I sat in my car holding a pistol in my hand. I thought to myself, “there’s just no other way.“ I was willing to give up on everything I ever cared for, my children, my husband, my parents. That’s how severe and how bad my mental illness had become. I cried loud to myself and walked out into the forest where no one would see me or hear me. I was tired of the loud noises, delusions, paranoia and the voices. I kneeled on the dirt and gently placed a towel over my chest. I grabbed the gun and placed it over my heart, I apologized to God, cursed the world and pulled the trigger only to find out that there was no bullets in the clip.

I got back in my car and went home extremely upset. I downed a whole bottle of pills and when my husband at that time came home, I told him what I had done. My husband accompanied me to see a Psychiatrist in Silver City New Mexico where I had lived at the time. The doctor then had me admitted to a psychiatric ward in Las Cruces, New Mexico. It seemed like my whole life got turned upside down in a flash.

Hello, my name is Iris and I have schizoaffective disorder. I am a 31 year old mother of three wonderful children. Before I was ever diagnosed I briefly want to say that I had a pretty normal childhood. I lived with my mother who at the time was in her second marriage. I am the youngest of three and grew up in a Christian home. As a teenager I maintained fairly good grades and participated in many school activities. I was outgoing and enjoyed life. I went to Western New Mexico University where I received my B.A. in Secondary Education and a B.A. in Spanish in 2007.

Prior to my diagnosis in 2012 I never felt psychotic or delusional. I felt like any average person. I met my husband in Silver City New Mexico when I was 15 years old and had my first son when I was seventeen. I guess you could say we had our struggles like most parents, but always made my education and my family a priority. When I graduated college I was already pregnant with my third child, Sophia and decided to put my children first and become a stay at home mom. My husband at the time was very supportive of that. Unfortunately, because of my mental illness my husband decided a divorce was best. All I can say about my divorce is that I wish I would have been more knowledgeable about my mental illness and had more support from my family and friends.

So what is schizoaffective disorder?
According to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness),“Schizoaffective disorder is a chronic mental health condition characterized primarily by symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hallucinations or delusions, and symptoms of a mood disorder such as mania and depression. For me, my symptoms included depressed mood, disorganized thinking and delusions in the past, but now it’s just depression that I am mainly battling with.

The onset of symptoms usually begins in young adulthood. For me it began at the age of 29. Schizoaffective disorder is a dark and difficult mental illness to live with for a lot of people. For three long years my schizoaffective disorder was like a roller coaster, some days were very hard, but others were very tolerable. I would just like to say that there is absolutely no shame whatsoever to seek help when you feel you need it. Therapy, counseling and meetings with a psychiatrist can make a world of difference and can help you learn coping skills while being treated with medication.

2012 How it first started!
I remember my ex-husband looking at the blank stare on my face almost catatonic like. I didn’t want to leave the house. I was living a dark nightmare and had no idea what it was, why it happened to me or what to even do about it. One night I woke up and fell on my knees and wept out loud for God to intervene in my life. I rebuked anything evil that I may or may have not repented of and gave my life to the Lord. Although I do believe in God and prayed often, my mental illness was so bad that I would constantly stare at the gun cabinet debating to take a gun and go out to the woods to kill myself. I had three wonderful children who needed me, how could I even think about doing that to them? I know suicide is wrong, who am I to decide my own death? I thought to myself every day, “God please be with me and help me through it” I would tell myself.

 The hardest part of having a mental illness for me was admitting that I had one. I decided to take my kids and move in with my mother for a while because I felt my husband just wasn’t giving me the support I needed. He was always too busy with work and by the time he came home he didn’t want to hear what I had to say. I had to admit, mentally I wasn’t well, but what was it? What was wrong with me?

