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.
One thing that I do remember is having this very scary optical hallucination after I'd been huffing (sniffing solvents) for a while and I remember it was very similar to the optical hallucinations I occasionally experienced while psychotic. But I also had other hallucinations that I no longer remember experiencing and I also had several other 'symptoms' of schizophrenia at 13/14. I don't know whether I had an unnoticeable psychotic episode in my early teens or something, but something wasn't right with me. Some of what I wrote was typical 'teen angst' but there are clear signs to me that something wasn't quite right. At the time I generally thought I was depressed, stressed or anxious (depending on what I'd read recently) but I wonder if there was more to it than that. I also wrote what could be used as a text book description of experiences with dissociation - ten years before I'd ever heard of it!!
I've written a bit of my first draft of 'writings'. I hesitate to call it a book because it may not get published. But hopefully it'll at least help me deal with some of my demons and maybe get past them. I enjoyed writing when I got into it a few years ago so hopefully I'll enjoy it again. I'm not very good at fictional writing so it will have to be factual but I think that would be best for me.
But now I have things to do so I must go.
May I ask a personal question (please ignore if you don't wanna answer)? What were your optical hallucinations like?
ReplyDeleteI ask because, I'm with EIS (Early Intervention Team) because of my personal and family history of mental illness and I haven't experienced any voices, but I swear I'm in the early stages of something visual. I know you ain't a doctor and I should bring it up with my team, but it's probably just nothing. Like sometimes I see small dark shadows/patches out the corner of my eye as if it's a spider or something. Can't work out if my mind is trying to take the piss. -_- When you had visual hallucinations, did it start out small, or was it like fully formed shapes/people/etc?