living with another reality

as i was talking about children's books awhile ago [my books of choice at the moment], a couple of friends were talking about horror books for children. one of them recounted how as a child he had read a certain book and was scared to look in mirrors for several days - living and sleeping in terror that the ghosts and other scary things he had read would appear in his normal life. but after awhile, things returned to normal, and he stopped expecting the terrors to appear.

but what if one day the terrors - images or ghosts or demons or whatever - did one day appear? crashing vividly and abruptly into your life and shaking up your whole concept of normal? what happens then?

and the answer is, that the event is called an experience of paranoia. and even if something like this never happens again, that it happened even once changes the reality you've always lived with. and schizophrenia is the clinical label given to those who have experienced such an event of paranoia. and that's all we really know about schizophrenia; some drugs can help prevent more paranoia, and a disproportionate number of people homeless (compared to the general population) have it. schizophrenia messes with your relationships and it messes with people's perceptions of you. and it messes with your own perceptions of your self and what you are capable of and how much you can push yourself. and no matter how hard you do anything and everything, there is no promise/guarantee that the terrors or voices or that which is not seen by anyone else will not one day return. and there is really no explanation for it. and thus, reality changes. one can live in denial, pretending that nothing is wrong/different and thus become out-of-sorts with the world and others. or one can courageously accept that reality has changed, learn how to live with the change, and be able to help others. either way, reality has changed.

and except for the movie, A Beautiful Mind, my life before moving here had no exposure to the change of reality brought on by something as vaguely defined and poorly understood as schizophrenia. i now have seen the change closer although i do not understand it any better. but what i do understand of the terror and restlessness and uncertainty and difficulties of this change can not help but cause me to weep. and like the psalmist, i ask why and am angry against it, even as i choose to trust God with reality - my own and that of others.