Table of Contents
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Living With and Inside Mental Illness xv
It's All Around Us, We Don't See It 1
Mindful Engagement 3
A Rat and a Motel: Looking for Love 5
Giving It All: Still Trying 10
Voices and Lessons: Schizophrenia Shows Up Unexpectedly 13
Smoking Mirrors: Fractured Realities 17
Looking Back and Beyond 19
Voices and Recollections 22
Specter of Himself: Life Slides Off 24
Foreign Context: Schizophrenic Trip 27
Delusions and Misperceptions 32
Inner Voices: Holding On to Myself 34
Unintended Disclosures: Voices Speak 40
Homeboy Remembers: No One's to Blaine 46
Self-Medication: Hiding from Help 55
Urban Upbringing: Running from Self 61
Stories Are Life 68
With Family Tales, Loneliness Goes Away 70
Bed-Wetting and Past Lives 76
Seeking for Silence: At Rope's End 83
Vermin and Other Things 88
Creating Family from Scratch: Found the One 94
Acting the Part: Psychotic Performance 96
Starving the Demons 101
Memories and Loneliness 104
Sometimes Death Is the Only Option 107
TV Programs Inside: Voices Alive 112
At Another Time, I Would Have Been Don Quixote 117
Reality Is Imagined 124
Imagination Begets Life 129
Drugging It to Normal 138
Board-and-Care Warehousing 140
Running Away to Mental Illness 147
The Genius Within 158
Talking Wishes and Repressed Delusions 162
Right Under Your Nose 165
Still Hoping for a Better Life 172
Fears and Mental Illness 176
In the Onset: AH Together Now 181
Drugs Only Masked It 190
Friends and Family Kept Me Afloat 194
Detachment and Fear Run My Life 198
Behind the Smoke Curtain 200
Cigarette Wealth 205
Clean and Sober: His Reality 208
Depression and All the Not-So-Positives 212
Wasting Away, and No One Noticed 217
Losing It: My Mind Is Not Right 219
Blarings and Glarings in My Mind 223
Gustos y Disgustos: Gustatory Delusions 230
Lonely by Myself 233
Whose Reality? 237
Can Trauma and Sexual Abuse Cause Schizophrenia? 241
What Waits for Me? 244
Pills, Pills, and More Pills: And Now What? 251
Epilogue 259
Works Cited 269
