Is it real? One of the most difficult things I struggle with on a daily basis is trying to figure out what is real and what is my mind twisting into a story only I know as real. After being diagnosed with schizophrenia, I was able to reflect back to childhood, and so much made sense. While everything made sense to me, there was also that question I dread: what is real? I would say the majority of my anxiety comes from this question. I often do not know if it is the dread of being let down, the embarrassment if others are involved, or having to face the reality that my brain twists reality, leaving me unsure of what is real and what is my reality.
When I was younger, I loved true crime. Unsolved Mysteries captured my attention but left me in fear the crimes would happen to me or near me. My mom had been dating my current step-dad for some time now. I despised him being in our lives because we were fine without him. I was watching my normal routine of Unsolved Mysteries, and there he was on TV. The man my mom was dating was on Unsolved Mysteries. I tried to memorize the facts; the world wide web was just coming out, so there was no looking up the episodes on the internet to get the facts. I knew when the rerun of the episode was going to be on, so I started to question my mom about different dates, events, and his past. I was trying to piece together if, in fact, he could be the man in the episode being sought by the police in California. Was this real? Could it be him? After gathering the information, I watched the rerun of the episode, and now I had no question it was him. He had committed a murder in California, and now he was dating my mom. Had I not been 12 years old, I would have called the number on the screen to have him locked up. I made sure everyone knew he was, in fact, the horrible person I knew he was, and he was wanted for murder. There was no question if it was real; it was real.
For years, I always insisted it was him. When the World Wide Web became a way of life, I looked up the story and reminded everyone. By this time, I knew it was not real; I understood I had these delusions that seemed so real they had to be real. I really truly believed it was real no matter what anyone said at the time. We can laugh about it now, but for me, there is a sadness that I have no idea I have created this belief that only I know to be real.
People have used and abused me knowing I will create a reality out of something that is not real. I have had not just one but several relationships in which I was being used and did not know that they were using me. It would start with something happening and I would think they had a girlfriend and I would question them. Their response was simply that it was not real and I was making it up in my head. One situation, the man had me twisted up in a world of crime while he lived with his actual girlfriend, who was pregnant, and she knew about me and how he was using me. He had me convinced we were together, I was providing money for him to start his business, I had to commit crimes for him or he would kill my daughters and me. All of this was real because all he had to do when I started to question things was tell me it was just my thoughts getting twisted and what I was thinking was delusional. In my mind, he was helping me, he was pointing out when I was delusional, while I knew the abuse was real, I didn’t know that there was no way he was going to kill my daughters and me. He had said and fed me the right lines that I thought the life I was living was real. It was not until law enforcement got involved and I saw facts on paper that I realized nothing was real. The stuff I questioned if it was real or not was in fact real, but I did not have the ability to separate what he said, what I created as reality, and what was real.
It broke me to know the pain I put my daughters through living in a life of terror because I could not distinguish reality from a created reality. It hurt me to know not just one human being but several other fellow humans could use my schizophrenia against me to obtain financial gain from me. What hurt the most was I still could not tell what was real and what wasn’t. How was I going to prevent this from happening again if I can’t tell what is real? When I think about the situation with my stepdad from when I was younger, it hurts knowing I was so convinced something was real I hurt others close to me by going around saying he was a murderer. I drove a wedge between my mother and me even when I was a child because I did not know what was real and what was not.
I want to explain this experience of not knowing what is reality and what is my created reality is different than something happening and you question if someone is telling the truth or you have a misunderstanding. This delusion involving reality is so real that nothing can tell you otherwise. I had FBI officers sitting in front of me telling me what was real and I did not believe it because it was not the reality I knew to believe. It took me really having to start questioning myself and events for me to see, those officers weren’t lying; they were explaining to me what was real. Even to this day, I catch myself questioning if maybe they were wrong and my created reality was, in fact, real. I still look up the episode of Unsolved Mysteries and look at the facts, questioning if indeed it was real, and everyone else was wrong. I still question what is real. I usually can pull myself back to reality before I fall deep into the depths of my created reality. But each day events happen, people say things, I see things, I hear things, and my thoughts either stay present in reality or they create a reality that I know to be real while others live in what is actually real.
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