All the entries I have made in this blog are my experiences with schizoaffective disorder. This is all I know. There is not a wealth of definitive information about schizophrenia and other forms. The brain is a complex organ. Psychiatrists only guess at what medication will work for any given person; it's a crap shoot at best, in my opinion.
I tried to find information on suicidal ideations and schizophrenia. I didn't find many conclusive answers or statistics. Again, all I know is what I've lived. No journal can tell me about my pain and neither can a psychiatrist unless they have the same brain disorder.
Every day was a trial. I just wanted to escape the emotional pain and character orchestration in my head. It got to the point that I didn't know which voice was mine. I was still trying to work, but I never could hold down a job for long period of time because of the voices. There was one exception where I worked for seven years. I'm a 49-year old woman and that's the longest time that I have worked with no interruption until the end when I had to go on FMLA.
I have a B.A. in Journalism that I tried to use twice. Both jobs were excellent opportunities for me. One was at a newsletter publishing firm in Arlington, VA and the other was a newspaper reporter position for a small town in West Virginia. The Arlington job was great. I even got to cover a story at a congressional hearing. It made me feel like a journalist because I was just out of school. I lived with suicidal ideations all day long and I never told my family this. I told them that I wanted to leave because I couldn't find good medical help... well, I couldn't. But I was more scared of trying to commit suicide and succeeding and that they would only discover my body when it started stinking in the hall.
The worse part is I loved this job. Whenever my symptoms got too much to manage, I would tell them I suffer from migraines and leave (more acceptable) and they were cool with that as long as I got my work done. There's a real difference in working with creative people versus a "normal" job. I loved that difference. Nevertheless, the ideations and voices kept on to the point that I knew I had to go home and refresh. I refused to give up.
.
But, I should have. Two weeks into my new reporting job about six months after the newsletter firm, I tried to commit suicide. I was on my way to the police station to discuss a molestation case. I had a panic attack, but at that time I didn't know what one was. I was crying like I was over one of my parent's grave. And I couldn't compose myself as I drove into the parking lot. I sat there a long time unable to compose myself.
I drove to my doctor's office. He wasn't there. I went home. I called my dad. He wasn't in his office. I called friend. He wasn't there. That's when I looked at the bottle of Xanax and decided to take them all.
I wanted my family to know that they could have done nothing. I just wanted to get rid of the drama that played out in my head every day. So, I left a note. I was blessed though; but, I didn't think so then.
In my haste to call someone, I left my apartment door unlocked. A friend from work, who was a quintessential reporter, came to investigate when I never returned from the police station. She brought police with her so that she could enter the apartment. They called an ambulance and saved my life.
The only reason I never attempted again is the look on my father's face the next day. He had driven from Pittsburgh to see about me. I didn't want to inflict pain on my parents or family, I just wanted mine to end. But, it didn't. So, as my poem in the first post said, I got a double dose.
I still tried to work, never finding a professional job. I worked a lot of minimum wage jobs. I couldn't hold one. This was rock bottom for me. I was 28 years old and I couldn't take care of myself. I felt so inadequate. This is about the time I was introduced to clozapine by my psychiatrist (an anti-psychotic) . It dulled the voices some so that I could crawl into a bank customer service phone job every day. But, I was proud of myself for working. There was a time when I was almost agorophobic, but my father scared me when he told me that I could sit here with him the rest of my life or push myself out the door everyday. Needless to say, visions of being an adult child in their home scared me.
I worked this job until my new psychiatrist (I had to change psychiatrists since I now worked, this messed my treatment up considerably) decided that he didn't know what to do with me after six years of treating me relatively well and reccomended FMLA. Well, that just gave me a vacation; it didn't improve my symptoms. When I came back things were very tense, but before they lowered the boom, I recieved a job offer from a company in Philadelphia I had applied to.
This company asked me to leave after two years. Of course, they persuaded me to resign. That brought me to New Jersey and my parent's home, again.
I have worked retail here. I was a security guard for three years. And, then I set my sites on a peer specialist position. I thank God for blessing me with such a position. I get to help people like me for a living.
Dreams deferred? I've had many. But I think that everything is in line right now. I know that whatever happens from now on, I'm going to be just fine. Even if I relapse or lose this job. I am very calm. And I feel relaxed. I know that He is in control.
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