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Iron Maiden has always been there, strummin, drummin, and singin in my mind all these years. I had stopped listening to it after I started on my medication, coz I was afraid of the mission I had to fulfill again. I didn't want to go back there, back in the field. Once I got to know that I had schizophrenia, which was more than a year after being on meds, I listened to Iron Maiden once again, and the thing that caught my mind was the lyrics, and the way they actually implied to me now more than what I had to tell others, make others realize...
For example, Futureal was one song that sang about me, that I sang, and questioned others, talked to others, told others about what I felt, about the truth that I knew, about what I could see and hear as the lyrics and I posed the questions to them... And it made me laugh that this was my life that Iron Maiden was singing as I had believed earlier, the only difference now being that I had to answer those questions myself, those questions were for me...read on to know...futureal...
I'm running out of my time
I'm running out of breath
And now it's getting so
I can't sleep at night
In the day, feel like death
I'm getting in far too deep
I feel them closing in
I've got to say that I'm scared
I know they'll win
Even so, I'm prepared
Do you believe, what you hear?
Can you believe, what you see?
Do you believe, what you feel?
Can you believe?
What is real ?
Futureal
What is real ?
Futureal
Whenever anyone seems
to treat me like a freak
It makes me see I'm the
only one who feels
That I know what is real
Sometimes it feels like a game
of deadly hide and seek
And when you're reading this
then I'll be gone
Maybe then, you will see...
Relationships are highly complex. Humans have not evolved biologically over the past thousands of years, but they have evolved socially, developing highly complex, varied, intricate social customs and relationships that are very difficult for a majority of the people to comprehend, to inculcate in their lives and to manage efficiently, to make sure that they are able to live in harmony with their loved ones, to love everyone...
Most of the people have trouble dealing with relationships and understanding them properly. This gets even tougher for schizophrenics. It's not because they don't know what is required to make the relationship work, a mutual understanding, they have the sense of realization of that, to an extent that surpasses 'normal' people. (Again I use the term normal to indicate those who refer to us as plagued by madness, which if they start defining, I'm sure they will fail). Our problem starts with the things we see, hear, and the things we believe. It starts making us delineate from the so called 'truth'.
Our belief in people trying to harm us make us wary of people in the first place. Even when we get over this fear, the little habits that we have developed over the years, certain practices that we have inculcated in our lives makes it a problem towards dealing in relationships effectively. For example, I believed that I shouldn't reply back to people who talk bad about the ones I loved as they would find out that I'm the chosen One, that I'm the one who is going to try and bring them down, they will know...that fear had gripped me to the extent that I had stopped replying back, to anything, and everything, social withdrawal that we go through making it all the worse. Even now that I know what to believe, I have made the mistake of doing the same, to the effect that my friend started questioning my love for her. How could I love her if I don't stand up for what I believe is right, to know that she is not what they say she is, that she is nice, she is good, she is a wonderful person...There was confusion, utter confusion. I begin to realize that I still fear it, in my subconscious mind, I still acknowledge that fact, that truth that I believed, and I still cannot stand the confrontational style people speak in...these small symptoms that seem to be insignificant, make our life all the more difficult, make our relationships all the more volatile...Yet we realize it, slowly, we understand ourselves, and slowly we find a way, a way out of the madness, a way out of the chaos, a way out of the confusion, of what could have been and what could be, we rise, stronger, facing the problems that make us alert, in the mind, give us a lesson that makes us stronger, wiser than the rest, slowly, we change...Everything that has a beginning has an end...the belief makes us strong!
From the unreal lead me to the real!
From darkness lead me to light!
From death lead me to immortality!
- Brihad-aranyaka Upanishad
It’s like facing my demons, shouting back at them inside my head, again, forever…That fear, I have to face, to stand up against them, to let them know, to make them see (my parents…them, those who are trying to bring us all down, bring down the world), to tell them that I am the One, I’m am the chosen one to destroy them all, to challenge my own enemies, to challenge my own fear, to challenge my own danger…that is how I feel when I try to maintain this cleaving relationship, try to comprehend the axe, trying to contemplate its razor edge.
