I have schizophrenia. There are no monsters under my bed. I’m a person, not a headline

ملخص مفصل

From Narnia to a psych ward, my world is not the normal one. But it has its own genius.

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Every day I buy myself a coffee. It reminds me I am an adult, despite all the things convincing me, and perhaps society, otherwise.

I work hard to remind myself I’m actually OK. The world is not falling apart because of my existence and there are no monsters under my bed.

As I’m waiting for my coffee, I glance down at the newspaper stand and there in big, bold shouty letters is my health condition linked to a shockingly violent crime. Instead of leaving the cafe sipping my freshly brewed coffee, I become a walking headline.

I was diagnosed with schizophrenia at 23. My version was schizoaffective, which usually involves hallucinations or delusions and mood changes. (There are at least seven subtypes).

When I was young, I was bullied by classmates and teachers alike and the fictional world of Narnia became my happy place. As I got older, magical friends were displaced by people more interested in how I’d believe anything I was told. My skills living in other worlds became a form of survival.

While I was still a teenager, the streets became a familiar place and that’s where I was later scraped up and put into a public psych ward full of human suffering. The diagnosis I got for the rest of my life was based on a set of questions asked by a male psychiatrist I’d only just met (in a suit and bow tie no less).

Did I hear voices? Did I see things nobody else did? Did I want to die?

I answered yes to everything – I wanted to tell him my “voices” were jazz singers, opera sopranos and orchestras, but lacked the ability to respond beyond yes or no. There were no long conversations about the difficult times, places and people I’d already lived through. Twenty minutes later, I became Schizophrenia. No longer Heidi Everett – artist, wannabe park ranger and Michael J. Fox’s wife. Just Schizophrenia.

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