Questions.

When I tell people about my mental illness, they usually ask me questions about it. I shall answer some of these common questions in this entry.

1. What do you have, exactly?
Schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. If you want to find out what it is, I suggest you check out wikipedia article. It is rather long, so I'll write my own take on it.

Schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type is a mental illness. I experience high and low moods, like in bipolar disorder. I am rapid cycling, which means I will be up and down many times throughout the day. I have auditory and visual hallucinations. Yes, I do hear voices. I sometimes go into a state of psychosis where I act strange, become ridiculously paranoid and delusional. I don't remember what happens in these episodes, so I only have what people say to go by.

2. What do you see? What do the voices say?
I see a lot of things that aren't there. I have one hallucination that I always have with me, even medicated and doing well. He doesn't have a name, but he stands in the corner and watches me. He has no nose, his eyes are dark and sunken in, and his mouth is wide open but has skin stretched over it. When I get up and move around to different rooms, his neck extends and his head follows me. He doesn't bother me, he's always been there. For as long as I can remember.
There are other, rather disturbing hallucinations I get.

Say I'm walking through a crowded mall at Christmas time. I will see the person in front of me walking, turn around and describe in all gorey detail how they were going to take my and kill me and dissect my body and put it all up on display.

The voices don't really say anything. Imagine there is a T.V. on in another room. You can hear the T.V., but you can't tell what exactly they are saying. Its like that. Sometimes its really loud, and sometimes its people arguing.

3. So, like, are you okay?
Yes, I am. I have lived with it since I was about 5 years old. There are times that it is overwhelming and I'll have to go into treatment for a while, but overall I'm okay.

Any more questions you want to ask? Check out my formspring.