I took a couple of weeks off.

I’m sure you noticed.

I just planned on taking one week off, but then I got a cold or flu of some sort and felt like garbage for about four or five days.

So I had to take another week off.

I’ve actually been doing well though.

Besides the cold or whatever that I had.

I felt like shit for a few days there.

But I turned a corner and woke up feeling pretty back to normal on Monday, for sure by Tuesday this week.

There have been quite a few folks in my complex sick lately.

And I’ve been in and out of doctors offices quite a bit the last few weeks – months really.

I had a primary care appointment this last Monday.

So I either got it there, or at my complex.

But it’s over now, and that’s what counts.

My primary care appointment went well though.

We didn’t have much to discuss.

Just the usual bloodwork being sent in, and she wants to see me again in 4-6 weeks.

She’s sending me to a dermatologist.

Skin cancer runs in my family and she wants me to get a baseline checkup.

I sent her the last ultrasound result from the DVT being gone.

And we just talked about life for a while.

She’s legit the coolest doctor.

We seriously have a mini therapy session every time I see her.

It’s great.

I feel like she sent me in another referral too, but I can’t remember where to right now.

And then I had a heart echo follow up last Thursday.

The cardiologist called me and went through the results with me.

They were the same results I’ve heard my whole adult life.

Mild pulmonary valve stenosis.

No changes.

No enlargement.

Nothing to be concerned about.

She said she wants me to do a repeat echo in three years.

Perfectly fine with me.

So that was great too.

And then more good things happened today (it’s Wednesday).

I had a rheumatology appointment and I didn’t have to see the shitty rheumatologist.

I saw his PA, and she’s way nicer.

And I got in and out in 30 minutes too which is a record there.

Got to and from San Antonio within two hours.

Hit zero traffic at 4:30pm on the way home.

I hit all green lights there and back.

It was a chef’s kiss perfect traffic situation.

I found out there’s a rheumatologist in San Marcos now, so I’m gonna call them next week and see if they take my insurance.

Transfer to them if I can.

Hopefully I can.

I hate the rheumatologist I see now.

He’s terrible.

He was the same guy I cried in front of at my first appointment and he put his hands up and said loudly “NO EMOTION! NO EMOTION!” to me…

Asshat.

I really hope this other rheumatologist takes my insurance.

We’ll see though.

But like I said, things have actually been good besides being sick last week.

And besides the usual hallucinations.

I had a gustatory one the other day. 

I opened a jar of salsa and it straight the fuck up tasted like fish to me.

And not on the first bite.

On like the third.

I’m sure it wasn’t actually fish laced.

It didn’t smell like fish.

But it takes thickly of fish.

I couldn’t eat it.

It’s still sitting in my fridge.

But I’ll never eat it.

I might as well dump it or give it away.

But no one wants an open jar of salsa.

Then I had an olfactory one too.

Both of these are much more common than you’d think with folks that deal with hallucinations.

If you google them, they say that both are uncommon, but they’re not uncommon if you already deal with hallucinations in general.

I was talking about them with my buddy who deals with psychosis too, and she gets them often too.

I have each of them at least once a month probably, on average.

They’re not nearly AS common as my daily auditory hallucinations, but they still happen all the time in my opinion.

Anyway, I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, I think this was about a week and a half ago, and my bedroom reeked of cigarettes.

Like, it smelled like someone had been chain smoking in there for hours and very recently.

Like, had just put one out recently.

And it’s impossible to smell things from other apartments in here.

The windows were shut and locked.

The air conditioning was on too.

I never smell anything from the outside, inside, ever anyway, at any other time.

So it wasn’t that anyway.

It was super confusing at first.

But then I realized it was a hallucination.

But it was still tough to get back to sleep with the smell so fucking thick like that.

I was surprised there wasn’t smoke in the room, it smelled so fresh.

It was so bizarre.

Those are the most bizarre hallucinations – the olfactory and gustatory ones.

I mean the auditory and visual suck.

They suck hard.

But the taste and smell ones are just off putting because they really fuck with me.

They’re always just so random.

They pop up out of nowhere.

But some of them are semi-predictable at the same time.

