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During the devastating onset of my schizophrenia, and as I became more symptomatic, I still was still able to make decisions that enabled me to survive.
While homeless, I badly needed a safe place to store my important paperwork. Despite my dirty outfit and old shoes, I went to my local Bank of America and opened a lockbox. Though I was experiencing delusions and hallucinations, I had enough foresight to keep a small balance in my bank account for emergencies, which covered the fee for the box. I locked everything away, including my passport, personal documents, and paperwork for the nonprofit organization I had founded years earlier.
A few weeks after I was diagnosed with schizophrenia and hospitalized, I went to the bank and retrieved all my valuable paperwork.
Before I became homeless, and as I realized I was about to lose my apartment, I opened a local mailbox in order to receive mail without a physical residential address. I paid the cost of the mailbox for a few years in advance. I also visited the Department of Motor Vehicles and changed my driver’s license from Ohio to California, using my new mailbox address, to keep it current.
Before I lost my apartment, I found friends to store my most valuable possessions. I gave my desktop computer to a friend for free, which I regret. I let a friend borrow my valuable viola, and she sent it back to me years later, after my schizophrenia diagnosis, when I was recovering at my parents’ home. I also regret selling my violin, my most valuable possession. I took the money I was given for its sale and donated it to my nonprofit to benefit needy people in Kenya. Unfortunately, in the long run, I was more capable of securing my belongings than taking care of myself.
I became homeless a few months after incorporating a new nonprofit organization in 2002. The mission of the organization was to raise money for people I had interacted with while living in Africa for a few months one summer. To this day, I don’t know if founding my new nonprofit organization was at all a rational decision or was entirely rooted in my delusions, as I secretly believed the organization would win a Nobel Peace Prize.
The same month I had my first psychotic break, I was still capable of putting together the complicated paperwork for incorporation, and I successfully applied for tax-exempt status for the organization. Once it received tax-exempt status, many of my student friends encouraged their parents, relatives, and friends to donate, unaware that I, the president, was psychotic. I raised thousands of dollars, which were sent to Africa. Other funding was used to pay for a creative website. I raised all of this money while I was homeless.
While homeless and raising money for Africa, I met a friend at the university library who I began seeing every day. He knew I wasn’t a current student but was unaware that I was sleeping in the library every night, as I told him I was staying with friends. He felt like a brother to me. He invited me to join him on a brief trip to visit his family in Taiwan, and I readily consented to go. On the trip, he asked me to marry him.
I reasoned that I should not marry while homeless, eating out of garbage cans, and still a college dropout. I had enough insight to know I badly needed to rebuild my life before entering a serious relationship. I politely told him no and left out the real reasons why.
Over a full four years homeless, somehow, I still had the rational thought needed for basic survival. I knew which libraries and bathrooms I could sleep in without being noticed. I discovered exactly where and when to find discarded food, often in parks. When I was eventually picked up and taken to a psychiatric ward against my will, I wanted to return to my homeless life outside, because I felt I had made a good life for myself despite being homeless. Clearly, despite my ability to engage in rational thought to survive, my whole life had declined to the point that a truly rational and thinking person would never accept.
Today, I am amazed that I was able to meet my most basic needs while I was homeless, delusional, and psychotic. How could I be so crazy, but still survive? Even in the depths of psychosis, part of my mind was still working.
After I was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was hospitalized for the second time, I developed insight into my condition, beginning to fully realize how sick I had become. Developing true insight into a psychotic illness so early on is also rare. Even at the time when I was most symptomatic, part of me knew what was real (my illness) and what was imaginary (the hallucinations).
Today, I no longer need to worry about food and finding a place to sleep outside when it’s raining in order to take care of myself. I am grateful for my relationships with family and friends again, have no worries about my basic needs, and can earn money through work. Thanks to compliance with my medication, the choices I make today involve realistic dreams and expectations for the future.
While having a conversation with an individual who has schizophrenia or psychosis in general, it is important to listen closely and to take him or her seriously. She or he may not be as crazy as you think.
