A Walking Stigma

When you’re living life on the edge and you’re only seen as danger

This post might not be my most polished. It might feel rambling. But it comes from a place of feeling like I don’t belong anywhere.

I first collapsed after several years of recovery from a decade-long struggle with a mental illness that nearly broke me over and over.

Paranoid schizophrenia.

Those words alone can make people uncomfortable.

When I started to destabilize again, it came after abusing my body for two years with week after week of progressive overload strength training—always pushing, always adding more, never allowing my body a break. It was how I had learned to survive.

My body was getting very strong, while my soul was getting frail.

That frailty eventually became visible from the outside.

I would go to doctors’ offices—one in particular, a physical therapy office that had been helping me recover from a work injury. They had known me for years. I had never been anything but kind, social, and fun, in the ways I had learned to be.

But my destabilization was showing.

I’m sure it was nerve-racking for them, seeing a very fit and strong person—someone who had shared his mental illness before—now showing visible signs of destabilization.

But the fact is, I’ve never been dangerous. Most people with schizophrenia are not. Most of us, when there is danger, are only a danger to ourselves.

Still, I was treated as a danger.

I don’t entirely blame them. Most people don’t know much about the illness. There is still a strong stigma attached to schizophrenia—especially the idea of violence. And when someone who already looks physically imposing starts behaving erratically, unfair reactions can happen.

This is an old wound.

And it’s one I feel nervous about now, as I begin to destabilize again.

Am I going to be shunned again?

Am I going to be quietly cataloged as a threat by everyone I encounter?

I guess we’ll see.

Like I said, there’s not much more to say than that. Just this fear.

I warned you it might feel like a rant.

But it cuts deep.