Questioning My Voices

 

Questioning my Voices

 

            It was the weekend, and my neighbor across the hallway was outside her front door with friends smoking and talking loudly. Sometimes I looked through my door peep hole to place the voices with the faces. I really do not mind when they are outside chatting and spending time together. On the few occasions when my neighbor and I have talked she has told me she works two jobs; she certainly deserves a relaxing evening.

            Suddenly I heard a voice, which I thought was coming from outside the door, say, “I want to know why he is alone,” and I assumed that question was directed at me. However, since I sometimes hear voices because of my diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, I was not certain if the voice was really coming from my neighbor or from my brain disease. It was a fair enough question. I am a decent, somewhat good-looking guy, so it might be reasonable for someone to wonder why would I be alone on a Saturday night?

            On this occasion, I went back to watching TV, but then another thought entered my mind… does my neighbor have feelings for me? Did she really say that? If she wanted to hang out with me, would she knock on my door, or would she not?

            The following evening, my neighbor was outside her door talking to her friends again when I thought I heard, “He is a schizo!!”

            I thought perhaps my neighbor had Googled my name and found my first-person accounts of living day to day schizophrenia. I am not a celebrity, by any means, but it is not difficult to learn about my mental health advocacy online. I had lived in my apartment for about a year, and I only told one person, an upstairs neighbor, about my medical history. I wondered, Did he tell my other neighbors I had schizophrenia?  Whether this voice was real or unreal, one thing was for sure… this was a learning moment. I realized that I could open up to some people, but I still need to be careful to whom or when I talk about my brain disease. No matter how many interviews I do, no matter how many articles I write, some people will still be ignorant about mental health and the stigmatizing words associated with it.

            “Schizo,” is not a good thing to be called. It is like the word “Psycho.” Some people think someone with my diagnosis should be out howling at the moon. In my years with this brain disease, I have found it is better to stay quiet and not react aloud to something unless I am sure where it is coming from.  

            It is now Tuesday; my apartment building is quiet, and I am playing music at a reasonable volume. Earlier in the day on my walk I began to question myself about the voices I had heard the previous nights.  The “Why is he alone?” still seems somewhat real, but “He’s a schizo!!” does not. The “Why is he alone?” question seems very strange to me now. How would she have known that I was alone when I had not seen her the entire day? In the past, I might have zeroed in on those questions and ruined my day by thinking of them over and over. However, distractions such as TV, exercise, or music give me time to figure out if the voices are real or not, and then I can move on, and that is what I have to do, move on from these thoughts. I love my apartment and my neighborhood. I feel blessed to live here, and probably will live here for a long time. I live in a very friendly community where I feel very comfortable saying hello to people I meet when I am walking outside. Hearing voices and wondering if they are real is part of what I deal with because of my mental health diagnosis. My doctor is the best person to talk to about my symptoms because he is trained to help me examine and confront the unreality of them.