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Maybe this article about my struggle with paranoid schizophrenia will help someone. I certainly hope so. It is not a lost cause. There is hope. I have demonstrated to myself and others that the battle can be at least partially won.

You have to help yourself. You can’t sit around waiting for someone to do it for you. It was after 13 years of suffering with schizophrenia that I finally came to realize the fact that I had a mental illness and was not possessed by demons.

One day, soon after my father died of a heart attack, my aunt said to me, “Snap out of it. You cannot do this to your mother.” It was then that I realized that my mother had suffered enough and I decided to fight back. These words had hit home and for some reason opened my eyes.

For 13 years I had seen things, heard things and felt things that terrified me. Now, with the help of God and remembering my aunt’s words, I began to slowly come out of that hell. I realized there was nothing there and I didn’t have to be afraid. I started to take my medicine the way I should. It is now 17 years since this all happened. I still feel as if I’m detangling or unwinding from something.

However, my main enemy has become my memory, especially of the time when I lived on the street and had knives put to my throat and was sexually abused.

I still have the schizophrenia and still see, hear and feel things and the pain is really bad at times, but I’m still better and there are a lot of people I am grateful to: my family, the doctors, the therapist, and most of all, my aunt.