Reclaiming this blog- space as my own to be as self-obsessive as I choose..

I’ve decided to write a post with the sole intention of reclaiming this blog space.

It won’t be a long article, but I felt that the need to type a few words explicitly channelling this desire because it’s opposite- self-doubt- has been plaguing me and preventing me from writing here as often as I’d like to.

I haven’t put any articles together for a while because I’d spoken to a few people who had commented, not maliciously, that this blog was a fairly self-obsessive, introverted affair of mine. I can be randomly sensitive over certain things and this is definitely one of them, mainly because it’s true!

The blog is centred around my experiences of mental illness, also my attempts at writing a book and so pivots around very personal, internally focused issues. Schizophrenia is really a distorted mirror to the self, and so taking that set of mirrors and adding another level to them through writing- it does all become rather introverted to the extreme.

It seemed to me that I was being highly self indulgent, writing about the very thing I was trying to get over. It seemed as though I was promoting something inside of myself which wasn’t useful or healthy and on that note I’ve practically stopped writing over the course of the last six months. I didn’t want to be introverted in this way, I didn’t want to be so self-obsessive. These are not personality traits I wanted to develop further.

However in the last couple of weeks I’ve decided that this isn’t fair, and also doesn’t represent my beliefs. This thing is there inside of me whether I write about it or not- I still suffer rage, despair and all of the fissures which come from experiencing such drastic, intense emotions, often for no apparently good reason and without alarm. These symptoms come on whether I like it or not, and do not represent the whole of the schizophrenic experience.

I started initially writing articles about my condition because I didn’t want to slip into the easy practise of thinking it was all bad, because it is not- and moreover there are so many wonderfully mysterious aspects of schizophrenia that I couldn’t resist picking some of them apart and trying to re-frame them, or greater understand them, via writing.

Schizophrenia is inherently obtuse, and so I have decided that the pleasure and small amount of satisfaction I gain from writing about it is more important than my own fears of waking up one morning having turned to stone. It helps me blow off steam, and helps me develop my own evolving understanding of the condition, myself, and my own spiritual beliefs.

Moreover this was the reason I started this blog in the first place- to deconstruct the schizophrenic experience and more importantly, the stereotypes and prejudices which surround it. I still hold to my belief that the vast majority of the schizophrenic experience is spiritual, although as I have relapsed in the last six months and experienced that intensity again, my definition of what the word spiritual exactly means has developed in terms of “mental illness.”

I still believe this is all so very important, and so I’m writing this article to reclaim this space as my own. Beware for long, slightly rambling articles about strange, uncertain topics and if self-awareness and dissection bother you you may need to find another blog to read.

🙂