Symptoms are very important to prevent your son to destroy parts of his life. It’s devastating to think about The nightmare my son went through, and instead of being helped, the all family was against him. So I want to share my son’s history, to help others to reduce the pain of their loved sons, when they start to feel the fear of being estranged.

The first strange sign was at 5. The day his brother was born, my son David, started using diapers to sleep because he started to pee his bed, until he was ten years old. When his little brother was 4 years old, David started to show a strange behavior. David never liked his brother very much. He was never protective or interested in helping his brother. I can say this because we used to have 2 twins at my house 1 year younger than David, and I could see the difference. They were always very protective with the little David´s brother, at the beach, crossing a street, playing, etc.

But when David was about 13 Years old, he started to harm his brother for every insignificant thing that his little brother did. If his brother, Edy, was running and touched him even without intention, David got mad and tried to strangle him. If Edy was making noises, David used to show that was very disturbed with that. He hated his brother because he made noises breathing. Because he enter his room, because he touched his chair at dinner table, he crossed a invisible line at the back seat of the car, that they shared. Because he was singing, or moving, or breathing….David was always very nervous with everything that Edy did.

I talked about this problem several times to different doctors and all of them insisted that was normal.  But things got worst. When Edy started at school, he started to try convince me that Edy was a very bad boy at school, that he was always on fights, he even imagined injuries at Edy´s hands and showed me “ See, his hand is hurt, see this red spot, is because of his fights, why don´t you believe me? Why?“ And repeated this for more than 15 minutes.

Off course I went to school to confirm Edy’s behavior and he had never been on fights and the red spot he pointed was just a birth sign. And off course I thought he was just jealous… because I always played a lot with David and since Edy was born things changed a little. Every day David had some excuse to hate his brother and was always looking at him with hate. Everything that Edy did, like breathing noisy due to asthma, David used to say that Edy was doing that to provoke him, even when he was asleep. When Edy went to the same school as David, David was senior and Edy was a junior. But David decided to instigate all his big friends to harm and make fun of his little brother. Bullying his own brother instead of helping him. The idea that all was just due to a natural jealousy was reinforced by the fact that David was a sweet boy to everybody else, very intelligent, very good student, very helpful at home, very obedient, the perfect son. He always had good grades.

I’m from Portugal (europe) and here the grades go from 0 to 20. My son used to have 20 at maths, philosophy, english, and 18 to biology, chemestry, 17 to french, and so on… At the last year of his high school, something strange happened he started to have a 19 to maths in a test and 7 in the other and again 17, or 6 he was very irregular. At this time he was 18 years old.

Started to smoke, to lose weight, skipping school a lot, and moving away from family, isolation, but still managed to finish high school with an average school of 17, although the irregularity of his grades. He managed to be accepted to University and could choose a good one, because of his good grades, and he chose a good graduation biochemistry course. But he was no longer my super intelligent son. He was my poor ill son.

So he dropped out saying it was too much for him. It’s important to explain that it’s very hard to go to a university here in Portugal, it is a big achievement. Only the good students can go to public universities and the others go to private universities, if they have money, but most of those universities are not reliable. So David just lost his first year at university, decided to change course, and choose biology, that was easier. 

But another strange thing happened with David personality. At the age of 16, his hate against his brother was now against me, his mother. He went to a psychiatrist… but he gave up after 4 visits. And the doctor said nothing. As you read this you can imagine the suffering of all of us. David was suffering because he was always being punished and criticized for being so mean, and off course he lost a lot of affection due to his behavior.

When the family was together there was always a war, David was always trying to prove that his brother was mean. He kept saying that just by looking to the face of Edy everyone could tell he was mean. Edy was suffering because he never could play with his brother and was afraid of him. He never could enjoy traveling in car in family because it was a war  that started when David enter the car. And I was suffering for the 3 of us. (My husband was always working or at the gym).

I was saying that David started to hate his mother. He kept saying that I made him sick when I was speaking in french, or when I was talking about computers, or about other things. He was very critical to me, he hated every thing I said, or do, and he just wanted me to know that he despised me. We thought it was just the adolescence crisis. But things got worst. He started to insult me everywhere I go with him. He was always saying that I was mean or petty, or crazy, mental ill,  and even in public places or in front of all family, he kept embarrassing me.  I felt like he was always hating me so much that he could kill me.

At this time I forced him again to visit psychiatrist, I could not bear so much hate form him, the son that loved me so much, that couldn’t see me crying, is now making me cry every day. I tried to understand him, ask him, but he just kept saying I was not his mother, and if I wanted to be his mother, I had to do a lot to deserve it. (I´ve been a very present mother, I left my job as Hostess, because I couldn’t watch David crying when I left him at the nursery, so I decided to be a mother. I used to tell him lot of stories, sing lot of songs, make videos of him, I just loved to be with him all day doing things)

So this made that David´s hate for me, was more painful. Because I knew I made a lot of thing to deserve being his mother.  In 3 years of driving just 5 Km once a week he had more than 10 accidents. We had to forbid him to drive. And now David is 21 years old and the psychiatrist took almost 2 years to tell us he is schizophrenic.  He continues to attend the course of biology at university, but with many difficulties… This year maybe he just stays home, I don´t know if we are going to force him to that effort, but I think he wants to go because he did not accept, yet that he is not the old David anymore.

The symptoms of schizophrenia, as you can see, can vary a lot, my son has no paranoia or voices in his head, but he imagines that people deserve to be hated for some secret reason. He sees things in our faces that make him believe that we are mean. He thinks that criticizing a woman for being with a particular dress is sufficient reason for to start a war with me in the street, calling me mean and crazy and mental ill. He believes that he is superior to everyone because he knows everything. He is always right, even when what he is saying makes no sense. He is very afraid of being abducted by aliens, but he never confessed to anyone, until I asked him directly. He remembers things about us that never happened, things that make me us, bad people. He sees expressions on our faces that are not there. He wants to educate and teach good manners to everyone, even to a stranger in the street. He chooses the wrong clothes for hot weather or cold weather. He never cares about his appearance and when I try to help him, he just tells me that I´m stupid and hypocrite because I care about that kind of thing. He goes out without taking a shower… and with the clothes to sleep. 

My schizophrenic son that hated my other son, now respects him, he is the only person he respects, he is only 16 years old.  My Schizophrenic son does not change the words when he talks, he changes the moral laws, the common sense, the social laws, he defends crazy ideas. He is loosing the sense of reality. Wrong or wright. And no one can teach him the right things, because he believes we are all stupid, crazy, mental ill, old fashion, etc etc he is the only one who knows the right things… about everything. So how could anyone detect schizophrenia in someone with this kind of symptoms?

He is so lost, and I cry every time he shows me where he is lost. In a world where he is the one who owns the true and makes the rules. A world where no one could live, but he lives there, alone, and I miss him so much. And I know that he also misses him self.