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Key points
- Your most essential self, your core being, cannot be taken away by psychotic breaks.
- The version of yourself you regret or feel embarrassed about might actually be your champion.
- You can be proud of yourself when you are mentally ill because that person got you to where you are today.
- Part of emotional healing is finding continuity in who you are before, during, and after your illness.
My life was in a holding pattern because of serious mental illness for about 14 years, from the time I was a sophomore in college until I was 34. My experience of life in my twenties and early thirties was a perpetual cycle of heartbreak and feeling misunderstood. I watched my family members and friends that I had grown up with move forward in life, building careers, getting married, and having kids. I was sure I missed the boat and that there was not another one coming.
I think what was most frustrating was knowing and feeling who I was, my core, and where I wanted to go in life, but my brain was ill, so others could not always see who I was or understand where I was coming from. I was a good person, but I was mentally ill. After over a decade in this holding pattern, my acute mental illness came to life, and I had to be hospitalized multiple times.
With every step of progress I made out of such a terrifying ordeal as psychotic breaks and a diagnosis of schizophrenia, I wanted to distance myself from my twenties and early thirties, like a bad dream that never really happened. I wanted to reject who I was then and never look back. I would run towards the future and not look back like my life depended on it.
However, it just simply doesn’t work this way. I can’t truly love and accept myself now if I can’t go back and reclaim who I was in my twenties, the missteps, the embarrassments, and the regrettable setbacks. To reclaim these years hindered by serious mental illness, I have to know the common threads of my existence and acknowledge that they were present during those years so I can reclaim who I was then with pride and fully understand and embrace who I am now. The following is what mental illness cannot take away from you and is never lost.
Character
I don’t believe you can lose your character during a psychotic break. You can make atypical choices based on delusions and hallucinations. Still, I don’t think basic goodness or your essential nature can be altered during or as a result of a psychotic break. For me, my brain as an organ was failing me, but I never stopped making the right decisions based on sound character, where goodness in me ultimately steered me in the right direction. The most important thing to remember is that we are more than just a brain, where mental illness cannot touch essential elements of our true selves.
When it comes to critical junctions where a life decision is to be made, I think being psychotic can make important decisions more difficult. Still, I think character and our essential nature can overrule our illness. When it comes to my story, I have no regrets from that time when it comes to my ultimate choice-making, with all things considered. I made some choices technically out of character, but when it came to the biggest decisions that mattered, I made correct critical decisions that carried me during that time. I believe that character is a bridge from a life previous to mental illness to a life in recovery afterward.
Intentions
No matter how bad you feel or if you just want to give up, I believe that you always have the choice to choose love. As difficult as it can be when you are so frustrated with yourself and feel hopeless, I believe you can always choose to love yourself and choose to love others. You can operate through a lens of love, utilizing it in how you interact with others. To me, this is what goodwill is.
As soul-crushing as psychotic breaks can be, I never lost the ability to love other people and act in love, as well as the ability to let kindness direct my intentions. In other words, I never lost goodwill towards others, even when I didn’t want my life and wished I had someone else’s. It wasn’t easy when I was sometimes rejected by others, and even though I could feel saddened at times, I never stopped seeking goodness with my heart and letting that direct me.
Willpower
Psychosis, as catastrophic as it can be, does not necessarily take away willpower. No matter what setback or how devastating it can be, willpower matters. Let me be clear that willpower does not cure mental illness, as if mental illness is an affliction for the weak-willed, which it is not. I do, however, think that willpower affords the patience and perseverance to get to remission. Even when things look hopeless, willpower is a mechanism that helps you hang on for a better day, even when the end of your illness is not in sight.
At times, though, I was losing my will to live, and I became indifferent about being alive and was ready to die. Ultimately, though, I clung to a will to fight for the kind of life that I wanted. Through my chaotic 14 years of illness that could be unpredictable and unstable, my willpower, while it wavered, still pushed me through hopeless and confusing times. I believed I would find my purpose and be the person I knew I was supposed to be. I would do whatever it took to heal and improve my quality of life because I was on a mission to create a future ahead of me. In the end, I did not give up.
Losing Regret
My life was in a holding pattern for a significant portion of my life. I could always look backward and wonder what if. I could always point fingers at my illness and blame any setbacks in my current life on my illness to provide an excuse to myself to give up or feel sorry for myself. But the truth is that I am in a race with time; we all are, and I will miss the good surrounding me now if I look back, expecting answers as to why this happened to me. To dwell in the past is to lose the present and future.
With that said, now that I can open my eyes to the world around me and fully embrace it, I realize that this person I was who I shunned is my hero and champion. As a mentally ill person in my twenties, I was my own warrior, overcoming insurmountable obstacles, all for the benefit of my future self, because my younger self knew my future life was worth it.
I never thought I’d say this, but I am incredibly proud of who I was in my twenties. Despite psychotic breaks and difficult circumstances, I came out of there with everything intact that matters. So, I reclaimed my former self as a relentless fighter and a dreamer, where I didn’t settle for my current circumstances and fought for my dreams. No matter how bizarre and painful this time in my life was, I lived to see the other side of it. Yes, I want to be the person I was and claim her because this person is the hero of my current life and will not stop until I get to where I am supposed to be.
I believe there is an unsung hero in all of us who experience mental illness, and we need to give ourselves credit and respect our personal journeys, even if they don’t always seem linear. We can only truly love and accept ourselves if we embrace our lives in their entirety with compassion and acceptance.
