3

Everyone experiences pain. It's how you address that pain that determines how

well you are able to love yourself and others. If each person resolved their own

pain, the world would be perfect.

In 2021, I was diagnosed with schizophrenia. It changed my life forever. I thought

it would never happen to me. After I was diagnosed and prescribed medication,

I tried to end my life before the mental illness consumed me entirely. The stigma

associated with the illness caused me to believe I would never work again or be

able to produce anything of value. I thought people would always see me as a

crazed manic from that point on. I didn’t know what quality of life I would have

with a crowd of loud voices running through my mind 24/7 and overwhelming

emotional urges constantly running through me, so I attempted to commit

suicide. I survived the attempt. I took my survival as a sign that I was meant to

be alive. I wanted to know why. I used my second chance at life to fight through

my mental illness and resolve all the chaos, anger, and fear in my mind. Since I

was able to journal while processing emotional trauma in a severe state of

psychosis, I decided to turn it into a story. This is the story of my healing journey.

Today, I'm able to function at an even higher capacity than before I was

diagnosed. That may seem like a ridiculous claim, but if you knew how foggy my

mind was before, how out of touch I was with my emotions, and how little

inspiration I had to do anything out of the ordinary, you would understand how

that claim is true. Surviving from a suicide attempt, and healing from a condition

like schizophrenia, these experiences change a person in a way that I can only

describe as miraculous. You see life and all its possibilities from an entirely

different perspective. Whether it’s a delusion of grandeur or not, I decided to

write a book, which is something I never felt made sense for me before. My

book is entitled “The Beauty in Crazy” because you have to see the positive in

any situation to heal from such a severe condition, but it’s not easy. If you look

at my journal entries, you’ll wonder who could see the positive in any of this. If

you find it, hold on to it. That’s what helps you get to the end of the story.

One primary focus of my life now is the coordination of my mind, body, and

spirit, and the tools that help this system flow in a healthy way. When my mind

failed me, my spirit carried me through. Before my experience with mental

illness, I described myself as a spiritual person. I have always had a strong belief

in God, but I didn’t spend too much time focused on religion. Growing up,

religion always seemed to focus on what I was doing wrong in my life, and I was

doing the best I could. Spirituality allowed me to privately pray to God during

my worst and my best moments, and believe God is with me and understands

and loves me, regardless of the opinions of others. It was my experience with 4

mental illness that showed me the practical applicability of religion. The

knowledge of scriptures, the connection to and social support of genuine

Christians, and the practice of helping and giving to others on faith.

For a long time, I felt alienated by the dichotomy between good and evil

emphasized in religious messages in some churches. If I had trouble being

entirely good, then I must be evil. That belief disconnected me from God and

any focus on my spiritual life, and blinded me to the practical applicability of

religion. There was all of this nuance that sat between good and evil in my dayto-

day life that religious people didn’t understand. In church, speakers spent so

much time condemning demons for wrongdoing, and attributing every miracle

to angels, that I would wonder where my spirit was in all of that. After all, people

have spirits too, right? How are the desires of my spirit assessed? I don’t want

to do evil, but the religious people around me don’t agree that my desires are

good. Where did I fit? Somewhere along the way, my spirit got lost in the

opinions of anyone who claimed to be religious. I believe this experience

brought my focus back to my relationship with God, which is very personal and

unique to me. Like my heart and mind, no one else can understand it, so I don’t

allow anyone else to manage it.

I also began to focus much more on nuance in the spiritual realm, those

unspoken emotional exchanges between people. Emotional intelligence

provides so much insight into the spiritual situations that humans deal with

every day. I can tell when someone I’m close to is angry with me without them

ever saying anything. I can just sense it. If I ignore that feeling, the situation can

escalate to something physical, an argument, or even a physical fight. I was

taught to ignore my emotions growing up. I was taught to bottle up negative

emotions and never express any of them to certain people, usually authority

figures of some sort. “How you feel doesn’t matter” people would always tell

me. So, I never learned to communicate negative emotions healthily or

respectfully as a child or a teen. The problem with this is that our minds, our

hearts, and our spirits never forget how certain situations made us feel, even

situations that happened during infancy. Our emotional memory is long, so

when you bottle up everything and refuse to address it, it leaks out in some way.

