Be

I lost my job teaching skiing thirteen years ago; and it was this, seemingly innocuous event, which precipitated my journey through madness.  But adversity makes you stronger—and solitude makes you wiser.  All things which consumed me during my years spent in isolation—my years of emotional retreat—served to make me more capable of affecting the collective consciousness from my platform of recovered schizophrenic.

Delusions of grandeur, along with paranoia, were terribly defeating to my ability to remain steadfast to the here and now while I was suffering.  Suffering was in the shape of having a contorted ego—in trying to fit something very large into a very small space.  For ten years of my life, I thought I had been one of the greatest generals in history.  All ten of those years were spent in tremendous self-pity.

Five years went by—while I was psychotic—before I was diagnosed with schizophrenia.  After receiving this diagnosis, and responding by attempting suicide, I was placed in a group home.  And there the journey—through madness—which has planted me firmly in my most intimate expression of myself which I can muster—took a marked turn for the better.  At this group home, which was in Castleton, Vermont, I began seeing a psychiatrist.  He recommended to me that I journal about my military service. 

Beyond journaling, which I’m sure helped me to dig deeper into myself, I began to do one hundred mile bike rides, once a month.  Exercise, as my psychiatrist put it, was one of the very best things for my mental and spiritual health.

Schizophrenia is not easily brushed off—doing one hundred mile bike rides—and journaling—still left me with too many unanswered questions.  A lot of soul searching would have to be done before I could live with the challenges I faced then, and still do today.  I had to understand that it was not a result of a deficiency of my character that I was hopelessly lonely—and poor.  And I needed to see that I was indeed strong; this was a lesson that wasn’t learned until I broke; not until the self-destructive nature of schizophrenia was exacted on my soul.

I left the group home where I did one hundred mile bike rides and maintained for a short while.  But then I regressed.  I had this lingering fear that if I didn’t spend the rest of my life in jail that I’d be the most tortured man in history. 

Some things which we experience in our lives are too intricately woven into the fabric of our character to be public knowledge.  I had a moment which I so desperately lost my sanity that I had to be put in jail—and, eventually, involuntarily committed.  I do not share what occurred that resulted in this punishment with anyone but my very closest friends.  I am, however, very fortunate to be able to say that no one was hurt and no permanent damage was done.

Eventually, after educating myself about schizophrenia, and receiving treatment in another group home, I came to realize I had not been a general. 

When you manage to peek through the underbrush of an alternative reality, you get hit.  Stepping forth, out of my journey through madness, brought with it a not just a feeling of accomplishment, and not just gratefulness either.  I felt almost immediately that I had to rectify my wrong doings; I felt I had to make up for lost time.  All the years of being someone other than myself fueled a desire to be more of the person I was meant to be.  I wanted to be stronger than I had ever been.

Needing to be stronger than ever before fueled my recovery.  I began blogging on my recovery process, daily.   And I began taking seriously the craft of writing.  Almost as soon as I got started, I saw fruits of my labor.  Because of my blog, I was invited to speak at the State House here in Vermont.  I would also (in a round-a-bout way) find work as a peer professional.  Work I did as a mental health advocate culminated in 2014 with a rally I put on for mental health awareness s month.

And then I set a new year’s resolution heading into 2015.  I decided it was time to get off of disability payments.  Almost as soon as the New Year started, the universe spun me around, and I was forced to resign from my position as a peer professional at a very good social services agency.  My years of work to be the strongest mental health advocate that I could be, took a sudden hit.

Among the more radically minded survivors in the peer movement, people like to think that their suffering served a purpose.  I vehemently stand by this point.  I feel that surviving schizophrenia made me much stronger.  Basically, the idea that psychosis can lead to tremendous insight into the soul, refutes a conception in psychiatry which attempts to have people return to “base line.”  Base line is the level of functioning that preceded the psychotic break.  And for a long time, I resisted the notion that I would only be able to resume a life which held as much richness as what I had before my fight for sanity.

Stronger, wiser, and more educated, I am.  But I’m still the very same person—at my most intimate level—which I was before I lost my mind.  And that’s pretty fucking great because I had a lot going for me.

Getting caught up in being better, stronger, and more outspoken was defeatist to my being in the here and now.  Any feelings of grandiosity, whether brought on by psychosis, or by a lingering feeling that something better is out there for me, took away from the simplicity of having a truly intimate connection to the life I lead.

My years of work to recover a life, once broken by madness, have led me to great heights.  I’m thankful that my hard labor yielded tremendous fruit.  But life holds something deeper for me than to just be a leader—or advocate.  Today, I’m realizing that the life I am leading has rewards far greater than grandiosity.  And it is within the simplicity of the person that I am that my connection to my heart, and soul, and to my own innate goodness may find root and abundance.