone to ever have to have that. The stigma for mental health is still really strong, and even though things have gotten better socially, people still nonetheless judge those with mental illness as being crazy, or worse. Unfortunately, sometimes in the mental health care system, people with authority do not always make compassionate and empathetic decisions on your behalf, and there have been many times where I have felt that my doctors didn’t even have my best interests at heart. Dealing with the system, then, is something that I would never have asked for, and something that I didn’t want, but something that I have to deal with anyway.

In general, people do not understand mental illness, but I do think it is getting better as there is more awareness now. But when you’re dealing with mental illness, the last thing that you want to deal with is stigma. People have especially strong stigmas about schizophrenia, often thinking that those with the illness are violent and unstable and homeless, even though that is not usually true.

Then there is the actual experience of mental illness itself. Mental illness for me is very painful, and I use the word pain, because I often feel pain in my body and mind whenever I’m suffering, whether from psychosis, paranoia, suicidal thoughts, depression, others symptoms, or all of the above. The medications help mediate the symptoms, but life is still filled with many stressors, and so things don’t always go the way that we hope they will. With mental illness and with the many symptoms that I have, it is easy to get lost in my emotions and in my mind, and that is why I have to be self-aware. But those experiences are not something that I would ever wish on anyone. They are very disorienting, confusing, and horrible.

You would think that you could just be logical about mental illness, and sometimes you can, and sometimes it helps. But there have been many times where my body has been out of sync with my irrationality. So for example, I may know, logically and psychologically, that I am okay, and that I will be able to deal with the problem at hand, but the stress of dealing with interpersonal dynamics as well as life itself and our struggles, can stress me out, and it can be very hard to regulate that disconnect between body and mind. As I have described before, when I am suffering, I have what could be called a sustained mood, a mood that lasts for quite a while, regardless of my thought process or rationality. This can be very horrible, honestly, because I feel a certain way regardless of what I think about it, where I have a very physical, visceral reaction to something in the world, and it doesn’t matter how much I talk myself out of the mood, I still feel the feelings.

Mental illness is horrible for these reasons, because it is so visceral and real to me, in a way that it isn’t to other people. The mind and body do things that don’t always make sense, and all you can do is struggle through it for a while, and be aware. As much as I wish that I didn’t feel a certain way, sometimes, I do end up feeling that way, and that can be very difficult, but it is something that I nonetheless live with.

Having suicidal thoughts and depressive moods is very horrible as well. There have been times where I have been so low, that I literally cannot live in my body. It doesn’t matter what I do in these situations, the feelings are still there. (Though I’d say it does eventually get better, once I’m able to take myself out of that state of mind with the tools I’ve learned through time.) It is very painful to have to experience depression and suicidal thoughts, and it is not something that I like or would have ever wanted. But it is part of living with mental illness, which is why I incorporate CBT and DBT therapy into my routine and as immediate ways of coping with life. I also emphasize healthy eating and exercise, because overall those life changes have helped my overall mental state and wellbeing. With my experience with mental illness, I am much better able to live with it, and things do not get as bad as they have been in the past.

The triggers that often make me feel terrible, might be innocuous, or they might be extreme. I have had to learn to live with these things, live with the difficulties, because as people know, we have problems in life, and we have to deal with those problems, whether we suffer from mental illness or not. So in my adventures, I have tried to be aware of what is making me feel a certain way, and that helps me gain control. As long as I can feel what I feel and point out the underlying reasons for it, I am able to deal with it. I have had trouble with difficult situations before, because of how much it has affected my mood, but now, I do much better at it, and that is because I am aware of it, and I know that life will still be awful and sometimes things are not good, but I deal with it anyway, as well as I can.

But attaching positive associations to difficulties is good to do as well. I am a strong person and I have overcome a lot. My struggles, while not something I would have ever wanted, have taught me a lot in life, and that is a very good thing. In many ways, I am on an adventure, and sometimes there is danger and instability in our life paths, but we find a way to journey through, and to survive and become our best selves.

There have been times in my life where it has become strictly about survival, literally survival itself is the most important thing for me. As stigmatized as suicide may be, it is something that I have tried to talk about, because it is something that I have struggled with in my own life. With my various experiences, I have struggled with ideation, and psychosis putting me in dangerous situations and mind states. Going to the hospital too many times, and struggling to get by in my environment, was all about survival. In a lot of ways, there really was no other way, there was nothing else that I could focus on. It was about overcoming the powerful feelings I had, that were literally killing me, to the point to where it was all that I focused on sometimes, was moving past those feelings.

Of course, in real life, there are many ways in which survival is a part of our lives, but it took on an added dimension when I was struggling with mental illness and suicidal thoughts. I don’t believe myself to ever be someone who would act on the ideation, but that does not mean that I haven’t still struggled with the depressive feelings that lead to such thoughts, and that has been very difficult to overcome, because it is often unexpected, jarring, and brutal, but so incredibly present.

There were times where I didn’t think that I was going to survive, either because I was in a dangerous situation that my illness had put me in, or the feelings were just too overwhelming and I literally didn’t know what to do with them anymore.