To face my fears, that they will know it all, they will know that I’m the One, they will know that I know what they are here for, and they will know that I’m here to bring them down, before they try to bring me down, bring us all down…I hear it, over and over again…”…you can’t bring me, bring me down…” by limp bizkit. The sound comes from within my head. That I know.
I have to stand up to them, all of them. It’s no more a game of observing, trying to estimate the gravity of the danger that they pose, no more a game of listening, and not replying back, for the fear that they might find out, it’s no more a game…of life and death, the nothingness that hath crowned its glory, That will Never BE. So I stand up to make sure that I don’t let them mock, not wanting to, but still they do, for they are still in search, for the truth…That they will never know, that fear doesn’t haunt me anymore, no more, not until I let it happen again, let it begin all again, and it gives me strength, great strength, strength to stand up and reply, reply back, face them, face my own truth, face my own dangers…
I still fear, fear of what might happen, fear that I will lose, lose myself, again…that is what I fear, now, that is all I fear. It’s like Disturbed sings “…another truth that you’ll never believe, just to complement your sorrow…” The fear of going back there again, it’s strangulating…
But now I know, today I know, today I have realized, that I need to face this fear, this fear that I have kept hidden inside of me, believed, even when they have stopped shouting, stopped telling me their truth. Today, I realize that I need to change, to face the change, face my fears, the turning point, it has come, and I’m happy…
“After a time of decay, comes the turning point. The powerful light that has been banished returns. There is movement, but it is not brought about by force- the movement is natural arising spontaneously. For this reason the transformation of the old becomes easy. The old is discarded and the new is introduced. Both measures accord with the time; therefore no harm results.” – Tao Te Ching
Till a few weeks ago, I was in this dilemma whether I should meditate or not. My relapse got under control in june when I started meditation, but recently when I had started hallucinating again, my doc told me to stop meditating as it increases the hallucinations. I had started feeling an increase in hallucinations the day I used to meditate. It is like one psychiatrist said, "While spiritual masters float in their world, schizophrenics drown in theirs..." That's because meditation also increases the hallucinations by intensifying the thoughts. But how could it be then that meditation had brought my severe relapse under control? Why was it different now? Why was it harming me now and increasing my hallucinations? I posted my query on the sz.com web board and got my answer...
It's one of the first things they teach while meditating. That is to 'Let Go'. You have to let your mind be the observer, just observe the thoughts arising in your mind and don't react to them. The thoughts will never stop untill you are brain dead, so the trick is not to react to these thoughts. It's like the clouds in the sky. They move on, without affecting the sky. That is how our thoughts should be. That is what I had forgotten. I had forgotten to let go. I wasn't observing my thoughts anymore, I was getting involved with them, I was reacting to them, I was believing in them...
Meditation brings about this eternal bliss, eternal happiness. It's because you let go, let go of all the pain, all the anger, all the hatred, all the agony, all the sadness, all the happiness, all the love, and you observe, you only observe...When you are in a tense situation, you observe your thoughts and act accordingly, you do not react, and hence you never get tense yourself. The key is to act and not react. The action will always bear good fruit, since there is no reaction. That is when the duality ceases to exist, there is happiness in your mind even when there is sadness around you, there is love even when there is hatred all around you, there is confidence in you even when their is despair all around, because you learn to act and not react. Yin and Yang cease to exist, good and bad cease to exist, the Eternal light shines, you become One with the Ultimate Consciousness, you Know the Ultimate Truth...
The Tao in its regular course
does nothing,
and so there is nothing
which it does not do. - Tao Te Ching
Let there be Light!
People try to kill themselves due to the following two reasons -
1. When the stress becomes more than we can handle. The person gets depressed and there is a feeling of hopelessness...
2. For people with SZ, it could be the voices telling the person to kill himself/herself. The person could have delusions of grandiosity and a religious outlook towards life and the sayings of the bible, vedas...
For a person with SZ, the risk is especially large since the person could be hearing voices, and also be depressed at the same time with feelings of hopelessness...Statistically speaking, 40% of people with SZ attempt suicide, of which 10% succeed.
Now we have to make sure that we prevent anyone from taking his or her life. The most important aspects to consider and steps to take are -
1. If a person mentions that he/she is depressed, it should be taken seriously and the person should be asked whether he/she has thought of suicide. Accordingly, professional treatment should be sought and given. It is a myth that people joke about killing themselves. If people say that they plan to do it, it means that they will.
