I’m exhausted today.

It’s Friday and I’ve had a helluva week.

Between the Pilot’s airbags randomly deploying while I was driving home on Saturday (yeah, I know, scary, huh?) and dealing with my finances, I’m beat.

And I’ve been having to take my anxiety medication every day for the past several days.

Which makes me tired too.

But I didn’t take it today, so I think I’m on the up swing of things.

I’ve been sleeping fine, but damn, I’m tired.

I’m stressed out, but I’m not stressed out all at the same time.

It’s strange because all of this is new to me.

This way of mental processing with the Niacin, Vitamin C, and Paliperidone combination.

Is this how everyone else feels all the time?

Like it’s just simply easier to deal with life?

My mind isn’t jumping into a death spiral.

I don’t feel like I need to get a new-to-me car yesterday.

Granted, I am a touch sad, and I am tired.

But for some reason, I’m not debilitated.

I’m not being consumed with fear, anxiety, dread, pressure, despair, worthlessness, or feelings of isolation.

I’m maintaining a very “it is what it is” attitude.

And I actually feel a sense of community today.

Is this how “typical” people deal with things all the time?

This is so much easier to deal with than my old, sick, mentally ill way of thinking.

Being in and out of psychosis for 20+ years put me in a state of irrationality and obscurity.

I haven’t been in the same reality as everyone else for a very, very long time, until recently.

And that took its toll on me and my emotional state.

Before I gained this clarity, I never thought about how my actions would affect my future self.

I couldn’t grasp the concept of the future, nor my role in it.

When in and out of psychotic episodes, I lost my traction with the real world and real world consequences.

It’s tough to explain psychosis.

How do I begin to describe my breaks with reality?

It starts with not being able to do things – not being able to see my impact on others and on the world around me.

If you deal with a friend or family member who’s mentally ill, and they seem to “defy” your advice, do the opposite, and keep getting themselves in trouble…

It’s not that they’re not listening – they literally cannot grasp the concepts.

Their mind won’t let them.

There’s a block in place, a wall.

They can’t see outside of themselves to see what they’re doing is going to cause them trouble.

I couldn’t.

For decades I couldn’t see my impact on others, the world around me, or even on my future self.

Not for lack of not wanting to – it’s that I literally couldn’t.

Mental illness blocks rationality.

It builds walls around certain areas of the brain and won’t allow any entry.

Mental illness blocks the ability to see and hear other people for what they’re really saying.

I’m speaking for myself here, but my mental illness caused me to be extremely selfish in certain ways.

Because I couldn’t see the impact I had on the world around me or even to myself.

It caused me to do things that were completely out of character, or were extreme, because it dyes who you are at your core.

The mentally ill version of someone is not the real version of them.

It’s a facade.

It’s a mask.

And not in a conscious way either, not by any means.

Mental illness is a traitor and will make your loved one feel like a traitor too.

Mind you, none of this is an excuse, it’s an explination.

There’s a difference.

A big one.

I have to own and apologize for my behavior when I’m mentally ill.

Just because I wasn’t in my right mind doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt someone or impact someone, that’s not an excuse – I have to own that.

But explanations are critical for understanding one another.

And mentally ill people can’t explain why they’re doing something or saying something, because their mind literally won’t let them.

Or when they do it’s irrational, selfish nonsense.

The mind is not clear when the illness is at the helm.

It’s just not.

Random things seem logical.

Spending all of the money in the bank account before paying rent, seems logical.

Cussing out a loved one because of something stupid, seems logical.

We are the same people that think it’s logical to commit suicide over something small or seemingly insignificant to someone else.

We’re not in our right mind.

Their mind is basically holding them hostage without ransom or a deadline.

My mind was.

I couldn’t see that calling my best friend at the time, and telling her that I was suicidal and crying hysterically and hanging up on her when she’d start to say something I didn’t like was detrimental to our friendship.

I couldn’t see outside of my own pain.

I just saw an abyss of misery and wanted help to crawl out of it.

But I didn’t realize that my calls were so stressful for her.

I couldn’t see outside of the bubble that my mind had created.

I’m in pain – listen to me, help me.

But the only person who could help me, was me.

And I didn’t figure that out until years after she left my life.

And unfortunately, I’ve done things like that with more than one person over the years.

I go into an episode, call them with my misery, for help, they don’t know how to help me, and everything they say is wrong anyway, and then I hang up, still miserable, and now down another friend or boyfriend.

This is what I mean – I could not see outside of myself.

My problem was more important than their day or night.

My issue trumped theirs.

