It started in my early twenties. At the time, I didn’t know what was going on. It’s hard to tell reality from fiction with schizophrenia. I would get extremely paranoid. I was living in an apartment in Montevallo, Alabama and going to college. I thought my neighbors upstairs had bugged my apartment. I could see little cameras in the corner of every room. I went so far as to tear out part of my ceiling in the den in the hunt for those cameras. I also could barely leave my apartment as I felt people were watching me and following me.
I will never forget that hot, blustery day I stood in front of a convenience store in a moment of lucidity. I called my father on a payphone.
“I need help. Something is not right.” I said.
“What do you mean? What’s happening?” He asked.
“I think I am going crazy!” I shouted.
He arranged for me to have a stay in the mental hospital and got me a psychiatrist. The problem was that I would not take the pills they were giving me. I thought they were trying to control my mind with those little pills. It took many years later when they got me on the risperdal injection that I got stable for the first, real time in my life.
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