A Day in the life of a Schizophrenic

Waking up, the remnants of medications making eyelids heavy, as if dumbbells are hanging from your eyelashes. Once you finally rise after hours of attempting to fully wake up, the screaming begins.

An ear splitting screaming and yelling. You may even look around to find the source of the voices you're hearing, but you realize after time, that it is all in your head. You shake your head, in a feeble attempt to make the noises cease, ultimately failing.

You finally gain the strength and motivation to finally get up from your bed, rising to go about the morning routine that you do every day, thinking that once you begin to do something, anything, that the people inside of your head, berating you and attempting to tear down every wall you built previously, will slow down with their words. They don't.

Hour pass, attempting to go about your day and ignore the voices telling you that everything is wrong, wrong, wrong! But you know it isn't, but they think its their very job to make you think that it is, rousing out their lovely friend anxiety to make you worry about every single thing you attempt.

They realize that after a little while, you began to tune them out. They don't like that. They send a message to your eyes. Thats when the shadow people arrive. The tall, gangling, boney, terrifying people. Could you even classify them as people? Creatures is more accurate.

These creatures blocking your view from the things you were doing once previously. Sometimes they attempt to interact with you, sometimes they will just walk around, ignoring your presence and going about their haunting, nonexistent lives.

These creatures are harmless, you know that much. They aren't real, but you cant help but to shiver and feel as if they are actual beings, dragging along around you, capable to harming you at any single moment.

But you ignore it, you close your eyes and rub them roughly, aimless attempts to get the sight to go away. How could you get anything relativity productive done with these things blocking your view.

After a number of minutes, they finally begin to pick off, one by one, slowly fading back into the back of your brain until the next time the decide to come out again.

This repeats throughout the day, but luckily with the assistance of medications, these hallucinations don't last very long.

Someday, not often, your body may begin to move on its own. Twitching and jerking. Yelling random phrases that you cant control. Where did it come from? Even your doctor is stunned on what the cause of them are, which isn't the most reassuring thing.

These twitches though, are a forewarning. They are a warning to you. These uncontrolled movements and noises are the signs of a up to come black out.

Blackouts. Not common, but they can happen. Your mind blanks out, your brain stops working. You collapse on the ground and loose all awareness of the world around you.

You stay blacked out for seconds, or even minutes, having no clue as to what the trigger to the blackouts are. Could it just be your brain short circuiting because of the chemical imbalance? Could it be a side effect of this illness? Hopefully you can find answers.

You hide your illness and problems from others. The stigma of this illness is dark and disgusting, seen as a psycho, a serial killer or someone who will snap in a second and go bonkers.

You tell some people. Some of them pity you, some of them disregard your problems as other illnesses, some shy away and eventually run, some stay by your side, keep a watch on your symptoms that you had told them, and they help you when you need it the most, when you blackout, start twitching and yelling in public, when you hallucinate or the voices get a little to loud for comfort, they are there for you when you need someone to hold you up and help you.

Schizophrenia is not a joke. It's a hell hole of an illness. It breaks you down piece by piece, berating you and tearing you apart until you eventually reach a breaking point.

We all hope we never reach that point.