Much like my other hallucinations.

Like, I can’t tell you how many plates of food I’ve had to throw away because of them.

Countless.

I taste cow manure a lot when I eat meat, any kind of meat – that’s why I’m basically a vegetarian.

Because 80% – 90% of the time, when I eat meat, I straight the fuck up taste cow shit.

And I usually don’t smell it when I have a gustatory hallucination.

Or taste it when I have an olfactory hallucination.

So that’s how I know I’m hallucinating.

Because taste and smell are so strongly linked usually and naturally, that if the meat actually did have cow manure in it, it would taste and smell like it.

Not just taste like it.

But I still can’t finish it once I taste it.

It’s game over.

Done-zos.

And I usually end up tossing it.

It’ll sit in the fridge for forever and then I throw it away.

Certain meats are worse than others too.

Steak is the worst.

I can’t do it.

At all.

Every single bite tastes like cow manure to me, it’s tough, I have to chew it forever, it gets stuck between my teeth, it has, like, a metallicy aftertaste.

No.

Horrible. 

0 out of 10.

In general, all red meat is a solid second no-go for me.

The only red meat I could ever really stomach was my Grandma’s homemade beef and noodles dish.

Which, I don’t know what type of spell she put on that dish, but that shit was amazing.

And I can do some smoked brisket, that’s alright from certain places – I mean, I am in Texas afterall!

Burgers are really the only safe red meat for me.

But they have to be high quality.

I can’t go out to McDonald’s or anything like that.

First off because of the gluten.

Secondly because it’ll taste like cow shit to me.

Literally.

But plenty of times I’ve gotten three bites into a Wagyu beef burger and it’s started to taste like cow manure.

It doesn’t always start off that way.

It’ll morph sometimes.

But I can usually tell when it’s gonna happen.

It’ll start out just not tasting good.

It won’t like, hit the spot like they usually do.

It’ll have a sorta like mundane, blah type taste to it.

Then suddenly, another bite in, it’ll taste like cow shit.

Like I said, the smell will smell like a burger still.

Totally normal.

Ketchup, pickles, whatever’s on it, will smell fine still.

But the taste…

The taste will be wretched.

Homemade burgers are hit or miss.

Sometimes I’ll not be able to stand the smell while they’re cooking, so I won’t be able to eat it when it’s done.

So I stopped buying meat all together because of this conundrum.

Because that happens with any meat that I cook at home. 

Pork is a solid third.

Pulled pork is alright at times.

But it’s few and far between.

I can eat a pulled pork sandwich about once a year.

But I usually don’t eat it all.

Turkey gets manure tasting quick, unless it’s smoked.

Smoked meats are better tasting for me overall, I’ve noticed.

It sorta cuts out some of that cow manure taste sometimes.

And the texture is way better too on smoked meats.

Chicken is usually a pretty safe bet for me honestly.

But every once in a while, it’ll get a gamey, manure taste to it.

It depends on what it’s marinated with.

Usually the texture of chicken will turn me off more than anything.

If it gets too juicy or too tough, it’s too much and I can’t eat it.

I like it in a specific, in between.

Texture is a whole other part of food (and clothes) that bothers me.

The texture has to be just right on all of the food that I eat, otherwise I won’t eat it.

Like how bacon is usually always safe, as long as it’s super crispy.

It has to be super crispy though.

But yeah, meat is a tough one for me.

Most all animal products are.

Eggs are.

Eggs were tough for me growing up too.

I asked my Mom this weekend if I would eat them growing up because I remember that they’ve always smelled practically rotten to me while they cook.

Even as a kid they smelled super, just, off.

And she said I would sometimes eat them and sometimes wouldn’t.

I said, oh, much like I am as an adult.

Hahaha!

So they’ve always been hit-or-miss with me.

Sometimes I can stomach them.

Sometimes they make my stomach turn.

Like, they have this odor to them that’s completely off-putting while frying, or scrambling, or whatever.

It’s not sulfuric.

It’s not cow manure, like the meat gets with me.

It smells like, basically, something is rotten.

I don’t know if I’ve ever smelled what chicken manure smells like, but it’s what I imagine that smells like, mixed with their feed and feather smell.

