Surviving Mental Illness

Published on June 13, 2017

This is a guest post by Valerie Fox of Morristown.

It has been years since my diagnosis of schizophrenia. At the time I was 21 years old. Today I am considered old " not middle-aged but old.

Looking back over the years, mental illness in the beginning had played havoc with my life. In the middle of my mental illness journey, schizophrenia was again responsible for destroying the life I had built after the diagnosis. Eventually I healed, but I had deep scars, the signature of schizophrenia.

After healing yet again, I tried to go on with my "new " life. There were times it was very challenging, other times very lonely, but for want of any other way out, I fought schizophrenia. The harder I did not let it rule me, the better I started feeling. Stigma of course was rampant, but it didn't matter because I had found my calling. While scarred, I did carve a good spot for myself in life.

Today it is approximately 55 years since the onset of schizophrenia in my life. It still occasionally challenges me, but I have learned and learned well it is definitely better to adhere to my treatment than to get caught up in the web of thinking I seem so well, therefore I am well. I have learned the hard way through homelessness that thoughts like that are very dangerous for me to entertain at all so I don't.

So today after many, many years of living with this illness, I can comfortably say I have survived schizophrenia. I don't know other persons' journeys, whether they have been easier than mine or harder, but I hope they too are in a comfortable place in their lives.

Valerie Fox
(a person in recovery)