Sleepless nights
I spent many nights not sleeping because I would have conversations with people who weren’t even there at three o’clock in the morning. As weird and ironic as it sounds I would constantly wake up from a nightmare at around three in the morning. I would constantly suffer from nightmares and often feel as if though there was a negative presence in the house. I was so full of sadness that I didn’t want to admit to myself that I had severe depression. I would text my family and tell them how much I loved them as if though it were the last time I would speak to them.

Most nights I would lay awake thinking the most amazing unbelievable things. For example, I believed that the government was sending weird satellite signals to my house that could somehow zap my mind using some kind of secret signal with a push of a button. I thought that my life revolved around a government conspiracy against me and thought of every possible scenario as to why the government wanted to target me. I would check the mirrors and the vents in the house to make sure there wasn’t some kind of microchip hidden on the back so the government could listen into my conversations.

That’s when the paranoia became severe. I began to believe that maybe there was like an illuminati type conspiracy targeting me and the whole town was in on it including my neighbors. I began sending text messages to myself thinking the government could read them. I wrote pages and pages of letters to the President to which I read out loud thinking he could hear me almost as if though that would be the solution to my problems.

 I also began calling out license plates numbers from random people in their cars as they drove by whom I assumed were in on it too. I would grab my bible and read to try and put my faith in God and hope that He would save me from it, but for some reason he chose to allow me to experience it. Medications weren’t helping me, instead they did the exact opposite and increased my suicidal thoughts which led to many trips to the hospital..

The faces
The worst part of my schizoaffective disorder was going out in public. Every face I had to look at the store or anywhere I had to go had all eyes on me and I thought they were all in on this so called conspiracy that my mind had created. I would look at someone’s face and see it slightly distorted as if though I was in the movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose, but it wasn’t a movie. It got worse every time someone would look directly into my eyes. It was very real and got scarier every time I went out.

That’s when I began to seclude myself. I didn’t even want to go to the living room because the television was there. As I observed the TV I felt I was getting messages from people on talk shows or felt people on the news were somehow indirectly making comments towards me. Yea, I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what psychosis can do to people. The only time I left my bed room was to have conversations with people that I thought were listening in on me inside the garage so I wouldn’t freak out my mother more than I already had.

My family kept telling me that there was no possible way the government would target me, why me? I was an average person like any other, Christian woman, involved in my bible studies and my children’s school. But it did happen to me. I clinged on to the Psalm of David like never before and I had many different people praying for me. I never told people what I had because I was afraid of rejection or that they would stop talking to me. The time I did open up to a friend who I felt was a strong Christian woman I never heard from her again.

My first visit to the psychiatric ward
When I had settled into my mother’s house who just happened to live next door to a Baptist pastor, I decided to tell him what was happening. I explained to him that I would see demonic things that others couldn’t and that I was constantly waken up in the middle of the night. He explained to me that I just needed to pray and they prayed for me. Prayer wasn’t enough to make this stop.

It was another day of hell when I received a knock at the door. I opened it and it was two women from Adult protective services at the Psychiatric center. My mother wanted to have me committed. I told the two women to go away and shut the door in their faces convinced that I needed a private investigator to look into my case. I asked my mother how it was possible that she could do that to me and told me “YOU NEED HELP!”

She took off with my youngest daughter and I called the police demanding that she return my daughter. Out of anger I broke the glass on her china cabinet and wept hysterically. When the police arrived I explained to them what had happened, they spoke to my mother who heard her side of the story and decided it was best I go to a mental health ward for observation.

I don’t hate my mother for having me admitted, I thank her for all the support she has given me and for all the times she’s helped me. The first time I got admitted to psychiatric ward was in 2012 in Tucson Arizona. There the psychiatrist insisted that I needed medication, but I kept refusing it. I thought that the doctor just wanted to keep me drugged up. “Schizophrenia” the doctors told me. How could I be fine one day and the next just have this so called schizophrenia? I told the doctor. I stayed there one week and finally submitted to the idea of taking and anti-psychotic. I kept asking for someone of Christian faith to speak with me, but they still refused to let me leave the hospital unless I submitted to the fact that I needed medication.

