Welcome to my website! Currently, I’m working on my first fictional novel called “Chocolate Days” about a love triangle.
Previously, I completed a memoir called “My Schizophrenic Life,” which I hope to publish someday. It is a poignant true story about my struggle with a combination of schizophrenia and a mood disorder. It reveals the effects and challenges of living with a mental illness from age fourteen and how I developed insights and coping strategies and became an advocate for mental health.
Here’s some quotes from the book:
“The disturbed mind lives in a world that intersects with common reality. Stimuli may trigger symptoms, which magnify into psychosis, anguish flows, fear abounds, and the future is clouded with uncertainty.
“Does anything seem odd to you?” I asked Penny. “Do you think we are being followed?”
“No. Are you trying to scare me?” she said. I shook my head. I didn’t say anything more, but continued to look back with worried glances.
By the time we got to Robson Street downtown, I couldn’t hear or see anyone following us.
The voices I heard were real to me. Logically, it’s impossible to hear people talking from sixty yards away on a busy street or bridge. It was like I was in a vacuum where I could hear things very acutely. I had super hearing like a comic book hero.
“We have to talk,” she said. “I want to know why you’re getting out of control. When Dad saw the message, he thought it was from someone he worked with. He never thought it could be you. You broke his heart.”
“I want answers.”
“Do you blame us because we’re not home enough?”
“I need you to care about me!”
“Of course we care about you.”
“You hate me. You all hate me.”
She looked at me with hurt in her eyes. I looked back with defiance.
Caught in a delusional trap, I found back like a wild animal wanting release. Attempting to escape was futile. I had nowhere to turn.
Sometimes one wishes to turn the clock back. We regret past events or wish we could change the past. I wished that my painful experiences could have been erased. Instead, they haunted me for decades. I could not separate truth from fiction.
For more information or to give comments, please contact me at: artbysy@yahoo.ca
Art and Writing
By Sandra Yuen MacKay
