The Journal Entries

Paranoid schizophrenia has often been seen as the red headed step child of all mental illnesses. The unthinkable. The most feared. Something to surely keep your distance from. Historically, schizophrenia has been rather treatment resistant and the quality of life of the afflicted was usually poor. Only fifty years prior to my father’s diagnosis he would have been chained to a wall in an institution. A reality that was never lost on him. My father always said that sane people haven’t the slightest clue of what it feels like to not be able to depend on one’s own mind, one’s judgment. He had been a college student with just under a semester left to secure his Bachelors in Education, so he could seek out a career as an English teacher. He loved to write and was damn good at it. There is no doubt it was his calling. Little did he know this very career path he sought and talent he possessed would serve as his lifeline, his primary therapeutic escape from insanity. With the onset of his illness he switched from fiction to journaling. His first consistent entries being entered in 1981. As life progressed he had a strong desire to share his writing, his story. He wanted to get published, but didn't have the executive functioning necessary to organize his writing into something printable. When he passed away in April I inherited his entire collection of journals with almost daily entries from 1981-2014. They chronicle his journey upon initial diagnosis through the end of his life. It truly is a window into an agonizing fight with schizophrenia. My father's writing will always appear on this blog in bold italic to differentiate from my own.

I remember my irritation with people inquiring after my well-being when I was not feeling well. If, innocently enough, I was asked how I was doing, I would snap back, “You know how I am doing, not worth a shit.” Since I believed that my mind was being read, I did not see the necessity in telling anybody anything. My life had been reduced to playing a sick game. I felt I was dying of exposure. Not physical exposure, but I felt like I was turned inside out. That I had no privacy, even the sanctity of my mind was violated, and I felt I had gone public. I was, by turns, humiliated, embarrassed, impatient, and contemptuous. I was alternately frustrated and angry. It made me mad when other people were trying to understand what was going on with me when I was confused and didn’t know myself. Let alone to be expected to communicate my twisted vision. I knew that to try and explain would make me sound crazy and only invite consternation from my people. Being a very proud young man, it did not sit well with me to be freaking out. I had always prided myself in having my stuff together. Now, here I was talking rubbish, or what sounded like rubbish. To me, I felt lucid, but in the absence of proof for my allegations, I felt helpless and frustrated. Enough frustration engenders aggression. So, at one point, at my wits end, I hauled off and punched a hole through a closet door. I knew that I was losing control. A day later I was in the hospital for the first time. I was verbally abusive, bellicose and determined to get to the bottom of this “conspiracy of them”. I didn’t know who “they” were, but I “knew” they existed. I have no privacy in what I think, say or do. The only thing I don’t share is the pain. The pain is private. Nobody, at least so far, can feel the pain of another.