I am so sick and tired of hearing voices. The voice in my head starts in as soon as I wake up in the morning, telling me, “Tomorrow never comes, motherf—er!” And “F— you, Teresa, F— you! No seriously, this time, F— you!” Then it continues on, saying, “This is the last time you’ll ever see your husband,” and “this is the last time you’ll do the laundry,” and so on and so forth. Then he’ll say, “How many more last times do you think you’re gonna get?” It’s so wearisome and frightening. Then there is the female voice, who says random words like, “Inauguration,” and “weeding,” and “Fremont,” and “woe.” Then the bad voice puts frightening song lyrics in my head- “If you fear dying, then you’re already dead!” and “he’s killed so many he can’t come home.” I wish I had never heard that band. One Day as a Lion. Terrible lyrics. And I also get the chorus to “Like a Stone” by Audioslave. Very upsetting.

I’ve been having these voices in my head for over a year. I want to say they started in late 2019. “Stupid, stupid motherf—er!” I hear constantly. And, “You’re so stupid, Rose! You’re so stupid!” That’s a line from Titanic, when Rose clambers back on to the Titanic from the lifeboat. It’s because the bad voice says he’s the devil, and that I’m in hell, and that’s why I’m going through all of these symptoms every day. Unfortunately, some things that I had done in college fourteen years ago match up with what the bad voice is telling me. It’s such a tedious, long story, I won’t elaborate here. Just suffice it to say that it’s not outlandish to think that I’ve landed in hell for what I’d done. My friends think it’s ridiculous, and that there’s no way the voice in my head is the devil. I wish I could believe them, but my experience of the world lines up with what the bad voice is telling me. The sun outside doesn’t look right, the trees don’t look right. I’m seeing orange cones EVERYWHERE and the bad voice tells me that they’re there to remind me that I’m not safe anywhere. I literally can’t go two minutes without seeing one when we’re out and about. It’s bordering on absurd. I asked my husband if they bother him too, and he said they do bother him, but not as much as it bothers me. That gave me a little consolation.

I don’t know how to deal with these voices at all. It’s something I am going to be working on with my therapist. I don’t know what his plans are to help me, but it better be something fantastic, because I’m at my wit’s end with this. It doesn’t help that I constantly feel like I’m disappearing, and that everything out there looks like it’s disappearing. The bad voice is saying “clusterf—, clusterf—!” I don’t get a break from him. He says other things that are so frightening, I can’t write them here. I don’t want to say them aloud, or give them any life. He says, “Your life, stupid! Your life!” It’s true that I want my normal life back, and that I’m suffering from schizophrenia very severely. I must say, it certainly feels like the end of my life, as I barely get through each day, and I no longer have any interest in anything. I spend all my time slogging through my symptoms and the bad voices that I hear.

I love writing, it really helps me, and I hope my writing helps someone else to not feel so isolated, to know that there are others going through what you are going through too, and that we’re in this together. I have such a heart for other people, I really want to help someone else out if I can. I think I’m going to light some incense. That always lifts my mood. I’m writing a grocery shopping list for tomorrow. The female voice just said, “Quinoa.” She always says things with an emphasis on the stressed syllable. “Quiiiiinoa.” I don’t mind her voice as much as the bad male voice. I don’t know what to write about now, I just know I want to keep writing. Everything looks so terrible to my eyes, I don’t know what to do about it! The bad voice is saying, “Sink sank sunk motherf—er!” As though I’ve “sunk to the deepest depth” which is something that my husband had told me a long time ago when he was upset with me. Sometimes it feels like that’s true, based on how terrible I feel, and sometimes it feels like poppycock. I wish it felt like poppycock right now, but the truth is I feel like I’ve sunk, I don’t feel whole, I don’t feel connected to the world around me, and it looks like it’s all disappearing. I’m really scared, and the bad voice says, “Hell is a scary place to be.” How I wish he would shut up for once, and let me live my life! And he says, “That’s precisely what you can’t do!” This just goes on ad nauseam, all day, every day. I’m so, so tired of it. My medication is supposed to be stopping the bad voice, but it’s not working. I don’t know what is going to make it stop. I just know I can’t go on like this.