Disclaimer- The stories in these blogs reflect the type of person I USED to be before I had started receiving treatment for my paranoid schizophrenia. I, in no way condone or approve of the type of behavior displayed in these stories I tell about my old life but rather try to simply state the idea that this is the person I used to be, and have since then learned from my mistakes and am in the process of turning my life around for the better. Part of my therapy is writing down these old stories as an attempt to take all of those negative things in my life and turn them into something positive and productive. So I want to thank you for supporting this positive cause by reading and being interested. It sincerely means a lot to me. I hope you enjoy reading the short story blogs I write about my life. -Joseph
So another time when I was a teenager I was at this party. It was a normal typical party type atmosphere. Adults were not home and were not going to be home for a few days. There was beer and drugs everywhere and a lot of teenage drama. We all go through it. It sucks. But for reasons due to my schizophrenia, these types of situations hit me a lot harder than most people. And a lot of times it would drive me to separate myself from everyone. I would then start cutting and hitting myself (or similar things of that nature). This was a common practice of mine that for the most part I kept to myself. However, there was one night in particular when I was sixteen years old that sticks out in my jumbled and fragmented memory where I actually told someone the nature of the types of things I had been doing.
It was a typical Friday night and I was really sick and fed up with everything and everyone around me. I had felt (from my delusions) that everyone around me was conspiring against me, turning on me, being nice to my face, and plotting on me in my absence. I was seriously convinced (from my delusions) that all of my friends were plotting to torture and kill me. These thoughts consumed my existence everywhere I went, so as you can imagine, I was severely stressed out and horrified. In addition, there was word that my best friend at the time was going to hook up with my ex-girlfriend who had just broken up with me three weeks earlier. Between this and my mom having cancer at the time, I did not know what to do with myself. I needed to go outside and get some air. I was borderline about to f***ing snap. I needed to calm myself down but didn’t know how. So I’m downstairs on the patio away from everybody else at the party and got that sudden urge to cut myself again. I was really fighting it because I didn’t want everyone to think I was weird. That was something I was really insecure about back then. The thoughts in my head however, were so overwhelmingly chaotic and horrifying that I needed to do something. I could not just sit still and take it. I needed to do something to escape that horror and chaos in my mind. Out of frustration, I started pulling my own hair down to my face slowly which then evolved into me scratching my face with my nails. I did this over and over again until the whole side of my face was covered in blood. I had officially escaped my mind and felt better. Pain had taken over and all was calm now. I then walked inside (now with the calmness and bravery to face everything) and everyone started screaming “WHAT HAPPENED?!? ARE YOU OK?!!?” I simply and calmly told them that I fell down the stairs. Everyone was pretty freaked out for a minute but then shortly continued on with their nonsensical teenage drama-like drunkenness. Completely un-phased, my mental state was pretty much an ongoing joke between all of them. Who could blame them really? No one at that age really knows how to deal with those types of things. Hell, I didn’t know how to deal with it myself. So anyways, one of my really close friends at the time (a different one than the one who was hooking up with my ex) , who knew me better than everybody else, followed me to the bathroom where I was going to clean myself up. He shut the door, made sure no one else was around and said to me, “You really didn’t fall down the stairs did you?” And me, knowing I could trust him, said “No I didn’t. I did it myself.” And he said in shock,” NO WAY!” And then I said,” I’ll prove it to you.” I then proceeded to take a roll of staples and continue to gash the side of my face with it.” Blood was dripping off of me at this point. He was amazed and yet intrigued all at the same time. He then asked if he could punch me in the face. I said very calmly, ”Sure go right ahead.” He then cocked his fist back and punched me straight in the bloody part of my face. I paused for a second, and him not knowing how I would react, hesitated for a second as well. And right before he was about to apologize for what he had just done, we both then immediately started laughing hysterically. This was the true beginning of a complex, but long lasting friendship. We both didn’t see it back then. But I should have realized there was a problem.