When I started therapy with my current therapist, I can’t tell you how many times I started to talk about other people and their horrible actions or words, towards me.

Hannah, my therapist, would slowly walk me through the situations and help me see that they’re just being them.

And I can accept that, or leave that.

Period.

They’re not there to save me, they’re attempting to help, and I’m rejecting that help because it’s not what I would’ve said to me in that situation.

They’re not me.

They’re them.

So, I can take them, or leave them.

I can either accept their behavior as “that’s them being them”.

Or, I can reject them and no longer have them in my life.

All times prior, when I had bitched about other people in therapy, no one put it to me like this.

They would always help me try to resolve the situation.

They didn’t look at it in this… almost neutral light.

I didn’t realize that I needed to accept people as they were, because of the mental illness clouding my views.

I couldn’t see outside of myself.

I didn’t realize that these people were always going to respond this way, because that’s who they are.

I can’t create a version of who I want them to be in my head, and then when they don’t live up to it, get furious and reject their advice or words.

I either need to accept them at face value, or move on.

And that hit me like a ton of bricks.

Mind you, this was around the same time as the Paliperidone was starting to work as well a few years ago.

This was just the beginning of the countless epiphanies I’ve had with her.

Every other therapist in the past has just listened and told me what I should respond with.

I – at least that I can remember, had never been told that I had to accept them at their core in order to understand what they’re saying to me.

This is just one aspect of how mental illness disconnected me from the rest of the world.

I wouldn’t get as mad at someone’s advice or words if I were to accept that that’s what they would say, and I know what they’re getting at because they’re them, and that’s just how they talk.

That because they’re them, I know what they mean, and I accept their behavior, even when it upsets me, because that’s just who they are, and I want them in my life.

Mindblowing.

I know this is something “typical” people learn as a teenager or in their 20’s.

I learned this in my 40’s.

Because my mental illness didn’t allow me to see outside of myself.

My mental illness tainted my view, and I thought the world, even my loved ones, were against me because I never understood this.

I knew I was alone in this world.

And that phrase – I am alone, is one I’ve worked on with EMDR therapy with Hannah as well.

In several sessions.

And we’ll probably have to work on it more.

Because I’ve always felt alone in this world, even from a very young age.

Deep down, I know I’m not.

But feelings can be heavy sometimes, and when you mix in mental illness, feelings become reality.

Mental illness makes me feel as if I have no future.

So, why would I plan, or accommodate for one?

It surfaced as reckless spending, emotional blowups, addict behavior, and constant suicidal ideations. 

I couldn’t see outside of today.

I knew tomorrow would eventually come, and that I would have nothing then, but it never mattered.

I never cared.

It’s like my preteen, teenage mentality went into my 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s.

My mind didn’t expand and grow as it should’ve.

I was stuck.

And the wildest thing is, I couldn’t notice – and I didn’t notice.

The thing I did notice is that people around me were seemingly “growing up”.

And I wasn’t for some reason.

Like when my old best friend and her boyfriend finally moved out of the house we were all living in.

I remember she was afraid to approach me because of how I would react.

At the time, I thought that was funny.

Now, I find it sad.

But she told me, and I blew up, cried, and finally accepted the fact I had to live by myself with my dog at the time.

I knew people around me were saving up money for things they wanted, places they wanted to travel to, concerts they wanted to see.

And I always got frustrated because I couldn’t do that.

Not for lack of trying, or because I didn’t want to, because I did.

But I didn’t have the ability to think that far ahead.

I’d always lived for the day.

I’d always hoped that this was my last day.

I’d always hoped I just wouldn’t wake back up.

I felt like a burden – and still do to an extent.

But when I was really sick, I couldn’t rely on myself.

I mean, for obvious reasons, as I look back.

But when I was in it, it was seriously frustrating and I couldn’t comprehend it.

I was an addict for many years.

And I turned to drugs to cover up the voices and mood swings.

Even though the drugs made the mood swings especially way worse.

I remember I tried to OD, several times.

I’d get sick, and just take more, to hopefully override my system.

But I always woke up the next day.

I was stuck in a loop.

Working 70 hours a week to support my habit.

I’d get paid in cash at one job, go buy my stash for the day, and head to my other job.

Over and over again.

For a couple of years I did that.

It’s a sad existence.

I ended up having to go to rehab.

The drugs tainted my view even worse than the mental illness did – they worked in tandem.

I’m worthless.

I’m a piece of shit.

I’m alone.

The thing is, mental illness doesn’t care about you.

I went through from about age 18-40 thinking that I knew what was best for me.

That I knew better than others.

