1st entry, 22.03.2005
I have been diagnosed with shizophrenia in december 2001, after around 1.5 years which I had already spent in delusions.
I didn't know much about the illness, I knew next to nothing. Although I had been suspecting that I might have depressions
or some other form of mental disorder I had usually been quite content with my being. It's been a deceptive contentment, I
had lost my sense for what is mentally healthy and what is not. For instance, I had been a student at the local university,
but I actually almost never went there and instead stayed in my little appartment playing computer games or reading books.
I was very suspicious of other people and was never quite happy being around them. And that while in my younger age I had
usually liked to be around others most of the time, I had enjoyed going to school and later to work in community service
(as opposed to national service). In the past, I've had friends and was in company very often ... this had almost disappeared.
Yet so far I didn't consciously suffer from my isolation, and for a long time I was still sane. The isolation was a choice,
I could have continued going to university if I had exercised my will. However, I did not realize how wrong my choice had been,
and I simply continued remaining a loner. The only company I allowed myself were the waiters and cooks of an indian restaurant
situated in my house, and my parents to whom I went for a weekend every two weeks. There, in my parents village, was also living
my only real friend, Jens. We didn't do THAT much together, but at least we regularly went to a cinema together, and two times
we went to holiday together, one time to Scotland and another time to Italy.
The thing which embarrasses me to this day is that I hid my isolation from my parents and from my friend. I didn't tell them
that I didn't actually stay away from university, instead I told them about fictional happenings there and other fiction about
how I enjoyed my life as a student.
It is my belief now that our conscience, if it is at all developed in us individually, has its ways to reward us for how we cope
with our own accepted morals, or to somehow punish us when we don't pay attention to our own values at all. The time of punishment
for me came in autumn 2000, when I started having weird dreams of being in prison, of people arguing with me, or relatives being
angry with me. However, by this point I had already found myself unable to "come out". I felt too much shame and was worrying very
much whether my family would perhaps pull dire consequences such as demanding from me to move back home to them, so that I would be
under supervision. There was also some more, for instance, I have three sisters, all of them much older than me and being closer to
each other than to myself. I feared they would consider my cheating as a betrayal, and would demand from my parents that they would
break off contact with me or something like that.
Now I know a bit better, after finally quitting university openly in spring 2001 I simply looked for a job and got a fitting one as
night security at a hotel. It wasn't so much of a big deal. Only thing was I cheated again, I simply didn't tell my parents that in
truth I had taken a 2 year long vacation on their and the state's costs.
I think this cheating was responsible for putting a depression on my conscience which actually contributed much to the illness of
shizophrenia really breaking out fully later.
I had actually intended to write more here about the actual experience of the shizophrenia, but now as I am trying to do so it is
quite hard. I have experienced that very often ... it seems that when I start talking about the voices I was hearing, the nightmares
I was having or the dire fear I was feeling these things would only increase in magnitude and frequency. For a mentally healthy person
there is a cure for temporary mental problems: time, distraction, focus on other things. In a way, we can be our own psychiaters and
treat ourselves when we have problems that don't overwhelm us. As I dived into the deep phases of my shizophrenia I didn't have these
options. Although this may sound unintelligible shizophrenia for me meant being in pain and boredom. With boredom I mean that I could
find no activity at all which would really relieve me. My whole mind got twisted, and I became my own worst enemy. It was like I had
split, into a sufferer and a torturer. When I would suffer I would not believe that I suffered. That made it impossible for me to find
relieve in crying or talking to someone else. Who'd understand me, anyway? My fears were very odd. For instance, for a very long time
I believed that my shizophrenic episodes were actually supernatural experiences, that god, devils or demons would influence me. Now, in
hindsight, I am quite sure that the only thing which happened was that my subconscious mind somehow projected those things in my mind
which I had always feared, such as grim gestures, harsh speaking, being mobbed, being intimitated, being hated, being left alone.
In the end of 2000, while I realized that I would need to eventually find a way to fix my life, I had become interested in spiritual
things, and in art and philosophy. Those things aren't bad ... but to use them successfully requires method and effort, both of which
I was lacking. The result was that I only dabbled in these things while believing they would help me anyway. I sort of deceived myself.