Just like, a fuckin gnarly rotten animal chicken.

And I remember my Dad used to make these fried potatoes on this huge counter skillet growing up for all of us.

And it was my favorite – breakfast for dinner.

And he’d make eggs for everyone, usually except me, when the potatoes were almost done.

And they’d ruin the lovely smell in the house from the fried potatoes!

When I first started seeing my nutritionist, I choked down eggs for her because she said she wanted me to eat them.

But recently, I stopped buying them again.

Within the last six months or so.

I just seriously can’t do any more of them.

Even with nutritional yeast on them – which is the only way that they’re at all edible.

The last three or four times I had made them I fed most of them to Bruce.

Then I let a full package of an 18-count carton sit in the fridge for a month and a half, untouched.

I can really only stomach scrambled ones, with a ton of nutritional yeast, cheese, and salt on them anyway.

And I’m lactose intolerant.

So that doesn’t mix well.

And I do usually feed half of them to Brucie everytime too.

For some reason the direct animal products – cheese is the exception, give me the most grief with the cow manure and manure/rotten in general gustatory hallucinations.

And even manure/rotten olfactory hallucinations when meat and eggs are cooking.

But never simultaneously.

I’ve never, ever had a gustatory and an olfactory hallucination at the same time now that I think about it.

Which is super curious.

You’d think, and even assume, that they’d go hand in hand.

But for me they absolutely do not.

Like I’ve smelled the rotten, manure type smell from eggs cooking on the stovetop and then have not been able to eat the eggs because I’ve just assumed that they’ve tasted like manure, or have tasted rotten.

I’d say 95% of the time, once the smell overpowers me as they’re cooking, it’s game over, and I don’t even try to taste them because they’re ruined already.

I usually just toss whatever it was.

Depending on what it is, sometimes I’ll put it in the fridge for the next day.

Hoping that when the smell goes away, I’ll be able to eat whatever it is that I cooked.

I’ve done that with chicken before and it’s worked.

I’ve been able to eat it the following day.

But it doesn’t always work.

This is why I stick to my “safe foods” more often than not.

I have things that I like that I know won’t fail me that I eat every day, week, whatever.

I get the same things every time I go grocery shopping because they don’t change and they don’t taste like cow shit.

And if for some starting reason they do start tasting like shit at some point, I have to change them up and find something new.

Which happens sometimes.

And I hate it when that happens.

Then I have to abandon the food, and I usually can’t go back to it for a few years.

If ever.

It depends on what it was and the severity of it.

And hallucinations don’t discriminate.

They don’t give a fuck what’s safe for me and what isn’t.

They’ll ruin everything they can get their shitty little hands on for me if they could.

My friend and I were talking the other day about how we need a break from all these hallucinations.

How exhausting they are.

How frustrating and annoying and tiring they can be at times – which is all the fucking time.

And how we wish we could just catch a fucking break at some point, from all of this.

Even if for just a day.

But then when we do catch a break, and we, for some mysterious reason (*clear throat* medications) don’t have a lot of symptoms for a day or two…

How we feel like we’re imposters.

And we don’t deserve to call ourselves schizophrenics.

Even though we absolutely are.

I told her when I have a day of low symptoms it makes me feel as though I don’t need any of my medications.

And we messaged each other at the same time basically the same thing –

That we’re stable because of the medications, and have to remind ourselves of that.

And coming off of them would throw both of us into psychosis so fucking quickly.

Then we talked about how scary psychosis is.

And it is.

Every month, month and a half or so I get a glimpse of in depth psychosis again.

For about one or two minutes.

It’ll happen randomly.

It’s like this check my mind does to keep me humble or something.

But, I’m usually walking Bruce when it happens, sometimes I’m sitting on my couch…

But usually I’m walking.

It’ll happen suddenly and it’s always the same thing.

Like I said, this all happens in a 90-120 second time period.

The feeling starts in the lowest part of my abdomen.

It takes about 15 seconds to creep all the way up to the crown of my head, but it’s the most intense bout of paranoia ever.

Knee-deep in psychosis type paranoia feeling.

