To celebrate World Mental Health Day on the 10th October I thought I’d share my story again as the last one got deleted as it was on my old site and this is the new and improved one. I decided to be more honest in this one as I purposely left bits out but not today. As the title says and for those who didn’t know I suffer from psychosis and have been suffering from it since I was seven, around 27 years now and wasn’t treated for it until 2016. For people who don’t know anything about the illness, Psychosis is a mental health problem that causes people to perceive or interpret things differently from those around them, symptoms of psychosis are;
- hallucinations,
- delusions,
- confused and disturbed thoughts,
- lack of insight and self-awareness,
I’m not sure when or how they started probably moving to Barbados with my gran and my mum’s absence that didn’t help either she didn’t want anything to do with me and it was decided I would go and live with my gran and her then-husband so I had to say goodbye to friends and the place I loved most, people were friendly around the way I must say. My time in Barbados wasn’t good and I struggled with reality every day but Madonna and Micheal Jackson kept me alive and played the Immaculate Collections and all the Micheal Jackson albums daily on my Walkman crying a lot too. It was then the voices started and we weirdly bonded they would cheer me up when I would cry or tell me to wind my neck in when I was getting in trouble in school or at home. That’s how I let it go on for so long as I eventually began to think that I couldn’t survive without the voices but that was later on in my life in my teenage years. It all stems from an event that happened in real life but if I was there that’s another story. I’m talking about an illegal rave called Sunrise Back To The Future I was only 4 when it happened and my mum may have taken me to it which explains quite a lot like why I have the deepest passion for House music and all things underground I even thought I saw a picture of myself at a rave in Bath with the words “Is This You” underneath and the words were true but if that was me in the picture that’s another thing. I didn’t investigate that the voices had a hold of me on that day but I wished I did as I will never know if that was me. It sounds crazy but it is possible and I remember it like it was yesterday how it and what happened but at the same time I have psychosis so delusions is its middle name. I have gone on Facebook and broke the silence with my mum but she still hasn’t responded guess she still doesn’t want anything to do with me but for my sanity, I wish she would respond and truthfully. That’s why I haven’t done a blog post about it as I can’t do a blog post on something that isn’t factual to my life or though saying that it could be all real just doubt doing overtime. I’ve had this possible delusion since I can remember and isn’t new not sure what age but it was around 2015 when I was watching it on YouTube it possibly came back or I started having delusions.
After nearly being thrown out of primary school I made it to secondary school which was hell but heaven. I met one of my idols Aaliyah and a few friends who I don’t see and haven’t seen since I got expelled but I had fun and was a troubling but fun time for me but it was then the psychosis got all too much for me or at least it started to get that way. It was 2001 when it got overload with 9/11 and Aaliyah’s death which by the way I thought she was murdered and they were coming after me. It was that point her songs started to get threatening and……it’s hard to describe but it wasn’t nice that’s for sure and for a day or two I was convinced 9/11 had something to do with Aaliyah’s death and were the same people after me I had trouble sleeping for at least a week after lol. It wasn’t just Aaliyah’s songs that started to become threatening they all were and I started to think they were all against me even the pop groups started to have a go or so I thought. I thought they had a mirror and could see everything I was doing and that they were doing bidding for these high up people but they didn’t want to not all of them anyway. It’s not Illuminati but big wigs in Hollywood I thought were doing this as in school there were talks like the MK Ultra, puppets, corrupt Hollywood and all that jazz and this must of leaked into my brain, I can’t think of a better explanation. It felt like I was being harassed no matter where I went and not just in songs but it eventually crept into the TV and I was getting messages there too and not very nice ones. I’m not sure when that was but I know the music came first and then it started on the TV. The music started when I was 7 but that was more like I had a mission to do and they were geeing me up but after Aaliyah’s death it got all serious and threatening.
