Schizophrenia - Losing my mind at 17.

It’s a strange thing. To feel that your life is an illusion. 

An illusion that is so hard to see if its reality.. or a Van Gogh painting inside your mind.  

When i was first told that my mind was slowly developing schizophrenia at the age of 17, i never knew much about the illness. In most minds, it’s often associated with ‘madness’ or a ‘split personality’ but they are not true. The easiest way i can describe it is.. looking through a window inside an old house and seeing the same window inside the window. Forever looking inside the old house. Whenever you are with friends or family, you are never in the same room as them. You feel disconnected… transparent. You lose touch with the world.  

I was so young. Traumatic and dark events in my childhood and teenage years that broke the glass inside my mind and allowed scary things to enter. 

“Monsters do not live under your bed, they live inside your head”

Sometimes the walls melt or voices ridicule me. Vivid shadows follow me and disappear whenever i try to catch them with my eyes. Sometimes when i am walking, i often feel the ground below me get longer and endless. 

Especially when i started exploring abandoned buildings. The silence inside the houses/asylums or schools was tricky to avoid. 

When i try to take a photo, i would often feel as if someone was over me. Taunting me to take it… or try to convince me that it’s not real. 

My therapist who diagnosed me said something that surprised me. He told me; ‘You’re dancing with the devil”  

ℭ.