Schizophrenia

A few old friends have conspired to punish me for daring to have a mental illness in their midst. After living with mental illness for twenty-four years for the past eighteen years I've been cut off from socializing almost entirely. I've had to live hibernated away in my house but for family outings. Struggling here with severe anxiety and taking medication to control the effects of schizophrenia these certain old friendships proved to be very disappointing. I really needed someone there and most of the time there was no one. 

It's came to my awareness that I'm not the only one to experience this however. When another old friend lost his son to suicide he then suffered a mental breakdown and resorted for a time to drug use. His mental instability, in spite of his lengthy history and ties to the community, lead to a common conversation encouraged among those old friends. They decided he should be blacklisted. Common consent encouraged avoidance of him and beyond that deprival of self in community are the painful stories of what happened next when he reached out to them. He begged them to take his calls, to go on fishing trips with him or visit him and they blocked his number, hung up on him and refused to talk to him. 

Almost exactly the same decisions have been made quietly about me. I don't want charity or pity. I welcomed one of these "pity visits" a few months ago. The visitors had the nerve to talk to me in a tone of paternal maturity. They mixed this with underhanded remarks and an understanding among themselves of personal success they then expected unfairly I should be able to attain for myself.

A mental illness is debilitating in case you didn't know. The symptoms of schizophrenia are difficult to live with. Social anxiety can be terribly confining. What they don't understand  is I'm ok with the person I am and the person I've become living with mental illness. To try and describe this to them would seem foreign and unwelcome to their commonsense. I am not ashamed of myself however nor concerned with the size of my house and its relevance to my success.

Living through delusions challenged my peace and effected my judgment so many times. My family has seen those struggles. I can't understand the comedic value of mental illness material. I'm sorry maybe I don't have a good enough sense of humor. Struggling through bazar beliefs of fame, notoriety and hidden camera conspiracies I find it hard then to see the hilarity inspired in this common man mental illness humor. It's very humor's for them to point at insanity and say "he's a raging lunatic" or "he's batshit crazy" or "he's a nut job." It really is a mature thing to say. 

Meanwhile I get to experience the delussions and ideas of reference which are ideas that link unrelated comments personally to what's happening in my life. If the remarks can appear negative and humiliating they will and are quite alarming, unsettling and upsetting. Dealing with them on a daily bases is a "legitimate disability." There is stress and worry constantly that  trouble me while I struggle with different kinds of competing versions of reality. Social withdrawal and organizational and motivational problems do effect daily affairs which is why mentally ill people appear disheveled and end up homeless. Laziness has nothing to do with any of it! Being terrified of public spaces and social interaction is more then limiting also. Are these legitimate problems I have?

 Have I overcome any buriers when I've tried to educate myself to go on and rationally attempt to discuss these issues maturely? Should I be ashamed that I struggle with mental illness?  

This is negative few days I've been having. I've been on a rant but there have been people who have been quite kind! I'm not directing this rant at any of the kind people. I do want to send a note to my working class neighbors, well the neighbors who used to live next door and who are still around. They drank liquor in their yards and continuously judged me in their rowdy late night fireside conversations.

 To them I want to say I am not guilty of any of your accusations of whatever drunken judgmental appeal you made with your logic! I am getting by the only way I know how to and I think anyone with serious mental illness deserves their dignity kept in tact period! Thank you anyone who robbed me of friendship for so many years. I put my stake down with you in earlier times and it proved a bad decision to make...