For me, it leaked out through mental illness. I believe this practice of bottling

up emotions is what attracts people to evil and consumes people with demons.

In the worst cases, those bottled-up emotions leak out through self-harm,

abuse, and/or crime.

In horror films, spirits are portrayed as scary. Perhaps, certain parts of my story

might scare you for this reason. However, I would say that there is no real reason 5

to be any more afraid than you are of the physical world. It's not much different

than the unspoken emotional exchanges you have with the faces you see every

day in your family, amongst your friends, or co-workers in the workplace. You

battle emotionally with familiar faces all the time. They can kill you spiritually

with words said directly to you or through gossip with others. They can shift the

perceptions of the people around you by spreading lies. Lies can follow a person

for the rest of their life, whether it be as a rumor or just a belief in their mind.

For example, jealousy and resentment can be the first feelings that indicate the

start of an attack. Anyone who you emotionally attach yourself in any way has

the potential to haunt you, and they do sometimes. When you get a feeling of

dread being around someone, it could be an indicator that emotionally or

spiritually they regularly attack you in some way. Imagine if those feelings, all

had words attached to them. What would they say? Many aren't as fortunate

or unfortunate as those few people forced to hear emotions. Only 1 in every

300 people can.

It's for this reason that I think it's everyone's moral obligation to themselves to

take responsibility for their healing and attempt to find true happiness. That

means prioritizing mental health and spiritual wellness, in whatever manner

works best for you. That means changing your environment and the people you

surround yourself with until you look forward to seeing the people in your life

each day. The process of making those changes can be excruciating, but the

result is worth it. When I heard people talk about finding themselves, the image

that came to mind was some wealthy guy traversing through Europe discovering

all of his passions so that he could make his life even more perfect. I didn't think

that finding myself was something that I could afford to do. After I was

diagnosed with schizophrenia, I realized it's something that most people can't

afford not to do. Addressing my emotional trauma, and prioritizing my mental

health and spiritual wellness, helped me heal my condition. It helped me arrive

at a point at which I can write a book.

I’m not rich by any means. I had to sacrifice to heal my mind, but it was worth it.

My story is similar to that of a lot of people consumed with work. I never felt I

had time or money to focus entirely on my mind and spirit. Mental health

appointments and spiritual activities were on the list of non-essentials. I went

to church occasionally and prayed, but I didn't always have the time or resources

to dedicate my time entirely to those activities. For a long time, I medicated so I

could ignore my emotions and avoid addressing my issues. I was led to believe

that it wasn't practical to expect to be happy most of the time. I was taught that

life is filled with pain and obligations, so it’s important to learn to accept

unhappiness. I was taught that everyone has to deal with some form of abuse or 6

stomach misery in some area of their life, whether it be at home or in the

workplace. That toxic idea fed habits that contributed to my mental illness. Any

pain or abuse you allow to persist in your life is a choice. It may be uncomfortable

to end relationships, change occupations, or move to a different environment,

but if you plan carefully and ask God for guidance, I believe it will lead you to a

happier and healthier place.

When my mind failed me, I began to rely on God and my spirit, my instincts. I

learned to trust my positive emotions and my intuition, the language of the

spirit. I believe God talks to us through our intuition. When I did that, I realized

that my body plays a part in the conversations that happen in spirit. Those

physiological reactions helped guide me to healing as well. You know the feeling

that something is wrong before anything physically happens. (Spidey senses, if

you will.) Many ignore these feelings because there's no physical evidence of a

reason to take action, but that's a huge mistake.

For me, schizophrenia became the reason to take action. Schizophrenia turned

my emotions and intuition from feelings into loud, disorganized, vocal phrases.

