Schizo: A Memoir

Epilogue: Memoir 101

The Experience

This has been an extremely challenging, incredibly rewarding, and certainly a brave experience in writing this memoir. When you are writing about yourself, you are forced to be honest with yourself about your life, and if you aren't...you are doing a very dangerous thing, not only lying to others but lying to yourself. But that was never the problem for me. The issue was facing the things that happened and talking about them with those you don't know. Opening up about the life you live...be it a boring existence or one full of twist and turns. It's hard baring your soul for others to see and comment on because you think and feel that you are being judged but that wasn't the case for me when I shared this memoir with you. I was met with open arms, I was consoled and given advice. I was nurtured and strengthened with your kind words, your thoughts and your prayers. Those things kept me wanting to share my life even when I wanted to shut the whole thing down and run away and hide beneath the security blanket of silence. In silence you are only forced to contend with yourself and the things that go through your own mind. I was never given a reason to run – but the opening of old wounds to share the history of the scars was enough to make me want to pull into myself and never come out. It takes a brave soul to bare all to the world. I don't consider myself so much a brave person as I am a stubborn person – not wanting to give up on something I began. (If you look at my works – you will see that this is a challenge for me. lol) ß not that I don't want to finish those things, it's just hard when the story leaves you for a while. I'm sure it will all come back to me.

I've learned quite a lot about myself, my illness and my abilities to articulate what's going on with me. In my critical mind, I think I could still stand to improve on all fronts. But those things will come with time. I feel confident that I have to the time to keep learning about the things that make me tick, the things that trigger me as well as the things that treat me. That's one thing that I searched for – treatment. While I constantly discover triggers to my anxiety, depression and schizophrenia – I had also began searching for "treats". Things that would take me out of a triggered state and bring me back to wellness and I found a lot. One of those things was reading about other people's experiences in life. Connecting with them on a deeper level and relating to what they were talking about. In support groups or "group" we all have a voice to give to the things that we find hard to deal with in life and we also have a voice to share what lifts us up. That's key. Not just sharing the bad but sharing the good as well. Things that went well for us, things that made us smile or brought us joy on a particular day or week is stuff that we all need to think about it and find comfort in. My therapist Nichelle told me "You know...it's okay if nothing is going wrong in your life and you want to talk about it too." Hearing that was like hearing something that I knew but never gave thought to. I would talk about annoyances when life held back the big things thinking that, that's all my therapist is for but when she said that I realized that I had good things to share as well. Life wins, "treats" (as I call them), un-suck (when life hands you something nice without you searching for it), blessings from God and friends, and praiseworthy people, events and things. I had/have quite a bit of good to share (in which we will discuss later on). As far as life changing and therapeutic experiences go...and I've had just a few...writing this memoir has been that for me. Writing period is that for me but this memoir was quite a bit more.