10.39 pm. I feel so tired and sad. I’m frightened. Frightened that I’ll really commit suicide one day. I’ve had schizophrenia since the age of 24 when I had my first breakdown in 1992, shortly after I was last released from prison, having spent in total about eight years of my youth locked up since the age of 15.

I am often in double minded torment. I believe that I can hear subconscious communication and that I’ve got some kind of psychic power or ability similar to being a medium, although realistically this could actually be my psychosis that I’m being treated for with anti-psychotic medication. The medication doesn’t stop me hearing, though. It relaxes me and stops me from feeling highly tense terror, though as I said I can still hear voices and sometimes I do still often feel extremely tense.

I often hear two things at the same time. For example I heard yesterday the words ‘Pay him’. At the same time though I heard the words ‘Frame him’.
This demonstrates that half of what I hear is positive and uplifting, and half of what I hear is negative and lowering. The words ‘Pay him’ for example, I associate with the fact that I’m a semi-professional film-maker and also a writer and poet and I hope that I’ll get paid more often for the work I occasionally do, which I usually do free of charge. The words ‘Frame him’ I associate with the paranoid delusion I’ve suffered from since I’ve been ill, and that’s the fear that I’ll one day be framed by the police for murder, get a life sentence and kill myself in jail.

With what I’m hearing and feeling I sometimes feel like I’m half in heaven and half in hell. I used to fight back in my mind and try to out-talk in my mind the negative thoughts that I heard, but now I just remain passive and just listen to what I’m hearing. And if I do hear contradictory thoughts I mainly accept and dwell on the positive.

15/1/10

1.01 am. Insomnia again. I often lie awake at night, sometimes feeling fine and blissful, but as it gets later these feelings sometimes turn to anxiety. I then sometimes give up, and if I’m feeling anxious I’ll look at adult porn on the TV or computer. I can’t always manage to resist this as I sleep on a sofa bed in the front room as my snoring used to wake up my wife Tina, so now I don’t sleep in the same bed as her. Because the computer is also in the living room it’s so difficult not to give in to temptation and look at porn. If I’ve been awake most of the night, I’ll sometimes resist it till about five o’clock in the morning and then give in due to sheer boredom, but then afterwards feel like shit again as my soul has been partly eaten by the devil. Porn partly consumes you.

16/1/10

1.37 pm. Schizophrenia is an invisible disability. People can’t see that your ill or how you’re affected. OK, people can see that you’re tense with anxiety and fear sometimes, but on the whole a lot of people with schizophrenia just look normal. And it’s not just mentally that the illness affects you. The illness and side effects of the medication also affect you physically. I’d guess that I’ve got three or four times less mental and physical stamina as what I’d have if I weren’t ill. I am 42 years old but often feel mentally and physically incapacitated to the point were I feel that I’ve got less energy than some pensioners.