2. If a person ever mentions or indulges in self harm, or talks about suicide, it is necessary to do as above. The only reason for self harm besides suicide is that the person has gone through trauma, and the self injury helps in alleviating the anger he/she has for herself/himself due to the traumatic incident.
3. If a person has SZ, he/she may not mention about suicidal feelings to anyone due to social withdrawal. The best way to find out and deal with such a situation is to have someone who is close to the person, and whom the person likes even when he/she is hallucinating, to talk to him/her and find out what the person has been thinking about. Besides this home technique, the best bet is to have a professional counsellor or psychiatrist talk to the person since they are adequately trained to handle and respond to the common schizophrenic beliefs and paranoia.
Finally, I would like to advise, "NEVER take anyone's word of being depressed or having suicidal thoughts lightly. They are not the worried healthy people. They are not the weaklings on the earth. They are in a situation that makes them believe that nothing is possible, and they are in this situation because of their neurobiology, because of the way their brain works. They need all the support that you can give them, and all the love that you can give them. They need to believe, believe that it is possible, possible to see the light again, to come out of the place where no ray of light reaches, where there is nothing to blind their eyes. And you can do this only when you understand and take things seriously, and when you yourself believe, believe in the Truth, only the light can dispel the darkness, you have to be the light, you have to believe...
This piece is for the "normal" people in order for them to understand the pain...They will know it better if they hear the song mentioned below. For the rest of us, the fight is still on! All you have got to do is believe!! Fight!
This song, Hallowed be thy name, though originally sung by Iron Maiden, shows exactly how I felt when I was suicidal, in the screaming voice of Cradle of Filth!
(It starts with the situation that I link to, then goes on to describe the emotional and mental agony that I faced, with the voices screaming to me to kill myself, believing in the grandiose delusions of being the One and seeing the Truth...though I never lost the strength and belief in the truth, always fighting...it is better to be dead than reduced to the nothingness, living and yet not alive, being like the dead and yet not die...)
" I'm waiting in my cold cell,
When the bell begins to chime,
Reflecting on my past life,
As it doesn't have much time,
'Coz at 5o'clock they take me to the gallows pole,
The sands of time for me are running low...
Running lowwww....
When the priest comes to read me the last rite,
I take look at the bars for the last site,
Of a world that has gone very wrong for me...
Could it be that there's some sort of error,
Hard to stop the surmounting terror,
Is it really the end not some crazy dream,
Somebody please tell me that I'm dreaming,
It's not so easy to stop from screaming,
But words escape me when I try to speak,
Tears they flow but why am I crying,
After all I'm not afraid of dying,
Do not believe that there never is an end...
As the guards march me out to the courtyard,
Somebody calls from a cell god be with you,
If there's a god then why has he let me dieee...
As I walk all my life drifts before me,
And though the end is near I'm not sorry,
Catch my soul its willing to fly away...
Mark my words, please believe my soul lives on,
Stop to worry now that I've gone,
I've gone beyond to see the truth...(the Truth!)
So when you know that your time is close at hand,
maybe then you will begin to understand,
life down there is just a strange illusion...
Hallowed be thy name,
Hallowed be thy name... "
Symptoms can start showing at childhood. They start on an average at the age of 15 for boys, and might just start at the age of 14 as in my case...though the age of 10 is also when the symptoms can start showing. Very rarely, it can occur at age 5. The symptoms can include violent mood swings, with a different reaction at each moment, aggressive behavior, followed by subdued behavior, social withdrawal, sitting alone and not responding, not replying, not moving...The symptoms may be identified and diagnosed as bipolar (or manic depression), but the diagnoses can be changed in later years to schizoaffective disorder (schizophrenia and mania). The child can be prescribed risperidone before an accurate diagnoses can be made, but riperidone is also prescribed for asperger's and autism, and in rare cases for ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)...
