by Kimberly Anne

Created on: May 09, 2009   Last Updated: October 04, 2010

Too Sane for Insanity

I contracted schizophrenia at the age of twelve. I'm almost seventeen now, and stable, controlled by medication.

My first experience with the voices was around Christmas 2004. I was having troubles with a boy I liked, and the voices came then, along with depression. My first recollection was them telling me to tell "J" to die. I wrote him a note, and he freaked out. I did, too. I did not know what was wrong with me, but I put on a front. I held it there until summer, when I stayed up late night, researching what it might be. The voices has stayed, and I was paranoid as ever.

The month after my thirteenth birthday, I found what I thought might be the answer. It was a website, and it had a schizophrenia screening test on it. I took it. The result? Positive. I had known that two of my uncles had schizophrenia, and one died in a mysterious car accident. The other was living in the denial of there being anything wrong with him.

I went back to school, and told a few certain people I had picked out in my head that I might have schizophrenia. No one listened. I even told a lady who I knew worked at the local hospital. She said nothing. I went on to finish out my eighth grade year relying heavily on a blogging website where the people actually believed me.

Ninth grade came, and I was in bad shape. I had contracted depression as a result of the schizophrenia, and was hanging on the edge. I finally told my parents I needed to see a psychiatrist. They sent me to a psychologist instead. She and I talked, and she did not believe me. She agreed though, that I did have depression, and referred me to a psychiatrist. He put me on medication for depression, and said that the voices were most likely the result of that. He did nothing about the paranoia and said it would most likely go away as the depression did.

By the end of ninth grade, the doctors realized I was having auditory hallucinations, but they still did not think it was schizophrenia. I told them I needed to go to a mental health facility to recover. They said, "You'll be fine. It's not that bad."

July 2007 came, and the voices told me to commit suicide. I started overdosing, late at night, and then realized what I was doing. I told my parents, and we went to the emergency room. I went to a mental health facility in Colorado Springs, and stayed there for a week.

While there, I started having horrible auditory and visual hallucinations. I was seeing people, hearing my cat, and believing in things that were not true. The world finally realized I had schizophrenia.

My sophomore year, I was mostly stable. I had very few symptoms, and people were believing me.

I was pretty much okay this last summer, and I have only had a few breakthroughs. Now that it's almost summer again, I am stressing over school and family problems. Because of my high stress level, I have been having minor panic attacks, and paranoia again. I'm fine though. I can function in a normal setting, and only the people whom I have told know I have schizophrenia, or that something is even wrong with me. Some people who consider me their close friend do not even know.

My journey through schizophrenia has been tough, and it will be one that will hang with me until the day I die, but I will always know that deep down in my heart, I have a choice about how to deal with it. I can inform the world, I can suffer in silence, or I can just give up hope all together.

I choose to inform the world about me, that girl from a small town who is too sane for insanity.

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