The other thing was that I had started treading on those spiritual paths inspite of having been a convinced atheist for years. I hadn't
bothered with objectively analyzing it all, with really informing myself on these matters before considering them seriously. In the moment
I am agnostic, which to me means to accept that there are unknown things in the universe and perhaps even beyond the universe. And that
some things in science hint at creation/intelligent design rather than at a sudden natural beginning or at a universe that in some way and
some form has existed forever. However, this agnostic stance I have NOW is the result of experience and of educating myself. During the
shizophrenic episodes I simply started to believe things simply because I found them inspiring. Between these two approaches there is
a big difference. For one thing, I do believe now that it is necessary to know myself and something about the truth of nature before I can
make such important decisions like starting to believe in a deity or some other supernatural thing. It is uncertain if there really is some
sort of afterlife or not, and I believe it is not worth it to exchange the good life you can have on Earth for fantasies about a beyond
which can never be verified conclusively.
So, this shall be all for now. I will probably write more on this subject later, this was the reason for the dated headline.
2nd entry, 23.03.2005
There was an element present in many of my most intensive shizophrenic episodes which I am remembering well: the feeling that I was
about living in perpetual farewell before I would soon be going away into a mysterious place or realm. Sometimes I thought it would be
the realm of death, at other times it was the thought that I would enter a spirit realm where anything would be the essence of art. One
time I thought would go through some sort of magic time tunnel right into the end times of this universe, when matter would cease and the
spirit alone would remain.
However, the thought where I would go was usually clouded, I didn't actually think about the where very much. What I felt anytime was
basically the feeling of farewell. It was hard to at home with my parents at those time, because then I would also have feelings of being
cut off from my loved ones, and I would also have feelings of not being allowed to take something dear to me with me to where I would go.
In those times I usualy rediscovered love, love for the things which in everyday life I like anyone else tends to forget about. For
example, I could walk through the city I live in and stop near a jewelers window. I would watch all the clocks and rings and necklaces and
would suddenly understand the beauty of some of the things humans are able to make.
I read somewhere in a book that "humans are like bees, their products are better than them".
This has some truth ... what we produce is often more enjoyable to ourselves than what we ourselves are.
In Germany there is this saying about people who make something with love ... like mothers cooking with love for their kids or like
men building hourses with love for their family. The jeweler whose works I looked at in the shopwindow might not have made it with
love for his customers, but perhaps only with the love of money, but there's certainly the possibility that he made it with love for the
things he made.
Back then I thought I'd be sensing something, that some things were somehow loaded with a belovedness.
Sometimes I miss those farewell periods, despite of them having been hard to bear at the time.
But when I think about it it's only the feeling I miss, the recognition of how dear something can be to me.
More later.
However, the thought where I would go was usually clouded, I didn't actually think about the where very much. What I felt anytime was
basically the feeling of farewell. It was hard to at home with my parents at those time, because then I would also have feelings of being
cut off from my loved ones, and I would also have feelings of not being allowed to take something dear to me with me to where I would go.
In those times I usualy rediscovered love, love for the things which in everyday life I like anyone else tends to forget about. For
example, I could walk through the city I live in and stop near a jewelers window. I would watch all the clocks and rings and necklaces and
would suddenly understand the beauty of some of the things humans are able to make.
I read somewhere in a book that "humans are like bees, their products are better than them".
This has some truth ... what we produce is often more enjoyable to ourselves than what we ourselves are.
In Germany there is this saying about people who make something with love ... like mothers cooking with love for their kids or like
men building hourses with love for their family. The jeweler whose works I looked at in the shopwindow might not have made it with
love for his customers, but perhaps only with the love of money, but there's certainly the possibility that he made it with love for the
things he made.
Back then I thought I'd be sensing something, that some things were somehow loaded with a belovedness.
Sometimes I miss those farewell periods, despite of them having been hard to bear at the time.
But when I think about it it's only the feeling I miss, the recognition of how dear something can be to me.
More later.