A true story about a brazilian kid

A true story about a Brazilian schizophrenic kid

By Priscila Jaeger Lucas

In the third year, we got tired of hearing that we were terrible, we became noisy and when they called us names, we answered: But we are the worst class in the school.

I think about how my school life would have been if we were welcomed and respected in our differences, every time I think about the people who taught us and I motivate myself to become a better educator than them. Sometimes you just need to show the student that you care.

I sent what I've written so far for my aunt to read and she told me an interesting passage that she experienced with me when she was still very young, on a day when she visited me she told me that I played normally, until I interrupted the game and said: "I'm very angry , aunt ni”. It was then that I realized that this might have been one of the first spikes of anger. Maybe I was born with schizophrenia.

Well, what about bipolarity? When did it appear? I believe that at age 7, but I could be wrong, I saw a professional say that a mood disorder arises from a predisposition allied to the environment, a stressful and traumatic event can occur. And that's exactly what happened to me.

I don't know if my mom will read this, because she seems to have gotten over the episode and she's already told me it's silly for me to have these feelings but, I just can't forget. The pain has eased but I think things could have been different.

At about the age I mentioned, my parents started taking care of a little cousin whose mother was in trouble, he was raised like my brother and I loved him more than I've ever loved anything on earth, I count the hours at school to go home and help to take care of him, he was my little brother to whom I devoted all my attention and love. Just like my parents. As we didn't do the official adoption papers, we had no way to stop when they took him away. I just can't forgive or forget the people who did it, it was like a part of me died at that moment. My mother lost her voice for six months, and I dissociated, I just decided that it was a certain person, that I thought I had the perfect life and I started to act like her, I even imitated her walk, the dissociation, itt was so strong that I forgot my name and when I looked in the mirror I didn't recognize my image as mine, because at that moment I wasn't me, I was that person. One day my mother called me my full name, and my brain came back and I got the biggest scare of my life. MY NAME IS PRISCILA!.

And since that day I experience very strong mood spikes, which are only mitigated by the medication.

A few years later I started to have an aversion to social environments, I would cry and have anxiety attacks when I was forced to leave. The most frequent social environment for me until today is the church, but I just couldn't go anymore. When I was little I sang, I helped the children, but from the age of ten, every time I went out of the house a deep despair attacked me. I confess that in 2020, I returned to be more frequent in the church and I intend to improve even more. It's because I'm different. I feel like I'm not part of the community because I don't have someone to talk to and someone who understands what I'm going through besides my parents, my psychologist and my psychiatrist.

Around the age of 15, the crisis got so bad that my parents didn't insist on me leaving anymore, even though they didn't approve of my isolation. It was terrifying to have to have contact in the middle of a mood crisis and maybe depression while I just wanted to stay home and cry in peace.

Around this time when I was alone I started to have the first auditory hallucinations and at that time I had no idea that I had schizophrenia, which was only diagnosed at age 22 after a major psychotic breakdown.

When I was alone and my mood was out of control, I heard the bathroom faucet turning on, or chairs being pushed in the kitchen and even people walking and talking. In my ignorance I thought it was something spiritual, I now realize that they were the first crises.

See I believe in God, I believe in heaven and hell and that there are phenomena that we simply cannot explain, but I also know that my brain has a chemical imbalance and I know perfectly well when I am hallucinating, even with the hallucinations that present themselves as spiritual.

At the same time the anxiety attacks were so strong that I couldn't stay at school. When I got my first cell phone from my sister I texted my mother and said I was sick so she could pick me up, and she would pick me up every time she could. Most of the time I went home holding back my tears and only collapsed when she had gone back to work.

I now realize that those were my first episodes of mood disorder. Something I also noticed is that in the ups and downs of mood, schizophrenia gets stronger and when the crises pass I have peace.

So, I couldn't have a month of mental peace, every month is a different crisis and when I stabilize it's a relief, because in crises my brain works so fast it seems to heat up and cause discomfort, when the crisis passes and he returns to normal is a relief even to live, because in crisis I don't live, I survive, because living without even managing to organize your thoughts is not living, it's vegetating awake.

I usually do not accept it when people say that I suffer from such a disease, I do not, I am very happy, and I recognize that I am privileged to have access to treatment and have the support from my family, but the crisis is indeed a suffering, It's hard to accept that I need to live in these moments, because all I wanted to do is disappear.

But I have to confess, despite becoming destructive to me in terms of impulsiveness with food and shopping, I like hypomania, and I've seen many others say they like it too, when thinking doesn't disorganized (what I believe is schizophrenia) hypomania it's a good feeling of liveliness that I couldn't explain in words. In the last crisis I woke up at four in the morning with my brain begging me to shop at the credit card. I didn't buy it but he stayed for five hours, causing me anxiety to buy something I didn't even need.

I finally stabilized, in this last crisis I became addicted to studying, I saw other people studying a lot on studygrams and I thought it had to be like them too, so I planned to study for close to 8 hours a day and when I couldn't do that, and I would go into extreme anxiety attacks. I felt stupid, incapable and these negative thoughts dominated my mind from the moment I woke up until bedtime, it was hard to think about anything else.

In mania and depression, feelings are extreme and everything we think becomes harmful even to our lives, but mainly to our minds.

Everyone has anxiety at some point in life, this is a very uncomfortable feeling that most of the time passes really fast, now imagine your anxiety being really strong, this is the anxiety we feel in a crisis.

In addition, especially in mania, the flow of thoughts is very fast and we propose to do a lot, but we can't do anything. This makes everything worse, the feelings intensify and it is difficult to even live.

I usually say that I only suffer from crises, and maybe I've even said that here in the book, but that's just it. It's such intense feelings that dominate us to do things we don't want that it's just impossible even to breathe, I can't count how many times I saw a car coming towards me and felt an urge to jump in front of it, it felt like this simple act was going to solve my external and internal problems. But by the grace of God the suffering of my family came to my mind if I did that and the impulse passed. This is a true story, my story surviving schizophrenia as a kid.