I wish it would go away, for me and for others. But I know that's not an answer. I know the pain will always be part of my life as it is for others. I hate it but that doesn't change the fact that I must accept it. Its something that will kill me one day and that day will be a good day. In the meantime the struggle through it all is almost purpose in itself.
The struggleis with 'god' or whatever name people give to the entity and experience. The knowledge that there is a controlling, noncorporeal force or being in my life causing the harm and upset, controlling and manipulating everything, toying and playing with me and my life and my senses and my reality was a brutal awakening. The conventional view that this entity is responsible for the good only is incorrect. It saves the lives of people after the tsunami but also caused the tsunami.
Facing it alone was very hard. There was no one I could talk to about this experience. There was no one to help me cope. I couldn't open up while I was going through it because I didn't have the strength or resolve. I was afraid of being thought of as a psycho or a schizo. I didn't want people to think I was mad.
That's changed though. I now know I am mad. It makes me sad because I know the negative meaning of that term. I know the expectation is that I will become a social pariah looked after by the mental health system but I don't expect that to be true in my case. I know that expectation is only caused by stigma and society's maladaption to the full spectrum of the human experience. I know mad is just a word and the concept is only half the picture.
I know I am not alone in my madness. There are other people who go through the awakening or whatever it is called but are never seen by the mental health system or never reveal their true experience so never get the social label of weirdo or mad. My choice is to become more open about my madness and take the stigma of madness by the horns because there is nothing wrong nor ill about psychosis except that it is a distressing experience that is intensely, deeply stigmatised.
My hope is that through more openess from me there will be more openess. I see that as the way the stigma will change. Perhaps the fact that I can do it without (I hope) becoming a social pariah is a sign that the stigma is already changing. 40 years ago I'd have been immediately hospitalised were I to tell a psychiatrist that I have an unusual experience of consciousness.
It is an ill in society that can not be seen: the perscution, false pathologisation and stigmatisation of the same experiences that created the idea of god. It is an ill that creates the ill of psychosis. Post-Industrial Revolution society has forgotten what to do when psychosis happens. Less developed countries have better outcomes for schizophrenia because of their cultural alternative nonpsychatric explanations and perhaps also because of their lack of treatment with psychopharmaceuticals.
Friends and family are likely to tell a person to see a doctor because they have no idea what to do (a result of the 'great confinement' where the mad were housed in the asylums and removed from view (and this, again, was done for compassionate reasons)). Doctors are tell the person there is something wrong with them. They explain it as a problem with the person's brain and treat it with avolition and sedation-inducing medication that slowly kills the patient.
Few understand the sheer misery of the experience. Its not surprising the completed suicide rate is estimated at up to 10% of people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Depression is a walk in the park in comparison. Its not surprising people want to kill themselves when they go through this because the often face it alone and have no way to attempt to understand it other than as a malfunction of the brain.
I know it will change. I know it will get better. I know it takes time to shift this immense wrong that few can even see. I hope I can make that happen faster. There's purpose enough in that to keep me going.
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