After her death, I was convinced the police were now involved with all the non-stop harassment from the TV and music I was listening to. I got my flat which I’m still living there and have been for over 12 years now. I still went along with the psychosis I had to deal with police and security guards who would often stop me for shouting cos they were following me or being called to take me away. All I ever wanted to do is some shopping and I never expect to get kicked out or arrested cos the security guard is being racist, I’ve been shopping many times and not had an episode and I still get followed and harassed by security, there have been times where I’ve been shouting in an aisle but that couldn’t be helped. It got so bad that I nearly was banned from all my local shops and could only go into Iceland which is still till this day the same, I had to beg them to let me continue shopping at Iceland after an argument with security which thankfully the staff and manager was quite understanding, I haven’t been in there for years now and I’m kinda embarrassed to go back in. The police have been no better and at times made situations worse rather than better arresting me for trivial stuff like shouting in public or getting psychical for no reason this just raised my suspicions with the police and every meeting was sure to be arrest and more hate for the police. Not only that they would play mind games with you knowing your condition and play on your fears and play with your mind, they often took advantage of situations which would lead to an arrest and a pile on and the custody sergeants are no better they don’t care what happened just as long as they keep making them come through the doors it makes me mad thinking about it. I got this sort of fear of the police by my mate who I was on about earlier and he had delusions thoughts of police and also in music and TV I was convinced of the same thing with music and TV but he kind of put his delusions on me which started making me think the police were involved too. Everything he said made sense and was linked with my thoughts and what I was experiencing without me saying anything to him about my experiences, it’s easy for someone to say “you should know it’s not real” but when you are experiencing any sort of delusions you’re too far past it to see the fake from the real and the lines get blurred the more you go down the path.
I’ve done a lot of crazy things but the far craziest is going on Twitter and Facebook and ranting about 90s celebrities particularly Hip Hop and R’n’B artists. I had enough of the music and what was being said on the TV and thought it was time to expose the bad people and I went on rampages to stop the taunts. I would like to apologize to all involved and know now that it was all in my head and didn’t mean anything I said, they were all my idols and I thought they were after me so that hurt a lot which is all laughable now but at the time it hurt quite bad and refused to play their records but I would always go back to them as in the back of my mind, though I was unstable I knew it was all in my head but there were times when I couldn’t even tell the difference. Around 2013 I started going on midnight walks alone with my dog quite a lot I walked around all of Bristol and Bath walking 15 miles at times, doing what I never understood what I was doing but I was having fun that’s for sure. I remember once watching the TV quiz show Countdown and picking up what I thought were clues something about meeting a Russian spy then on the night time I was driven out my home by what I thought were police and their terror gadgets I still can’t explain what it was but it was something like an electric forcefield running through me and it was annoying. I walked all the way to the town centre around 3 miles to where I live where I thought I was going to meet a Russian spy but I could never find him. I say spy but I don’t really know who I was meant to be meeting, I know I was having voices in my head telling me to buy some tuxedos but I never did and never would of as the voices led me but never really make me go out and spend a crazy amount of money for one of of my so say missions. I didn’t allow the voices to control me but curiosity was a different thing and think it was my curiosity that led me astray, the what-ifs so to speak. There were always two sides a good and bad side and they were days where I was fighting with the bad and days I was fighting with the good and some days a bit of both. I had several kinds of voices from the against to the pro and they were telling me all sorts of stuff but mostly they were quite nice to me but unexpectedly get nasty for no reason and without warning.
So that’s my mental health story dealing with psychosis if you made it all the way to the end thank you for reading it it was quite a lot of information to write out as it was for a long period of time so there was a lot to cover. If you suffer from any mental illness or you know someone with a mental illness don’t be so hard upon yourself or them take each day as it comes and don’t let the feelings or anybody for that matter get you down. If you haven’t sought help then do so before you end up in a bad outcome. And people there is no need to judge yes they may think that Bin Laden is after them but if the shoe was on the other foot you would think otherwise. I hate people who purposely wind up the mentally ill when they are adults you shouldn’t behave like that and is nothing but childish behaviour it makes me mad. It’s just the way they go around thinking they are better or that person doesn’t know anything cos they have an illness get a grip prick. Just because that person is or had a mishap you hold it against them for eternity. I’ve seen this happen a few times with friends and strangers I’ve met along the way. I have no time for dumb people and will cut you off not that there is much cutting as my circle is small and cut many people out my circle for dumb and non-dumb reasons, I won’t get into that as that would be another long paragraph. Well that’s it we’ve come to the end of the line for this blog post I hope you found it interesting and informative. I will leave you with three tracks I produced “Changes” “Better Days” and “In My Stone Cold Grave (I’ll Be Pushing Through”) three house tracks as House is the salvation of music and are three of my best positive tracks for people who need a lift in their life so I leave you with these three tracks and remember I’m always here for you.