I finally turned fifty last weekend. I have been thinking about that birthday since I was 45. Each year I counted down to the big day. My twenties were very happy and I was full of life, which kept producing pearls for me. My thirties were more interesting until I became ill at age 34. This event ended my life as I was living it entirely. My forties were a decade of hospitals, doctors, medicines and mourning. Mourning the loss of my marriage, the life we had built together. Bumbling around trying to get back on my feet and failing again and again until I just quit trying. It was really hard. Many schizophrenics say they wouldn't wish the disease on their worst enemy. I agree with that. I think it is born of the question, 'why me?' which all schizophrenics ask themselves. Being under the thumb of schizophrenia causes an expansion of the heart and mind. Other people are much more appreciated and in focus. Memory is strong and nostalgia for normality becomes a motif. I don't have the same appetite for life that I had in my twenties and early thirties. In fact, I struggle more often than not to find a reason to keep on living. It helps not to have plans that can fail, and it helps to just live. I have thought of suicide and it has thought of me. But I have decided that while I don't have much to live for, there's always another day. That's all I have to consider. I don't hope to rebuild my life. I just hope sometimes, that I meet some nice people who will understand. I have only recently started telling people that I have schizophrenia and so far it hasn't caused many waves. That's a big relief. I worried a lot about letting it be known. As if it might go away. But it doesn't go away. I want to start a new healthy regime to take me into old age. I thought walking would be good. Now that the weather is cooling it's a good time to start. I would also like to lose the weight that the medicine has made me gain. So I will be having some adventures in the kitchen. Nothing dramatic, just trying to trim out the fat so that my walking will shape me up. God I read this back and I seem so reduced as a person to what I was. But I know better than to try and rebuild. It just ends in a trip to the hospital. I really hate that I missed out on life with my ex-husband and I really wanted children. It has been such a short 16 years. All that time I could have spent as a wife and mom... Yeah, I still feel stunned by schizophrenia. It takes my breath away when I think of how much I lost. Still, I have had these years to get close to my parents again. My mother came up for my birthday, and we had a nice time at the botanical gardens and a good restaurant. It was like old times, when I would come home from university and she would take me out to great restaurants around Virginia. It was all so fun. It was lovely to visit again. But still, even with all that, I miss my love. I really do.
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