A Rainbow in the Dark

A RAINBOW IN THE DARK

Created by Shawn Phillip Blair

Hello, my fellow human beings. I am Shawn, am 23, and have schizophrenia.

In my youth before the illness befell me I was a person I don't now remember, but I know I was a responsible young lad with a bright mind who liked to help people. Some of those qualities were reduced because of my illness, but I have been working to rehabilitate them to their former levels since. Me and most of my immediate family moved to the island of Kauai in 1989 where this potential tragedy first manifested itself.

At first I feel I coped just fine, but was teased and in the end I was coping quite poorly. In between the beginning and the end I began to feel a sense of terror about the school I went to and felt physically threatened by my co-students because I had experienced beatings by them. So as my anxiety grew, my grades suffered, and I felt discombobulated in the process of doing normal things. I was most of the time in a tension that was very strong, and that lasted for years. When we left Kauai in '92 to return to the mainland, I felt like I was going to be a fish out of water to an even worse degree than I had already felt I was on that island that I myself was an island in the middle of.

I had accurately forecast the climate for me, but it was really no more severe than it had already been for me. It was actually a bit better, but the schooling I once loved so much was still not within my grasp. I also rarely and could only awkwardly speak to my peers and people in general. I wandered wooded areas with no direction in mind while schools were packed with students for hours a day for years where there were no people and there was no pressure.

In '96 my illness culminated with onset. I had been studying computer programming for weeks and would not stop focusing on each new thing to learn until I understood it clearly.

I ignored the extreme stress I felt while doing that. That led to a 3-day period in which I did not sleep and was disturbed by frightening thoughts I could not control as well as voices, tingling, and tactile sensations. After that period I felt I had slowed down and lost most of my ability to feel. I was numb, lost, and only aware of one small, unrelated bit of reality at a time.

In '97 I saw a program on schizophrenia and realized some of the symptoms mentioned in the program matched what I had been experiencing. Though I saw that program in '97, I waited until '98 to get diagnosed for fear of having to talk to someone I didn't know about personal things that I had kept secret.

I was surprised by how easy it felt for me to express the horror of what I had gone through to the counselor that saw me on that first day at access. I was urgent about receiving my medication on that first day and did promptly receive it that first day upon the conclusion of a gentle interrogation by Dr. Glover.

I thought that it would be more of a magic bullet than it seemed to be. I grew disillusioned with its shortcomings and so I began to research schizophrenia at the public library with their computers. I found some alternative treatments but was still dissatisfied with the results. Much of the information I navigated was technical non-layman in sort, and I very easily misinformed myself with what I thought I had read on occasion. That was not my only problem; I grew confused and my short-term memory was much worse that usual.

I could not sleep, although I desperately wanted to. I took more than one dose of my high dose per day having forgotten the previous ingestion of the day's dose. I thought that I needed to take it after a while, due to my thinking it had affected my own production of the substance in a negative way that only more ingested melatonin could correct. I finally stopped taking it after thirty days, but the pain had only just begun.

While I was taking it I cried out, "Please help me, why? Why?" Etc. while laying in the bathtub. I did that for hours many times before it was over. I even went outside at night trying to telepathically communicate to aliens that might be able to cure the disability I felt.

When I stopped taking it, I emerged more confused and anxious than ever. I had a very difficult time controlling my thoughts. Strange thoughts I had no reason to have flooded my mind with nonsense. I could not understand those thoughts and even when I had control of my thoughts I did not understand them very well. I even looked demented in the pictures that had been taken of me afterwards. I felt angry that no one had recognized the difference in me, but many had reason, for they had never really known me, therefore did not have an opportunity to witness the change.

I fortunately did not accept the prospect of being that way for any longer than I had to. In fact I planned on getting better than I had ever been before. I searched the Internet for ways to train the brain to function more effectively and found a variety of powerful techniques. I have been using those techniques for some time now and have benefited greatly from them. I am not nearly as confused as I once was and am not nearly so anxious any more. I plan to continue to get better until my illness is so obscure I'll not know it is there.

The Beginning...

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