Symptoms can be confused with drug misuse, bad company, or teenage rebellion...the important thing is to recognize where the saturation point for teenage problems is, how to distinguish between what should be and what shouldn't be, and make sure that the child is given professional help as soon as possible. If there is no change in the behavior after visiting a counsellor, a psychiatrist is the best option since psychologists tend to diagnose the problem as emotional and not neurobiological, the same way as psychiatrists tend to diagnose the problem as neurobiological and not emotional. Getting the right kind of help depends on the fact that the psychologist or the psychiatrist should have a balanced outlook, considering all possible implications of the problem. Either may be expensive, but may not be the best. Either may be free of cost at a government hospital, but the best in the field...
The symptoms should be recognized as early as possible for effective treatment. Symptoms can include slipping grades, inability to cope up with studies, inability to respond properly (that can be taken as misbehavior), incoherent speech ( saying things by linking words in a way that it doesn't make sense) (thought disorder), feeling emotionally low resulting in loss of interest in daily activities like keeping oneself clean (depression), saying religious quotes with strong emotions in a manner that seems to the person as defiant towards the person, prophesizing things or saying something like "my prophecies can never be wrong, they couldn't have gone wrong!" (grandiose delusions), repeating things, repeatedly saying the same thing, repeatedly performing the same action, such as pacing the floor for hours together, sitting in the same position for hours together without responding, or responding when spoken to (catatonia), saying things that seem untrue and believing it even after he/she is given sufficient proof against it, such as saying that someone is trying to hurt him/her, or eating the food given only after someone else has taken a piece from it (delusion of persecution), saying things like "I can see things that you cannot, I know things that you don't, I can read the secret codes hidden in text, I can read how people are by their actions and reactions (things that seem very natural though eccentric, but the signs of madness (delusions of reference, where he/she is told by someone to look for such things...). I say 'madness' because of how 'normal' people describe it, but you start differntiating sanity and insanity, and you will end up going in circles), running away from home ( due to delusion of persecution that may seem like the inability to adjust with the family according to the generation gap), trying to harm oneself physically, kill oneself (40% of sz people attempt suicide, of which 10% succeed)...
In the end the only thing that matters is whether you were able to overcome your own selfish ego, and whether the love for your child was strong enough to help him/her out no matter what pain and disgrace he/she brought to the family.
And finally I would like to quote the father of existential psychology, Dr. R.D. Laing -
"Madness need not always be breakdown,
It might be breakthrough."
FIGHT!!
I've just read a message about this person feeling confused as he/she was just diagnosed with schizophrenia. I must say that this is exactly how I felt when I first got to know that I had SZ, which was more than a year after being on meds for it. Confused, scared, not knowing what will happen next, not knowing whom to trust, not knowing what to believe, and you slowly start realizing that all that you believed all these years might not be true...but how can it not BE! How can not be when it was so real, it was the truth, you couldn't have been wrong! What is this happening? Why is this happening? What is wrong? Why do I have to calculate all my moves, make sure that I don't make a mistake, make sure that nothing goes wrong coz it could summon the end of the world, all because of me...why? How can it be that I feel the way I feel, uncertain, unsure of what I believe, of what I believed...
All of us feel this way, trying to figure out what life really is about, trying to make sure that we don't get lost in the delusion again, lost in our self-created madness that we still sometimes find comforting, knowing that there is someone we can talk to, someone who Knows, someone who will tell us the Truth, someone who will guide us through...The fear of going back there can be agonizing, making sure that we don't take more stress than we can handle, unsure whether we are just stressed this time, or has it started again, the voices, the confusion, the madness....
And all this time, all we can do is let it be, let go, let go of all the fear, of all the pain, the pain of losing all the oppurtunities through all these years, of not making it through what we all wanted to be, of what we all could be, the pain of never getting the love of people we loved, people we cared about, letting go of the anger, intense hatred, hatred for ourselves, hatred for the world, pure unscathed hatred...
But in the end, all of us believe, believe that we can make it through, believe that no matter what happens, life will never get us down, we will make sure that we lead the life we want to lead, not burdened by the past, coz if we start thinking of what could have been, it's going to drive us outta our minds...something that has already happened, something that can happen again...All we do is fight, stand up and fight, cry and yet fight, fight for our lives, fight for our minds, fight to make those voices stop, those screaming voices, fight to believe, believe that we can make it through, believe that it will all get over, fight, FIGHT!!