From a young age, I knew something was wrong with me. I started having prodromal symptoms of schizophrenia from at least grade 5. That was back in 2000. Camps were nightmares back in 2000 and 2001. I would hallucinate the other children picking on me in school, even though they didn’t hate me. They hated me after I bullied them for imagined offenses against me. It was all my fault.
I was relating to my father that I hated the hokey pokey because it reminded me of the camps I hated in 2000 and 2001 that I went to because the students were forced to go on these camps back when I was in grade 5 and 6. Luckily I missed out camp in 2002 in grade 7, but only because I said my parents couldn’t afford it. My mum was upset when I said that I said that to the teacher. She didn’t like the teachers thinking my family was disadvantaged.
We weren’t poor, I just didn’t want to go on camp, because I was hallucinating that the other kids were bullying me. But they weren’t, I just needed to of entered the mental health system at a young age.
I prefer the macarena, as it reminds me of the camp I had mania at back in 2005. I was grade 10 by then. The illness had changed from plain hallucinations to hallucinations and bipolar elements. But, even worse than hallucinating people abusing me in 2000 and 2001, in 2005 I hallucinated that people were praising me. That’s why the camps I went to in 2005 were heaven on earth. I went on 3 of those camps.
But by 2006 the voices started abusing me, they abused me so much that I had my first suicide attempt by overdosing on sleeping tablets. I was first put on medication in the kiddy’s mental hospital. But I only recovered down the line when I had shock therapy. The psychiatrists of the child mental hospital didn’t even give me shock therapy when I badly needed it!
I knew things were wrong with me. In 2003 in grade 8 I was doing rowing and tennis. By 2004 in grade 9 I was on holiday with my parents up in north Queensland, where I made a promise to kill myself before my 18th birthday! Fancy that! Being on holiday and plotting suicide! I really didn’t want to live to see the future of the world, and even more my own future.
So my illness went in cycles. 2000 and 2001 I was depressed, 2002 and 2003 I was manic, 2004 I was depressed, 2005 I was manic, then 2006 I finally got some sort of treatment. Life is horrible with untreated mental illness. I don’t understand why I didn’t go into hospital in 2008 when I was an adult to get shock therapy. Guess lack of insight is the way the illness goes….
Oh, before I close this article, I remember I was attracted to a lady in grade 12 on the camp in 2005 during the winter in Brisbane. The camp was at Queensland Camping and Conference Centre Mapleton. She put her head on my shoulder in the meeting hall during the last day of the camp. Nobody kissed others on the camp, even though some were in relationships with others at the camp.
So, I was 16 on that camp in 2005, since I was kept down, I should of been in grade 11, so she wasn’t kept down, so, all things considered, she would of been 1 year older than me. So she’d be 34 by now, as I’ll be 33 this year. She probably had a child by now. She probably is happily married to someone else.
I would go on a camp with people my age, just the problem is, most of the ladies would be married, so I couldn’t hug them and be close to them, as a 34 yo lady’s husband would kill me. Such is the struggle of being a leftover man. Not that I am marriage material. I have no job, I live on a pension, I can’t drive, I am 3 out of 10 in looks, even when I was skinny I would only be a 5 out of 10 guy. So yeah, women are very happy when I practise celibacy and don’t bother them. lol
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