Mental illness is bizarre.

When the Paliperidone first started to clear up the bulk of my voices last year, I felt like I was always around people.

Granted, I worked retail at the time too, so I was.

But even when alone, I have never really felt alone.

I had these elaborate ways I would imagine situations.

Like I could see them play out every which way possible.

I could feel peoples touches even.

I would get into full back and forth conversations with people.

But it was all unsaid, in my head.

And then the real situation would almost always happened like I had played out.

At least, it felt like it matched up.

Looking back, it was all a series of self fulfilled prophecies.

Because I would have 90% of my conversations that never came to fruition.

And I would not count those.

But full on conversations back and forth, in my head.

For hours.

Every day.

No wonder why I could never focus for very long.

I don’t have that as much now.

I still have running conversations, but they’re not as demanding and negative now.

There’s no longer people talking all the time.

They would just egg on all of my negative thoughts.

And the voices always knew what I was thinking about.

Which would blow my mind.

How did they know?

But I wouldn’t ever see these people.

I want to make that abundantly clear.

They were all just in my head.

At least that I knew of.

But that’s why I never thought I had a schizophrenia spectrum disorder.

I knew it wasn’t real, even though it was real at the same time.

I knew it was in my head even though it was fairly constant.

It’s tough to explain.

Because I did know it wasn’t real.

But I just thought I was psychic.

And then some of the situations ended up happening “all the time”, so I knew I was psychic, right?

But that’s not reality.

That’s a delusion.

And I’m sure, over the years, I hallucinated full people and full conversations too and it never registered.

I’m sure of it.

I know when I worked in a bagel shop I had hallucinations.

I’d be delivering them in the early morning and would hallucinate people in the van and on the side of the highway.

That’s when that one first started.

I see people standing under the highway exit and other roadside signs.

Usually right in the middle, but not always.

And they’re just standing there.

Usually in an orange or red hoodie, but not always.

When the person has a hoodie on, it’s almost always up and covering their face.

The times where there is no hoodie worn, or if the hood is down, I still can never make out the face.

It’ll be just like this glob of an almost painted looking head that’s an olive skin tone but pixilated-esque – or just jet black shadow looking type face.

That’s how most of my visual hallucinations are – shadowy faced.

Though sometimes it’s a face to face conversation just like one you and I would have.

It’s now Thursday and I’ve been hearing voices all day while outside.

Yesterday and today has been really quite scary.

It’s been really bad this week.

The voices wait till they know what they’re saying might be taken as something that could really happen and jump on it.

I had two guys following me a few days ago on my walks with Bruce.

They followed me for over fifteen minutes the first night, talking about me, what I’m doing and what I’m thinking.

Talking about my limping – the way I’m walking.

How I’m ignoring Bruce and I hear them but they staying hidden from me.

I’d look behind me and see someone walking very quickly just out of sight pretty far back.

Orange-ish red hoodie, no recognizable face, pretty far away.

But every step I took, they got closer just off and behind me..

They kept talking about how it must be hard living a lie.

Talking about how I’m keeping up the limping charade for quite a long time.

About how much weight I’m putting on my left ankle (the one that hurts).

How I’m bending it occasionally, so my limp is a lie.

They were talking about how I’m ignoring my dog because I’m preoccupied with them.

Then I’d look down at Bruce and one of them would say “she only looked at him because we said something”.

It took me over twenty minutes after I stepped foot in my apartment door to stop hyperventilating.

I was sweating and out of breath.

Full blown panic attack.

I could still hear them talking about me.

“This is where she lives”

“Now we know”

It was around 6:30pm when that happened.

The only other time I went outside that night was to let Bruce use the bathroom just before bed.

I couldn’t go back out there.

The next day, I could hear the usual people in their apartments as I walked by.

(After this walk, I realized 95% of those neighbor voices I hear every day are still hallucinations)

Because the two guys started following me again.

They started back up, not missing a fucking beat from the day before.

Like the night before I stopped started scanning every building with my finger to my face.

I have to eliminate anyone out on their balcony and my mind just twisting their tones.

There was no one around.

No one.

The guys were still talking about me and how great they are at dodging my sight.

They’re still there.

Just behind me.

In my head I just said what the fuck.

And they said fuck you to me.

Ah.

Hallucinations.

Everytime they’d say anything, in my head, I think “fuck you”, and they get annoyed with me and get meaner and react to my just thinking it.

Well, they’re obviously in my head at that point.

At least now I know that I can do that, and get a reaction from them.

And then I know they’re not real.

If I can thought project to them, they’re not real.

Okay, cool, that’s at least a useful tool.

It’s amazing to me how I can be phenomenal one week and terrible the next.

I obviously started this post before my symptoms got bad again.

I was going to restart the whole entry, but this is more authentic as to how bizarre and unpredictable my voices and mental illness really are.

I had a filling come out on Saturday last weekend.

Then my 42nd birthday was Sunday.

(Which I cried on from missing my Grandmas and not being able to talk to her that day)

Then I had a super stressful (but productive) therapy session on Monday afternoon, and BAM.

Woke up Tuesday with a fuckton of symptoms.

Stress is my biggest trigger, hands down.

And it’s wild to me how quickly things can change.

I’m grateful to have another tool.

Once I realized that I could just say “fuck you” in my head to the voices and have them react, I started doing that everytime I hear conversations.

And 95% of them get upset at me or get upset in general after I think it.

Which is calling themselves out as hallucinations.

Holy. Fuck.

So much of what I hear is still chatter.

It’s usually just much, much more tolerable and tame the bulk of the time and I can normally ignore it.

This week was not one of those times though.

This week sucked.

I’m fucking exhausted today.

I ended up waking up with a terrible headache and I have done a lot of nothing so far.

My meds are kicking in after my nap and I’m feeling much better. 

I can’t help but think it’s all connected.

– Keren