The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays

Some people dislike diagnoses, disagreeably calling them, boxes and labels, but I've always found comfort in preexisting conditions; I like to know that I'm not pioneering an inexplicable experience.

Hung on my bedroom wall is a quote attributed to Joan of Arc: "I am not afraid. I was born to do this." However my life unfolds, goes my thinking, is how I am meant to live it; however my life unspools itself, I was created to bear it.

Among psychiatric researchers, having a job is considered one of the major characteristics of being a high-functioning person. ... Most critically, a capitalist society values productivity in its citizens above all else, and those with severe mental illness are much less likely to be productive in ways considered valuable: by adding to the cycle of production and profit.

A fictional narrative is considered nuanced when it includes contradictions, but a narrative of trauma is ill-advised to do the same.

The line between insanity and mysticism is thin; the line between reality and unreality is thin. Liminality as a spiritual concept is all about the porousness of boundaries.

...a primary feature of the experience of staying in a psychiatric hospital is that you will not be believed about anything. A corollary to this feature: things will be believed about you that are not at all true.

After all, it is easy to forget that psychiatric diagnoses are human constructs, and not handed down from an all-knowing God on stone tablets; to “have schizophrenia” is to fit an assemblage of symptoms, which are listed in a purple book made by humans.

Sick people, as it turns out, generally stray into alternative medicine not because they relish the idea of indulging in what others call quackery, but because traditional Western medicine has failed them.

In the language of cancer, people describe a thing that “invades” them so that they can then “battle” the cancer. No one ever says that a person is cancer, or that they have become cancer, but they do say that a person is manic-depressive or schizophrenic, once those illnesses have taken hold.

For those of us living with severe mental illness, the world is full of cages where we can be locked in.

When a certain kind of psychic detachment occurs, I retrieve my ribbon; I tie it around my ankle. I tell myself that should delusion come to call, or hallucinations crowd my senses again, I might be able to wrangle some sense out of the senseless. I tell myself that if I must live with a slippery mind, I want to know how to tether it too.

When an artist dies, the art that never was is often mourned with as much grief as—if not more grief than—the individual themself. The individual, after all, was flesh and blood. It’s the art that’s immortal.

Yes, I thought, our eyes meeting, you may think I'm hot, but I'm also a rotting corpse. Sucks to be you, sir.

With such unpleasant associations tied to the schizophrenias, it is no wonder that I cling to the concept of being high-functioning. As in most marginalized groups, there are those who are considered more socially appropriate than others, and who therefore distance themselves from those so-called inappropriate people, in part because being perceived as incapable of success causes a desire to distance oneself from other, similarly marginalized people who are thought to be even less capable of success.

A diagnosis is comforting because it provides a framework—a community, a lineage—and, if luck is afoot, a treatment or cure. A diagnosis says that I am crazy, but in a particular way: one that has been experienced and recorded not just in modern times, but also by the ancient Egyptians, who described a condition similar to schizophrenia in the Book of Hearts, and attributed psychosis to the dangerous influence of poison in the heart and uterus. The ancient Egyptians understood the importance of sighting patterns of behavior. Uterus, hysteria; heart, a looseness of association. They saw the utility of giving those patterns names.

Because I am capable of achievement, I find myself uncomfortable around those who are visibly psychotic and audibly disorganized. I’m uncomfortable because I don’t want to be lumped in with the screaming man on the bus, or the woman who claims that she’s the reincarnation of God. I’m uncomfortably uncomfortable because I know that these are my people in ways that those who have never experienced psychosis can’t understand, and to shun them is to shun a large part of myself.

There may be something comforting about the notion that there is, deep down, an impeccable self, without disorder, and that if I try hard enough, I can reach that unblemished self. But there may be no impeccable self to reach, and if I continue to struggle toward one, I might do mad in the pursuit.

Sartre claimed, "We are our choices," but what has a person become when it's assumed that said person is innately incapable of choice?

...I am afraid, but I am conscious enough to know that there is no hope even of death in perdition, only more of the same awful suffering. It stands apart from loss, injury, or perhaps even grief, all of which are terrible, and yet are still beautiful to the dead woman, who sees them as remarkably human, and alive.

To say this prayer—burn this candle—perform this ritual—create this salt or honey jar—is to have something to do when it seems that nothing can be done.

Rebecca Solnit says in The Faraway Nearby, “There is a serenity in illness that takes away all the need to do and makes just being enough,” which has not been my experience. After all, prolonged and chronic illness stitches itself into life in a different way than acute illness does. With chronic illness, life persists astride illness unless the illness spikes to acuity; at that point, surviving from one second to the next is the greatest ambition I can attempt. The absolution from doing more and dreaming big that I experience during surgeries and hospitalization is absent during chronic illness.

I'm still trying to figure out what "okay" is, particularly whether there exists a normal version of myself beneath the disorder, in the way a person with cancer is a healthy person first and foremost. In the language of cancer, people describe a thing that "invades" them so that they can then "battle" the cancer. No one ever says that a person is cancer, or that they have become cancer, but they do say that a person is manic-depressive or schizophrenic, once those illnesses have taken hold. In my peer education courses I was taught to say that I am a person with schizoaffective disorder. "Person-first language" suggests that there is a person in there somewhere without the delusion and the rambling and the catatonia. But what if there isn't? What happens if I see my disordered mind as a fundamental part of who I am?

Most of the time, I could stuff down the despair far enough that I continued to—pointlessly, in my mind—brush my teeth, sometimes wash my hair in the sink, and report my symptoms to the phantom who claimed to be my doctor.

Someday, we'll be able to trace all mental illnesses to autoimmune disorders. But we're not there yet.

my thinking, is how I am meant to live it;

lived a tragic existence as the madwoman in the attic;

I saw El Santuario as being built on hope, which is not the same thing as faith. Hope is a cast line in search of fish; faith is the belief that you won’t starve to death, or that if you do, God’s plan could account for the tragedy. My morning prayers begin with, “Blessed Mystery, thank you for … and Blessed Mystery, may I …” Remission appears over and over in the latter: May I be well.

Still, I did what I had done all my life when faced with something I did not understand: I read about it.

McQueen said about his clothing, “I want to empower women. I want people to be afraid of the women I dress,” which is another truth about fashioning normalcy: the way I clothe myself is not merely camouflage.