I thought that I was self aware, and I thought I was conscious of how the world perceived me.

That was far from the truth.

Mental illness lies to you.

It told me, for decades, that I was self aware and knew exactly what I was dealing with.

I chalked up my behavior to being bipolar – and that’s that.

I’m bipolar, that’s why I act this way, I can’t control it, it is what it is.

But, that is an excuse.

That’s not owning my behavior, that’s dismissing it into the universe.

I figured that since none of the medications I had tried had really taken away my symptoms, that I was a lost cause and that I was just destined to be mentally ill and explosive for life.

This was pre antipsychotics, and pre schizoaffective diagnosis.

Once I was put on the Paliperidone, and things cleared up a bit, I had some heavy, intense realizations.

My mental illness made me a person that I hated.

My mental illness, and the voices, perpetuated a life that was opposite of the one I really wanted to be living.

But I still didn’t know exactly how to change it at first.

I was still hearing voices.

I was still paranoid as fuck even on the Paliperidone.

I was still behaving irresponsibly in some aspects of my life.

I was just more aware of it, but I still didn’t know exactly how to stop it.

The most frustrating thing in the world is to be aware of my mental illness, be aware of what I need to work on, but not see the path to the resolution.

Not be able to see how to get to the finish line still.

Knowing that I’m fucking up still, but not being able to stop 100% yet.

Being 50% able to reel yourself in, but the other 50% is still out in complete irrational land.

That’s how I felt before the Niacin and Vitamin C regimen was added to my Paliperidone.

I was so close before then to being able to be the person I wanted to be – but there was still this obstacle.

I was still hearing voices before then, I was still in and out of reality.

Lucidity was close, but I still couldn’t fully grasp onto it.

Take my reckless spending, for example.

I had been talking about this in therapy for months prior to the introduction of the Niacin and Vitamin C.

Hannah encouraged me to create two “buttons” in my mood app, that I fill out daily.

One that says “spent money”.

The other that says “didn’t spend money”.

And if I did spend money, I had to write down what I spent it on in the notes at the bottom of the daily entry.

I heeded her advice, and started doing this a few months prior to starting the Niacin and Vitamin C regimen.

It was extremely helpful.

I was instantly embarrassed about what I had to write down, and it instantly curbed my spending.

There’s something about seeing the data, in black and white, that can create a difference, even when still mentally ill.

It may not fully compute, but I got the idea.

The mood app is by far the best thing I’ve done for my mental health – besides therapy and being medication/supplement compliant.

It helps explain to me, in a data driven way, what I’m doing and feeling.

It helps relay information to me about my mental status.

The thing about having a mental illness is that I live in the day a lot.

I tend to not think about the future, and the past is full of traumas.

The mood app and mood diary helps me see that I do have good days – good weeks even, and it helps me reflect and see how things like starting or stopping medications have impacted my mood.

When I started the therapeutic dose of Niacin and Vitamin C, my mood elevated, and has stayed elevated with very few “bad” days since.

My hallucinations are pretty much nonexistent now, and that’s noticeable in my app.

Similar to when I started the Paliperidone, there was a notable difference in my mood and a complete lowering of my visual hallucinations.

It’s good to see the positive changes when you look back, especially on a bad day.

Because I may feel as though everything sucks sometimes.

But I look back at my mood app and remember how much worse off I could be.

How much dislocation I had with reality at one time.

And I would’ve never remembered that on my own, I need help with that.

I need help remembering how bad it was at one time, and how far I’ve come.

And it’s amazing to see my progress, in a graph, right in front of me.

Because I forget.

My illness makes me forget and makes me think that I’m a piece of human shit and that I’ll always remain that way.

It lies to me and tells me that I’m worthless.

That I have done nothing, and I’m not close to getting better.

The app is helpful for disproving that.

I don’t really know what my point is in this entry, other than; take it easy on folks who have a mental illness, and if you have a mental illness, take it easy on yourself.

Folks with mental illness don’t always realize what they’re doing, and the impact that their actions have.

They literally can’t see outside of themselves when they’re sick and in the illness.

Be patient with them.

And recovery is a bitch.

I’m learning that rather quickly.

I’m having to pick up the pieces of the mess I made when I was ill.

It’s not fun, and it’s not easy.

So just be willing to give those folks an extra helping hand when they need it, and if you’re able to.

Don’t sacrifice yourself to do it, of course.

But I hope this entry helped you understand where the mentally ill person in your life is coming from, and how they’re not all there when they’re in the thick of it, even though they may look or act like it.

They want to be, but they just can’t.

– Keren