Medications
The first antipsychotic the doctor put me on made me so shaky and drowsy at the same time. I have a long list of different kinds of medication I have taken for psychosis that I don’t want to relive. Every side effect of every pill I tried I had to learn to cope with gave me side effects including increased suicidal thoughts. It took me a long time for me to find the right pills for me and till this day I still feel drowsy during the day. I have attempted suicide three times and have been admitted to four psychiatric hospitals, including a state hospital in Las Vegas New Mexico in which I was court ordered to go.

Support
My mother never left my side. Unlike my ex- husband, who refused to want to help me through it, my mother was always there just a phone call away or she would drive to my house for support. I was afraid to tell anyone what I had for fear of rejection, especially in the Christian church. My husband was of absolutely no help. Every time I was having an episode and needed my husband’ support he would just yell at me as if though yelling it into me that it wasn’t happening was the solution to the problem.

I hated living in a dark nightmare while at the same time trying to keep it together for the kids. I would cry a lot and often not leave my bed. My children saw all of that and as much as I regret doing what I did a fraction of their memories are going to linger over the fact that they saw their mom depressed and hospitalized and I will forever live with that.

Faith
My Christian faith is the most important thing in life above all things I believe God comes first in everything. I would often go into the garage every day and begin by praying for Israel as well as the president and begin the day talking out loud rebuking satan and crying out to Jesus for help. How I desired to have rest from my mental illness, but for three long years I didn’t.

It would be very difficult for a lot of people to believe that the things I saw were very real. I know that there is a spiritual battle going on every day and a part of me was able to tune into that. One night something inside me felt a cold chill. I believed I could see an army of demons coming closer towards me. I would cry out to God to bring his mightiest angels to surround me and fight them away and He did every time that I felt the cold evil darkness creeping in closer to my house. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.

My mother, a Christian woman herself would always take the time to pray with me, but I was still facing the darkness. I wish my husband would have taken the time to pray with me, but every time I asked him to pray with me he would just stay quiet or walk away.

The last hospital I went to was an ice breaker for me. I got to see first-hand what real mental illness looks like in other people and somehow the medication the doctors had me on seemed to make all the bad things go away. By now, I was on medication for a couple months. By then the voices, the delusions, and the dark figures started to disappear.

My mother who drove all the way to Las Vegas NM to be by my side, made some Christian friends there who visited me in the hospital and prayed for me. I felt I was getting better, I could talk more with others and my body didn’t feel the side effects as much. It takes time for the right medication to sink in. I kept wondering Lord, use me in this moment to help others.

While at my stay at this state hospital, I carried my bible and I met a Christian man named Robert who was diagnosed with the same thing I was. My stay at this hospital was very discouraging. Robert was about six feet tall and big in stature. Robert was a retired Vietnam veteran and in his late fifties. We talked and reminded each other that the Lord would help us through the time we were there. In a way I felt a sense of protection by Robert as he scolded anyone who was there that tried to be bothersome towards me. He was admitted court ordered as well because he thought people were trying to get into his house and he took a gun outside to where the neighbors would see and someone called the police and had him admitted to a hospital.

Regardless if that was true or not, I enjoyed Robert’s company because he knew what it felt like to have a mental illness and we kept each other sane and certain that neither one of us belonged there. Some people there were so bad they would shout and become aggressive by throwing chairs and would stir up fights with the staff demanding that they let them out. Others seemed mentally gone and in their own world. One young man I spoke to believed he was Eminem the famous rapper you see on TV. He also had schizophrenia and his was really bad! He would say the most outrageous things about being able to morph into a snakelike being, very weird. Although we did share some similarities about feeling we were being watched by the government, everybody that was there at the mental hospital was different and unique.

