Heart and Soul: My schizophrenia story

Illustration: 123rf.com

I’ve had schizophrenia for 13 years now, since I dropped out of university.

My university life was a dizzying experience. I got all the freedom of a young adult without having to worry about money and how I was going to pay back my study loan. But that wasn’t the cause of my schizophrenia. I’m not even sure how I got it.

My doctors say it’s because of a time of extreme stress, that the brain’s chemicals got imbalanced and caused me to hear voices in my head which were not mine.

Schizophrenia changed the path I had so carefully planned out and wanted to take. As I wasn’t accepted to do medicine or pharmacy, my next option was to do an accounting course. I was intent on succeeding and gaining a 4.0 CGPA, but it was not to be.

Looking back now, I was failing but didn’t know it. I was blindsided by my optimistic desire to succeed at something that, come to think of it, I was not good at.

Besides, I had low energy, and I didn’t know how I could pull off working 9 to 5 in an office after graduation.

I didn’t know what to do. I was unhappy in university and stayed in the hostel until my term was over but I was not studying or attending classes anymore. I was in denial and I didn’t want to go home. When my parents came to take me home, I wouldn’t allow it. They pushed, they pulled, we screamed, I was in pain.

Eventually, I was sent to the nearby hospital’s psychiatric ward. I was melancholic and sad. “Why am I like this? What is happening to me?” I didn’t worry too much but focused on being quiet.

It was there that I first learned how to crochet.

I still remember the smell of the first hospital I was admitted to. The food wasn’t nice. Somebody donated a basket of cookies to each patient. I wanted to live a healthy life, but still I managed to eat all the cookies in the end, haha!

Sometimes I think the other voice in my head is just my conscience, you know, like the banter Marlin and Dory had in the movie Finding Nemo – in a sea of nothingness, with nobody but each other.

My grandma used to say I was very dreamy and lived in my own little world, which I didn’t necessarily think was a bad thing. What I remember was living this life in a sorrowful condition. Every Chinese New Year, I would bravely attend the reunion dinners, and every year, I would cry and cry, until eventually I stayed at home for the following Chinese New Years. If I cried loudly, I was alarming everyone, but I was just so sad...

I remember visiting the hospital very frequently to see the doctor who was so very busy, as government doctors are, and I don’t blame them. At least I got the medicine for free, which could go up to a few hundred Ringgit per month. So I am thankful. But I hated going there – it was too cold and I was too fidgety.

But now I have a new doctor and I think I’m getting better. I’m still taking some mild dosages of medicine for my schizophrenia, though.

My doctor thinks I’m getting better but need something to occupy my time, which is why I started writing articles.

And from all the hospital visits, I met and became best friends with someone who was also visiting the same doctor at that time, so I am happy.

I have changed a lot through the years. I have cried painful tears, sometimes without knowing the reason. I just want to put all this sorrow behind me, and look forward with hope and faith. Writing this article has got me thinking: Do I still have that voice in my head? I sometimes talk to it, but I’m not sure if it’s my conscience or a schizophrenic other-worldly voice.

I want to tell myself and the doctors that I am better, but I feel very at risk. What if, when I don’t take the medicine, the voice returns with an even greater fury? What then?

I guess only time will heal me. I have to wait it out. I mustn’t be impatient.

I want to move on. From now onwards, I will try to feel happier and have more fun in my life, and make everyone else happy too. I realise that everyone only wants me to be happy, so I don’t have to work so hard, I just have to make myself happy, and everything else will follow...