I got my Invega injection today.

And I honestly couldn’t wait for it.

I’ve been having some breakthrough symptoms this last weekend.

And last week.

It felt like all the peace I had with the six or so day run of very few symptoms, disappeared.

Quickly at that.

It gets exhausting, bouncing back and forth between hallucinations, delusions and the radio noises I hear.

Now that there’s been some short lived relief sprinkled in, I was hoping things would get easier.

But then I hear the voices and become engulfed again.

It’s tough.

Some weeks are better than others.

Some days are better than other days.

It’s just exhausting sometimes.

I’m hopeful that my injection will help curb the symptoms, for now.

I have a lot of ongoing hallucinations and delusions.

They morph a little.

But mainly go back and forth between a few.

For most of my adult life, I feel like I’m being surveyed.

Constantly being watched and followed everywhere I go.

It makes it difficult to walk around, or be in public.

I feel like people are watching and commenting through the blinds on their windows.

It makes it hard to do a lot.

Because I still hear people next to me talk about me.

Just like they have my whole life.

And I still feel that sometimes I can tap into what other people are thinking.

Even though it’s quieter than it’s ever been.

It’s not just people either.

Certain common items bring up my delusions and hallucinations too.

I feel that all mirrors are really just one sided cameras.

I have a few mirrors in my apartment now, but I have to force myself to look into them.

Which I rarely do.

They’re all placed in areas to mainly have light bounce off of them.

Not to look into.

I have a running cleanliness command voices and other hallucinations too.

The voices will berate me until I wash my hands sometimes.

They really focus in on certain times of me being unclean.

For example, when I pick up Bruce’s dog poo.

They layer into and over themselves saying things like:

“Pick it up.”

“Did she pick it up?”

“She’s just going to leave it there.”

“Pick it up!”

“She has to pick it up.”

“Pick it up.”

And then, after I have thrown it away, they get on me about washing my hands.

“She isn’t going to wash her hands.”

“Look at her, fucking disgusting.”

“She just touched her face.”

“Wash your hands.”

“Fucking gross.”

“How disgusting.”

“Wash your hands!”

“She’s disgusting.”

“Fucking disgusting.”

“She needs to wash her hands.”

They say things like I’m “disgusting” for touching anything on myself after picking up the dog poo.

They’ll follow me around my whole walk with him and scold me for being a vile and nasty person.

They used to get so bad that I couldn’t use the bathroom.

When I did, I would just cry through it.

Screaming at them to stop.

The hallucinations would torture me and yell about how unbearable and gross I am.

Just for going to the bathroom.

I would hold it almost all day to avoid the comments.

I dread showering still because of the comments.

They’re not as much as they have been in the past, but they’re still there.

I don’t talk about it much.

It’s embarrassing.

But the hallucinations don’t fucking care.

They show up regardless.

I feel like they want to embarrass me.

That their goal is to make my life as miserable as possible.

I know I’ve talked about this several times before, but my hallucinations mimic my neighbors and people I know too.

It’s absolutely an ongoing delusion that my neighbors focus on me and talk about me constantly.

They can also have the exact tone and timbre of friends or family.

When I lived with my parents at the beginning of last year, I’d hear “them” talking about me.

Especially at night.

That would quickly get taken over with someone trying to communicate with me via the browser and/or the camera in my phone.

Or on my laptop.

Or my mom’s computer.

Or all of them.

Because they’re watching me.

Constantly watching me.

And at the time I still had quite a bit of difficulty separating the hallucinations and delusions from reality.

Even now, I have a hard time doing that some days.

Most days are decent.

And I can tell that the hallucinations and delusions are 100% in my head.

But sometimes they mutate into something plausible and seemingly rational.

And that’s where I think they’ll always have a loose grip on my wrist.

– Keren