Some patients were brought in by the police, other patients had been there for over 6 months and would circle around the doctors waiting to be seen so that they could get released and the doctor would always say “I don’t know at this time”. As obvious as I could tell, these people were severely mentally ill, they needed hope and prayer just as much as I did. For the first real time in my life I began to have empathy for other people. After all, I was in the same place as they were and needed the help as much too.

During my time in the Las Vegas hospital I drew pictures and tried to keep my mind occupied. The hospital was not only filthy everywhere, but the staff was not suited for the kind of positions that they had. I wrote bible verses on my drawings and then posted them on the bulletin board that was bare and had no coping skills for anyone to see. The next day someone must have been looking at my drawings because I had two patients compliment me and one even asked me to write bible verses down for him on a piece of paper which I gladly did. I often prayed for everyone there including myself.

The doctors only had me there one week and told me I was fine enough to go home. Robert left around the same time and we both knew we would never see each other again, but in my mind I see him as a guardian angel who stood by my side when no one else would.

When I got home, I continued counseling sessions at with a gentleman named Matthew. He was kind of a quiet fellow, who always let me vent even when things sounded outrageous or were irrational. When the medication started to take effect on me I felt like my old self again. I was then able to look back on the things that I had done and said in the past and realized, I truly was delusional and in a serious state of psychosis. I completely believe God was in control of everything.

Regardless of the fact that I felt I had little support from family and friends, my children were the light of my life. My counselor called my husband a few times to ask him if he would accompany me to our sessions. By this time my husband was already looking for an attorney to divorce me and I had no idea that was what he wanted.

Leaving my new home in Silver City was my next step. I was tired of my husband ignoring me every time he came home from work and I was tired of the pointless arguments and fights we had in front of the children. I stood outside to talk to him and asked him what he wanted and he simply said a divorce. Our marriage had ended even though I desperately did not want it to end. When I took my marriage vows I was serious when I said “through sickness and in health”, but he gave up on me.

Since I was living with my mom I felt my life has made a complete turnaround in the most positive way. Do I still struggle with delusions? No. Do I hear audible voices? No. Am I depressed? Yes, but I am being treated for it. I continued my counseling therapy and visits with my doctor as well as taking the prescribed medication. I can go out in public and take my kids to a nice dinner or to go visit friends. My children and I attend church at Calvary Chapel on Sundays and we attend the midweek service for bible studies. I take my children to school and I pick them up. I am a proud parent of two Honor Roll students who have maintained good grades. If they are sick or need to go to the dentist, I am there to take them. When the kids need help with their homework mom is on the job. My kids are the light of my life and I pray for them every day. I completely feel as if though I have walked out of the darkness and stepped into the light.

A combination of the right medication, time and counseling has helped me be in a better place. I do have schizoaffective disorder, but I am considered high functioning. In fact, I look back at the delusions I faced and realized how crazy it was of me to be under psychosis and that I truly did have a mental illness that sprung into my life like a huge surprise.

Coping
First and foremost, support was my means of survival. I needed all my family to be supportive and they are still to this day. I alone created my own group of specific people that I have for support for days that are hard which are family friends and my children. I never miss a medication or a counseling appointment, they are important to me because they are one of my main sources for support. Seeing my psychiatrist is also important, but the key to being able to reach some goals are mostly through my family who cares about me and always lend an ear in case I feel like venting.

Morning walks are helpful as well as having a cup of coffee as the sun rises. Praying is an essential part of my life as well God is the greatest counselor a person could have and He alone is available at any time of the day or night. I take my medications every day like I’m supposed to, continue counseling in Tucson AZ and follow up with my doctor visits.

I enjoy taking long rides in my car with my children or going out for some fun at a restaurant. I have met incredible people with mental illnesses at my visits to the hospital, mostly people who are kind hearted and high functioning like me and I am blessed to have met them because I have empathy for them as well as understanding. Some people are very low functioning and need a lot of help, but others can live a pretty good life and be an effective parent and friend.