This is a story about my Schizophrenia meant to be painted. The years after college my father passed away on Jan. 2, 2007, due to natural causes and then my sister died the very next day in a car accident on her way to the funeral. I cannot express the pain and anguish that came over me.I suppose all people who are affected by mental illness have that moment when “it” happens—the moment when their condition makes itself known. My moment happened when I was an undergraduate in college. It was in the form of voices, hallucinations and paranoid thoughts that one of my professors was trying to kill me.
We are all around you. We are the walking wounded, the invisibly battle-scarred. You see us every day — in the grocery store, at carpool, at school pickup and dropoff, at PTA meetings, at the gym and at work and at the playground. You probably don’t know that we have a severe mental illness.
One weekend in June of 2017, our lives, the lives of our family, and most importantly, the life of our daughter Sydni, changed forever.
