All I’ve been doing the past few weeks is walking for my vein ablation recovery instructions.

It’s been engulfing.

Which is kinda nice because I feel like I haven’t had much time to think about a lot.

Even though I have been thinking about a lot.

I’ve been lonely lately.

I keep thinking about all of the friendships and relationships that I’ve lost because of my behaviors.

And I know psychosis episodes are to blame for a lot of that.

I say that as an explanation, not an excuse.

I’m not excusing my behavior, just because I was in psychosis.

I was still a total piece of shit for years and years and I have to own that till the day that I die.

I have to own the fact that I was toxic as fuck for decades and I didn’t realize.

I couldn’t see it.

I couldn’t see outside of myself.

I thought I was open and honest and communicative and knew exactly what I was up against mentally.

I tried my hardest to know myself.

But I didn’t have the slightest clue really.

I had no idea who I was or what I was really up against until I was 39 years old and properly medicated.

For decades I dealt with undiagnosed psychosis episodes that I thought made me psychic.

I had no idea what psychosis meant until days, even weeks after I got out of the hospital and I remembered to google it when I was looking at my discharge paperwork.

I remember being sucked into articles and researching it for months after that.

How have I never heard of this?

How have I never thought of this?

How have I never seen this?

How the fuck long have I been hearing this shit?

Years, decades.

The whispers?

Since I was a teenager.

The talking about me?

Since I was a teenager.

The crowds?

Since I was a teenager.

Fuck me.

It’s episodic, but I’ve been delusional and having episodes since I was a teenager.

For months I was completely engulfed in what psychosis means and different stories as to what that meant to different people.

I could relate to a lot, but I still couldn’t really see it.

Not until a few months after I was put on the Paliperidone, then I really started to wrap my head around it.

After August of 2021, things really started to make sense.

My head started to get quiet, quiet.

The whispers started to fade with an antipsychotic that worked for me – the best a medication has ever worked for me before.

And that fucked me up at first if I’m being honest.

It was so quiet.

I had no clue how much noise was in my head until they all stopped.

That first week without them, I’ll never forget it.

It was searingly quiet.

I don’t remember ever hearing that level of quiet in my life.

I could hear just one thing at a time for the first time in decades, or even ever, really.

I’m still getting used to it.

I had my volume on and scrolled across a schizophrenia simulation that Kody Green had on his facebook profile the other day.

I got physically ill – my stomach turned, and I cried.

Instantly.

I had frozen for a second but then took my finger and scrolled past that shit so fast it lasted a second and a half, tops.

But it was long enough to give me a physical and emotional reaction.

I can’t do those schizophrenia simulator things most days.

They’re too spot on, it’s too fresh for me.

Every once in a while I’ll be in a mindset where I can handle it,  but that day wasn’t the day.

I’ve been hearing someone say “miss” to me on my walks yesterday.

It’s probably just some breakthrough shit.

But I heard it three times, twice in the morning and once in the  evening.

I’m noting this just for me, in case this is the start of an episode.

I have been stressed and in my head the past week or so.

And I’ve been feeling very lonely and alone lately too.

I’ve had some phantom knocking too the past couple of days.

But, getting back to the subject, I would google psychosis all the time back then, in different ways, different phrasing, trying to get a rounded picture of what it is.

I was so fucking ignorant.

But at least I can change ignorance with education.

I was so fucking blind to my symptoms.

It took another six months and a mood app every day for me to really come to terms with what I’m dealing with.

With the addition of the mood app that I started after the Paliperidone, I realized, in time, that my moods and my psychosis had nothing to do with one another.

Which took out the bipolar with psychotic features diagnosis and made schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, a much more accurate diagnosis.

So I took the data points to my psych NP and he agreed that my moods and my episodes have no relation to one another and then he changed my diagnosis to schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type.

It took over six months of tracking my mood and psychosis symptoms every day to figure that out.

And I’ve been tracking for almost three years now and that’s still the biggest pattern that has emerged.

That and how my stress levels influence my physical pain the same and next day – it’s significant.

They influence one another 100%.

Until this mood app, I was utterly clueless.

I thought my world was open, honest and clear.

In my delusions, it was.

In reality I had closed everyone off, was completely blind to my symptoms, and miscommunication was the standard for me.

I wasn’t who I thought I was.

And I didn’t realize that until just the other year.

It’s not like in the moment I was able to catch myself back then, quite the opposite.

I was out of control.

I lost practically everyone in my life due to my behaviors and toxicity.

I lost jobs and advancement opportunities.

I got pulled aside at every single job I’ve ever had for “behavioral issues” and nothing ever clicked in me that I was the problem.

They were always the problem.

I could always turn it around on my employer.

My love life was a date here or there with one or two real relationships in my whole life.

Is that because I seek out people that don’t really have an interest in me?

Is that because I didn’t even like myself so I didn’t care if my partner liked me either?

Is that because I felt like I didn’t deserve anything serious so I didn’t seek anything serious?

Is that because I put my trust in the wrong people?

It’s probably a combination of all of the above and more.

I guess the big take away for me is how do I trust myself anymore after decades of mistakes?

I know I was dealing with uncontrolled psychosis episodes, but that was still all me.

It was still all me, ya know?

How can I trust that person?

Is that person really gone like I want her to be?

Is she really under control now or is this all because I’m not around a lot of people, and when I reintroduce myself to a lot of people I’ll just go back to the same behaviors?

How do I trust that I won’t be that person anymore?

How do I turn that self doubt into self belief?

I can’t do what I used to do with dating or making friends.

Because I was picking the wrong people on top of everything.

I kept picking people who needed help.

People who need guidance and who aren’t mentally stable because that’s where I’m comfortable.

That’s what I know.

So now what?

Who is healthy?

What does healthy even look like?

I went on two dates last year and they were more of the same unhealthy people.

So I stopped immediately.

I do not want to repeat my old shit behaviors and patterns anymore.

That’s not who I am anymore.

I keep telling myself to just do the opposite of what I would’ve done before.

So instead of continuing to date, like I would’ve done, and just deal with the people when I’m maybe not quite ready to, like last year, I stopped.

I did the opposite.

Instead of letting the person make some shit behaviors and pretending like they didn’t because I crave some type of attention, I just stopped.

I put my cravings aside and focused on my needs.

I don’t need someone in my life who acts like this.

Period.

And I’ve grown too much in the past few years to let behaviors like that slide too.

He got controlling when he saw me “back on facebook dating” – he basically told me he didn’t want me talking to anyone else while I was talking to him, and we had gone on one date.

Not that that’s ever acceptable, ever, I can talk to whomever I please whenever I please.

Period.

So that’s not gonna fly at all.

So I am proud of myself for doing the opposite of what I would’ve done, so that’s a bonus.

And I know a big part of all of this is just learning how to trust myself again.

Trusting myself to take my medication everyday and go to therapy and keep up the self care and continue the real self awareness, and be the person who I always thought I was. 

– Keren