As I began to heal my spirit, the voices became organized enough for me to

decipher between each one and find a message or a lesson. Every familiar

feeling was vocalized so I could understand the source of it. My most disruptive,

physiological reactions began to make complete sense to me. Panic attacks, that

sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach, the butterflies swirling around before a

speech or a meeting, the flutter you feel when you see someone you find

attractive—all of these feelings went from physiological reactions to verbal

phrases that provided insight into my life.

Most people don't get what I consider to be a privilege now of hearing vocalized

feelings or the vocalized feelings of spirits surrounding them. An illness that was

meant to make all my thoughts entirely disorganized and make me crazy

provided me with more clarity when I listened. I saw my life from an entirely

different perspective after that. So, I want to share my experience with others

who may not be familiar with schizophrenia. I’m hoping my story helps everyone

see the importance of processing their emotional trauma with the help of

mental health resources and spiritual wellness tools. I also want to emphasize

the importance of faith in God and trusting intuition. Most of all, I want to

provide evidence that supports the idea that prioritizing your health and

happiness is the best way to protect and help yourself along with everyone

around you. 7

My story is structured in an unorthodox way because of the state of mind I was

in when I wrote it, but I left it this way because it is the best way to illustrate the

progression of my mindset over the two years following my diagnosis. It started

with overwhelming and unexplainable negative emotions. I found myself angry

and depressed about things in my life that on their own wouldn’t have made me

angry or sad. Since I didn’t understand or know how to uncover the real source

of these emotions, I medicated it. Eventually, those emotions turned into loud,

disorganized phrases that consumed my mind non-stop. Now, my experience is

just that, my own. I'm not saying that my case represents the experience of

every person diagnosed with schizophrenia. For a lot of people, this illness is a

long-term or permanent condition. Some may not see the value in me sharing

every point of my experience, but sometimes you find the most valuable things

in places you feel there is nothing valuable at all.

It isn’t easy to process emotional trauma while in a perpetual state of psychosis.

It is a miracle that I found solace in the Bible, in writing, and music. Each of those

influences is a consistent positive presence throughout my book. Before each

chapter, there is a Bible scripture that reflects a theme that is engrained in me

from that phase of my journey. In each chapter, there is a song that inspired me

during that time. You may see my writing as the rantings of a profane lunatic,

but they inspired me to create this book and allowed me to chronicle the worst

part of my experience, so I embrace it as a necessary part of the healing process.

Like braces, you have to see the state of a person’s teeth before they are applied

to understand how remarkable the results are. I had a lot of disturbing feelings,

thoughts, and visions. I regurgitated what was embedded in my psyche since

childhood. Memories of physical, sexual, verbal, and psychological abuse,

sexism, caste, and/or racism all flooded out. “Sticks and stones may break my

bones, but words will never hurt me” as the saying goes. That is the furthest

thing from true. Sticks and stones could break my bones, but words broke my

brain.

After I got to a point where I could operate, I did and said a lot of strange things

amid my delusion. When you read my journal entries, I hope that you will be

able to frame them using this context. During the first chapter, I introduce

myself in a way that reflects how I felt during that time. You learn things about

my physical life that aren’t abnormal, but those details are colored by the

symptoms of a mental illness. I had so much bottled-up rage from moments

stemming back to my childhood, but I couldn’t understand it or express it

coherently. My thinking, and communication, were disorganized, offensive, and

showed a lack of restraint. It took a significant amount of work to process each

thought, convert it to a presentable phrase, and tie it to a relevant area of my 8

life. The way it is presented is the only way I can help others understand how

difficult it is to operate and recover from one of the most severe mental illnesses

discovered, without the help of medication. The format of the first chapter

reflects the amount of difficulty I had with thinking when I first began

experiencing the most severe symptoms. However, if you can find the positive

and useful aspects of the messages that I try to convey in the first chapter, you

will be able to understand what motivated me to keep going through my journey

from a schizophrenic mind to a healthy mindset that helped me to build a firm

foundation for a fulfilling life.