Amy Dillon

Being Schizophrenic

Is something I am not proud of.  I was diagnosed with it when I was younger and have never shaken off the fact that it was a not-sure-of diagnosis- I would much rather be bipolar, just like my friend Jason who I met in the hospital.  He was in 8th grade and I was a sophomore- not to be confused with the Jason that almost ruined my soul.  The one who did the Nazi walk in front of the girls’ bathroom, in hopes I’d be there to see, watch, hear, whatever.  His friend Simon was pulling on his sweatshirt while I walked past him smelling like nervous poo, and he didn’t embarrass me, he just continued to put on his sweater, with that glow of having just realize something.  If I could see Simon again I would tell him his yearbook picture is scary (embarrassing scary- not like Jason’s which was terrifying.  I remember having seen his picture in the yearbook while I was lying on the floor by the old spider sacs under the antique couch in my upstairs bedroom and honestly being scared to death.  Did he know something I didn’t at the moment?  Maybe it was because in a past life he made a bet with someone about me and death.  And maybe that is why now I fear death.).

So yeah, you might inquire (I don’t 100% know what inquire means) that I am schizophrenic just from reading that past paragraph, but I think I just am alive with imagination.  When something doesn’t go my way- almost- I just tell myself that it didn’t happen, shake it off, and go on my holly jolly way.  Am I schizophrenic if I fall asleep on the toilet seat in the girl’s bathroom of a small Lutheran high school?  Am I aware of my surroundings if I fart while my head is down and I am sleep, in the front row of a classroom where study period is being held in a larger Catholic girl’s high school?  Am I paranoid if I think it is a sign that my teacher tried to brain wash me and my surrounding classmates that I had a lobotomy when she forces her words to me in an unkindly manner, and says that I should write about schizophrenia and lobotomies? 

I could go on forever, but the one thing that makes me wonder what is really wrong with me is when I tell myself something and I am not sure if it is really coming from me or not.  Right now, I like to think it is just a brain in a jar, having fun, watching my every move, telling me what to do when I am paranoid or scared.  For instance, yesterday, or the day before that, or maybe both days, I was washing my hands in a Jewel Osco bathroom.  I wanted to start to wash my hands and the thing in me told me to dispense soap with my left hand, and I wanted, for some reason that escapes me, to use my right.  So after I washed my hands, something bad happened to me- I forgot what because this has happened to me so many times that what exactly happened I forgot- I think it was something like I “accidently” touched the red part on the dispenser, of which I wasn’t sure if it was blood or not.  So even though I have complete control of my own body and thoughts, something outside of me controlled ALL circumstances, if only for a brief moment, to bring down rain on me.

Is this schizophrenic?  Maybe it is a little crazy, but it can get (not may, get- not right, left) scary.  But hey, as long as I take my meds, all is right tin the world, right?