I’m having a hard time letting myself just be today.

I’m tired.

Which probably doesn’t help.

I feel like I should be doing more of something.

But I don’t know what.

And I don’t have the energy right now, anyway.

I got my Invega injection this morning, and I’m scared at how tired it will make me again this month.

But this week, the past seven to ten days, I’ve had much lighter symptoms.

They’re still there.

But they’re not all day.

They’re more sporadic throughout the day.

They’re quieter than they normally are.

Even my visual hallucinations have been dulled lately.

They’re usually around all the time.

It’s just been this week that they’ve been quieting as well.

It’s an odd sensation.

I have a few repetitive visual hallucinations.

Though normally (for me) what I see is more abstract.

However, I will see people standing on the side of the road – the highway especially.

When I pass they’re no longer standing there when I look in the rear view mirrors.

It’s another situation where I have a hard time with mirrors.

They’re always hiding something.

The people that I see are usually wearing heavy clothes.

Like winter wear almost.

They don’t move from the sides of the roads, but sometimes they’re under signs off to the side.

Sometimes they’re in the median.

They’re almost always walking with traffic, so I can’t see their face.

My normal visual hallucinations, the ones I see daily, are usually things that blend together. 

Colors, shapes, they’ll overlap.

It’s like everything’s blurred and moving slowly.

Especially if something is moving against something that’s not.

Like a car passing in front of a fence.

The stagnant thing will blur and wave in the wake of the thing in motion.

And the thing in motion has a trail of wind and it’s travel path behind it.

For example, when a car passes in front of a fence, the fence waves and bends with the motion behind it.

And behind the car is almost a trail of where it once was.

The moving object makes a wake, almost.

I see things as fuzzy and foggy.

Like not everything is in focus.

Not like I need my glasses, but more like there’s a fog around things.

Nothing’s ever really in focus.

And my eyes do that shimmy a lot.

Granted, I’m legally blind in my left eye, but what I’m talking about doesn’t change with my glasses or rest in my good eye.

It’s just there.

Everything seems to move a little slower than it actually is when I’m having heavy visual hallucinations.

And it’s not as distressing – usually, as my auditory hallucinations.

Well, that’s a lie.

They’re just as distressing.

But to me they’re more obviously not real.

(Except for the people on the side of the road.)

And they have their own weight that’s just different from the auditory hallucinations.

They’re heavy in a different area for some reason.

Another normal (for me) thing that I see is fluffy balls of shadows.

They’ll glide along the floors of my apartment. 

Hiding under my coffee table and other things.

They’re usually only on the floor.

They remind me of the soot sprites (aka susuwatari) in the movie “Spirited Away”.

They look just like them, minus the little arms and eyes.

I also see shadowy figures.

Humans, but not humans.

From whole figures to profiles of someone, none of which I can recognize due to a lack of an actual face.

There’s never any facial features.

I usually see these shadowy people outside of windows, peering in.

They look into them as they pass by, and when I actually look to see who it was, they slip in and off to the right or left in an instant and I just see a trail.

This is probably my most common visual hallucination for me.

The shadow figures and the blurring of things happen the most.

But when I’m not on medication they all run rampant.

I decided to talk about my visual hallucinations today because for the first time that I can recall, they’ve been minimal for about a week now.

And it’s almost scary not seeing them right now.

Because it’s new.

And I know that sounds weird, but it’s how I feel.

All of my visual hallucinations used to be paranormal to me, right?

All of these “visions” were comfortable.

Now they’re not.

Now that I understand the paranormal is not real, and as my symptoms ebb and flow, it’s difficult to get used to not seeing and hearing things as much as I have in the past.

And it’s difficult to not count it as paranormal when they do surface.

I have to remind myself they’re not real, because there’s a little part of me in the back of my head that’s still feeding the ghost delusion.

And that’s a scary trap to fall into.

For the most part, I’m able to keep it in check.

I have to remember that what I’m hearing and seeing are hallucinations.

Not reality.

And then days like today, I have to let myself be okay with being okay and quiet.

Be okay with being uncomfortable.

Because it will become comfortable in time.

– Keren