So obligatory, I’m not diagnosed with schizophrenia, but bipolar disorder, and my doctor and I have discussed potentially adding on schizoaffective disorder, which is sorta like bipolar moods with some schizophrenic delusions.

Anyway, the first time I became manic was when I was 17, it was a really a really scary time in which I was suffering from psychosis. I was terrified to sleep for a week straight, I’d stay up all night with the lights on. My eyes were always blacked out in the mirror after dark, and it was like I was looking at a demonic person I couldn’t recognize.

Shadowy demon people would follow me around all the time and were always lurking out of the corner of my eye. I was having little auditory hallucinations where I could hear something akin to sonic booms in my house, it was crazy loud, or sometimes I’d hear whispering in my ear but I had no idea what it was saying, like all my delusions it was paranormal like though. Then I was paranoid all the time, people were always watching me and I’d actually hear their conversations morphing into them saying mean things about me even though they were total strangers.

I still suffer from the paranoia aspect of it, but it’s not that common for me to hallucinate unless I’m hypomanic or manic, but I am often though, so I guess I do kinda frequently. Even when I do, it’s not scary like it was that first time because I can differentiate between reality and hallucinations now, but at the time I couldn’t.