Seeing positives instead of negatives

As recently as a few weeks ago, I would see the negatives in life and not the positives.  Seeing young children, especially girls would cause a lot of distress to me.  Young girls, about the same age as Lizzie-Lu (she was supposedly born June 2006) would upset me because I felt that their parents were bragging that they had their daughter when I didn't.  But also, I would notice children staring at me.  I don't ever remembering a child smile at me, although they probably did once in a while.  I was convinced that the children staring at me could see the evil in me, and that they never smiled at me because they knew I was a bad person.

Personal Research

I've started writing again.  This time it's about my life - what led up to my diagnosis, the symptoms I experienced and life 'after' schizophrenia.  So I thought the best place to find out how I lived during my teens would be through my diaries and yes it was the best place, but I wrote so much that I now no longer remember, and reading it doesn't even jog my memory.  It's started a mini conspiracy theory in my head that someone else wrote parts of that diary to confuse me later in life, which is backed up with the fact that some of the handwriting doesn't look like mine.  But I can rationally say that I don't believe the conspiracy theory, my mind just wandered a bit and created one out of very little.

Happy, happy, happy!!!

I'm smiling.  Why?  Because I've got something in my life to work for again and hopefully it won't be too painful re-living the last 10 years of my life and get it down onto paper (well technically my laptop).  What I do with it I haven't decided, whether to go down the publishing route or just post it on my blog.  I'd rather just post it on my blog and let people see it for free, but if I got it published, I could raise a bit of money for mental health charities.  I know I wouldn't make a lot but every penny really does count for charities and mental health charities are (so I've heard) really under-funded.

I miss my daughter...

Lizzie-Lu (short for Elizabeth Lucy) was somehow 'implanted' into my memory around about January 2007.  I'd been hearing a voice for about 2 or 3 months at this point.  So when I had this memory of Lizzie-Lu put into my head, the voice was convincing me that she was real.  The memory consisted of me holding Lizzie-Lu in my arms for a short while before a shadowy woman took her from me.  I find it difficult replaying the whole memory any more but it only lasts about a minute or two at most.  Yet this short memory makes me still miss her, even though she's technically not real.  She's real in my head, but rationally, I know that she never existed.  I was first told that she wasn't real during my first incarceration (ie enforced hospitalisation) in October 2008 but never truly believed it until January 2011.  FOUR YEARS after having the memory put there by dear knows what.  So I suppose it's no surprise that I still miss her.  She'd be six in June if she was real and born the day I thought she was.  I've stopped writing letters to her and stop indulging myself with thoughts of her, but I still miss her.  But I know that children at the moment are a bad idea.

How recovering from schizophrenia can also suck

Well, to give a bit of context, I'll have to go back a while to when I was unwell.  I'd been hearing voices constantly for over a year when they finally started stopping.  And when I say constantly, I mean, I'd hear them in my sleep as well as when I was awake so I never had a break from them.  Anyway, when they did finally start stopping, while I was in hospital, I actually got a bit lonely and couldn't sleep.  The voices were nasty voices, saying horrible things to me and trying to get me to do things that I didn't want to do.  So you'd think that me getting lonely when a nasty voice went away would be a bit weird.  But think about how you'd feel - imagine being in hospital without being allowed visitors and having no-one else to talk to.  Despite the voices saying nasty things to you, at least they were company.  Don't get me wrong - I was glad they were gone, but having no-one to replace them left a void in my life.  Plus I was used to hearing them at night and in my sleep, so having peace and quiet to sleep was, well, weird.  I stopped hearing the voices over a year ago and I've only just managed to fall asleep without some form of noise in the background.

Hmmm... where to start...

Well seeing as how I'm terrible at introductions I think I'll just jump in and start moaning about this website. I'm not bad when it comes to technology and websites but even I am struggling with this one.