Imagine you’re in a secluded farmhouse.

No neighbors.

No nearby anything.

No car.

No transportation of any kind.

It’s 1am.

You wake up out of a deep sleep.

You realize someone has cut the power.

You hear someone walking inside the house.

You have no phone.

There’s no landline.

You’re by yourself.

You have no weapon.

It’s 100x worse paranoia than that.

Because that’s probably just the cat, and there was a storm you slept through.

But, everything is watching me.

Everything knows what I’m thinking.

They’re after me.

The voices start faintly.

It starts behind my head and within about 10 seconds, wraps around the front of me, and makes it sound like I’m in the middle of a crowd, but I can’t quite make anything out that anyone is saying.

It’s just loud and chatty sounding.

So all of that took up the first 25 seconds…

The crowd noise, as quickly as it came about, starts to fade, and there’s just a couple of indistinct conversations left talking on either side of me.

The hardcore, all consuming paranoia feeling is still there.

Throbbing.

Unfaded.

It’s all over my body.

It’s all consuming.

I can feel every single fucking muscle in my system is tensed up.

I can tell the several conversations being spoken on either side of me, are about me, but the second they say the words, I can’t remember what was said.

I’m honestly and literally thinking that these people are talking about me, and out to get me.

I can’t see any of them though.

My body and eyes are on autopilot.

I’m moving, walking, or sitting, whatever function I was doing before this started still, but I’m not taking anything in.

And I’m literally 110% believing that someone is after me, following me, watching me, stalking me.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, the paranoia feeling starts to retreat.

It slinks down my face and back into my chest, down into my lower abdomen.

At the exact same time I realize that I’m hearing hallucinations right now, that no one is out following me, stalking me or anything of the sorts, and for about a minute and a half or two, I was just delusional.

It’s like this disorder feels the need to fucking show you what it could be, and it was like – just for a few moments, every once in a while.

Just to prove itself.

It’s a shitty fucking reminder.

Because for that minute and a half, I really am delusional again.

Eyes darting back and forth, looking for a threat.

Heart pounding.

Fuckin not being able to think about anything else besides the delusion.

Being completely engulfed in psychosis momentarily again.

Time and time again.

Like I said, that happens, I’d say, every other month or so.

It’s just a minute or so.

But it feels like forever in the moment.

It’s a horrible reminder of how precious my fucking sanity is honestly.

I refuse to take sanity for granted.

Because I’ve been in a position where I couldn’t think for myself.

I couldn’t think, period.

I couldn’t function properly.

I couldn’t be on my own in my adult body.

And it’s a seriously frightening situation to be in.

And I never, ever want to go back into full blown psychosis ever again.

These glimpses of it are all I need to remind me of its horrors.

People who have never experienced psychosis – which is, a lot of people, are lucky.

And I bet they don’t think about it at all.

I bet they probably never even think about how fucking lucky they are to have a good, solid brain in their skull.

One that doesn’t trick them and try to fool them all the time.

I don’t think folks understand how truly exhausting it is to deal with breakthrough hallucinations all the time.

It’s not anywhere near as draining as psychosis.

But it’s draining nonetheless.

And I bet people who don’t have to worry about hallucinations and delusions, have never even really thought about how different their life would be if they did have to deal with them.

That must be nice.

I’ve thought a lot about how different my life would’ve been if I never would’ve had any mental illness issues.

I wonder what I would’ve done.

Where I would’ve gone to college at.

If I wouldn’t have taken so many years off after high school.

If I would’ve had a good career at this point in my life.

I always wonder about that type of shit.

People who don’t have to deal with this type of shit are so fucking lucky.

I’ve been watching this show where this kid had a super rough childhood and he was talking about it with his adopted mom.

He said everyone is like an egg in a carton.

Because you know how sometimes when you drop a carton of eggs, one will break, and another one won’t?

That’s how humans are too.

Some of it just comes down to luck.

You can do everything right.

Take all the right precautions.

Do everything the right way.

But then life will drop your carton.

And you’ll either break, or you won’t.

And it’s out of your control.

It just happens.

No matter what you do to prevent or stop it.

You either crack, or don’t.

– Keren