They are stealthy. You don’t realize they are there until they have a stronghold and you are forced to face an uphill battle in order to get them to leave. By the time the cacophony is identified, it really is too late. The first is always the Commentator. The gender changes over the years, so for our purposes, we’ll use the female pronouns. Commentator doesn’t have a name other than the descriptive title, but she is an old friend. She seemingly doesn’t pose any threat nor any possibility of harm. You rather like that she is back to describe your every move. From the “extraordinary”–“J is skillfully navigating into the traffic and earns not one glare from the other drivers as she slides the car into the middle lane…” to the purest description of boring possible–“J is scratching the right lower calf because it has an itch.” Doesn’t matter what you are doing, she is there giving the play by play action. You welcome her. You know you are not alone as things in life start to feel a little less secure than usual.
But you should be afraid of Commentator. You should run screaming from her. While she herself poses no threat, she is the gateway to all of the others. She opens the door and invites the others in, as if they were vampires and cannot enter without an invitation. The others are not as verbose as her and so you do not truly notice their occasional comment or observation. You may hear them, but you write it off to a traveling thought lingering in the filter of your brain.
Until you are finally in a very quiet location and you cannot help but realize that the cacophony has returned. The voices a person with schizophrenia may hear over a lifetime are varied. At least that’s been my experience over the three decades of living with it in my life. There has been God, Satan, my father, myself, my childhood self, Barbie, among others. And of course, the Commentator. Once there was a very dark person, genderless, really, who said very bad things and suggested horrific “solutions”, always only self-imposed, causing harm only to myself, but horrific anyway. That one was with me from age 17 till 19 (until I started treatment) and fortunately has never returned.
For me, the schizophrenia has always been a blessing and a curse. I got amazing work done when I was in an active episode. Sleep was not needed as much and there was usually a helpful voice that would tell me what to do or say when I got too confused due to the lack of sleep. The voices often solved problems for me. During the many years I have not been in an active episode and have studied the illness, I have gained advantages and I now better understand what’s happening when in an episode. But at times this creates a paradox in itself because I’m deep enough into an episode to identify it but still well enough to step outside and determine, in an objective, clinical sort of way, ‘oh my, I need to do this, this, and this because I’m having an episode’. It’s an odd place to exist. It fortunately doesn’t happen often and doesn’t last for long.
At this point, I have been able to take the voices in stride when a little episode has hit over the years. The one episode about six years ago was not awful as I was able to readily identify it and upped my treatment to kick its arse back into place. The voices then were really just a nuisance, but not harmful. Obviously, I realize in the grand scheme of things, they are technically harmful as one really shouldn’t be hearing them in the first place, but relatively speaking, they didn’t do much. The last bad episode was when I was pregnant with older son and had intentionally (and with the four doctors’ permissions) went off the medications so I could try to get pregnant. That episode started in the second month of the pregnancy and by the third month had crippled me to point of not being able to leave the house. But Hubby was there and took care of me and both sons during their times in my womb. There was no episode with younger son since I had started the new treatment during the first pregnancy.
Cacophony. What a wonderful word. I wonder if I like it for the definition, a harsh, discordant mixture of sounds, or because it reminds me of so many other wonderful words…sarcophagus, symphony, epiphany, chaos. Not sure. I feel smarter when I’m in an episode, although I do have more tangential thinking patterns. You would too if you were listening to as many people as I do then.
This reflective nature at this time about this part of my life makes sense to me…I’ve been thinking about it a lot as I reflect on younger son’s journey. (His tic has evolved to a chest thump. It’s cute. He’s a little Tarzan.) The voices are invisible. They’re easier to hide, especially when you are used to them and know how to handle it. It’s harder to hide thumping your chest.
Stealthy cacophony.
ohbloodyhell8 