But I feel as though talking about suicidal thoughts and ideation is a good step, and even though not everybody is receptive to it, I can at least talk about it to people that I trust, and I can express it in my writing. It does need to be talked about. I lost a great friend last year to suicide, and that was extremely hard for me. I knew that that could happen to me, if I had not been able to get my mental health under control. And he was a good friend of mine, and I was very sad that he could no longer be with us, because of his own struggles. In his case, it was literally lethal.

So suicidal thoughts are not something to gloss over, and they do affect people. But the stigma is so incredibly powerful, that people do not talk about it or seek out help. And I don’t blame them. People think that suicide is a selfish decision, because you are disregarding the people around you, but what they don’t understand is that your mindset becomes distorted by the bad chemistry and by your response to the environment and life situations, and that is not your fault. People want to stigmatize suicide and suicidal people, and it does a lot of damage. This is because people cannot express something that is very real to them, and they cannot work through it easily. I don’t doubt that part of the reason why I lost my friend, to suicide, was because he felt isolated and alone, and he didn’t feel as though he could reach out to people. The sad thing was that he had good people in his life, including me, who cared about him very much, and wanted to support him. And it didn’t matter how many times I told him this, it didn’t change the outcome.

I get sad thinking about these kinds of things. I am just glad that I don’t struggle with suicidal thoughts nearly as much as I used to, and have before. Sometimes it was unbearable. Through time, I have learned a lot of good coping mechanisms, and therapy has helped me understand myself more. Writing is an incredible outlet and expression, because it is a positive manifestation of something, and it is tangible and real. I find that to be remarkable, and I’m glad that I’ve been able to do it throughout the years, because I feel as though I am leaving behind good work that people will hopefully be able to benefit from later on down the line. Plus it helps keep me grounded and present, which is important to my recovery.

It is sad that mental illness is not understood by most of society and by the general public. Yet it affects a lot of people. In terms of my own diagnosis, even though trauma was a part of it, genetics also were a factor. It runs in my family. This is difficult to realize, because it means the genetic component is completely out of my control. But I nonetheless continue to do what I need to, to take care of myself, and to not suffer more than I have to.

I don’t want to see myself as a victim of any sort, even though mental illness has hurt me a lot, in a variety of ways. Instead, I want to see myself as someone who has overcome horrible things, painful things, in order to become a better person and to rise above it like a phoenix. It is hard, because some people do not hear me, they don’t listen, and they do not understand or want to understand what it is like to live with mental illness, what my experience is like on a daily basis. There have been many times where I have thought that I could live a much better life if I did not have to focus on dealing with mental health issues. And I think that this is true in a lot of ways. Suffering can make you stronger, but too much suffering can break you, and make you bitter and calloused. So you have to be knowledgeable of what you feel and experience, because what you experience could be the thing that pushes you over the edge. Thankfully in my life I have been resilient and resourceful, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes think that I would have been much happier had I not had to struggle with mental illness. If I had not had mental illness, I wouldn’t have had to struggle with the stigma, with the judgments, and with mental illness itself. I wouldn’t have ended up so lost in my own mindset, struggling to know what to do sometimes, and I would have been able to take a more conventional path in life. While I wouldn’t say that my path needed to be conventional, there is a part of me that wants normalcy, because I want to have a normal life, and not focus on things that are out of my control.

But there is a way in which it really is the luck of the draw: you never know what you’re going to get in life, but I got what I got, and it is better to accept that, than try to numb out these truths. There is a reason why acceptance is such an important part in the recovery process: if you don’t accept it, you can’t move on and move forward. If you accept it, you can begin to make choices that will impact your life in a positive way, and you can begin to cultivate the kind of life that you want to live. That’s what I learned, and it helps me.

Believe me, I know it is not easy, life is not easy for anyone. We all struggle with various things, and there are people that struggle with mental health issues, who don’t even know that that is what they are experiencing. This often leads to self-destructive and self-medicating behaviors. I’ve seen that happen, where people don’t know what they’re going through, and what they are experiencing, and so they cope in unhelpful and unhealthy ways. It takes a lot of awareness and struggle to know what you’re going through, and it is not something that I would ever want anyone to have to experience. But through time, I have managed to accept what I am going through, and that helps me contextualize it and not look at it with so much fear. You can become stronger through your experiences and efforts, and you can get through it. There is no reason why mental illness has to be a death sentence, or the thing that always tears you down. There are positive steps that you can take, and things that you can do, and while I know that it is still hard to experience these things, I at least for myself know that I have managed to get through it. With having mental illness as a part of my life, I feel as though I have become a stronger, more empathetic person, and while I wouldn’t say it was mental illness itself that led to that, going through adversity and difficult things has helped refine me to become a better person, and I need to acknowledge that.

I definitely think that I’ve been through a lot, and I can’t deny that. Sometimes, it is Hell itself. But I have also gone on an adventure, seen new places, and that has helped me to refine myself, and to become better. The adventure has made me a better person, and I am able to give back. While the conditions are not ideal, and while I wish that I wasn’t given this hand sometimes, I know that I made the best of it that I could, I’ve taken what I was given, and I have done something with it. That is all you can do sometimes in life, so you may as well enjoy the adventure. There is a lot of satisfaction in such an understanding, because you realize how much you’ve grown and how much you have changed through time. You’ve realized what you have done well in life. It makes you stronger.