>>833379i was diagnosed with early childhood schizophrenia at 11, so most of my life i've lived like this. to me, it's just existence, there's no way out of my head, i'm used to it and medication only goes so far. imagine it's like autism but inverted, because it kind of is. it's caused by the same gene, just on the other side of the DNA helix responsible for that neural pathway.
if autism works like a linear path, then schizophrenia is like a skill tree. schizos have a lot of special interests that they spec into, they jump from point to point making all sorts of connections in their minds about things that seem only loosely related. that's also where the stereotype of schizos liking conspiracy theories comes from, a part of it is true! it's that whole missed connections/pattern recognition thing. even i used to use /x/.
the biggest way it affects my life is the isolation. humans are social creatures, it's hard to escape your nature even if to me, the thought of other people is a little terrifying. i can't read other people's minds, the thought that they perceive reality different from the way i do is interesting, but also scary.
but, everything's nuanced, nothing is entirely good or entirely bad. sometimes the hallucinations are positive, like
>>833300sometimes they terrify me, but i turn that into creative works to cope. people like outsider art, i think it's because it comes from a place of incomprehensibility. my mind runs on cosmic horror by default, so i write a lot. i see things, so i draw things.
even in my isolation, i don't ever feel all that alone. there are good voices in there too, some of them are funny and make me laugh. i'm hardly ever bored because i listen to the stories made up in my head.
hallucinations are dependent on the subconscious emotions. i make art to escape fear and paranoia, so looking at my art, you tend to only see see the more terrifying side. there are good things too
