Two, Many Faces

Friday, April 10, 2015 started off like most mornings during my final semester of college – coffee to wake me up, a run to make sure I was active, and followed by gin to calm me down. (And then typically followed by the rest of the fifth throughout the day.)

I had quit taking my anti-psychotic medication months ago. At the time, I believed the side effects of anti-psychotics were just too cumbersome to live a “good” life in college. The weight gain, exhaustion, detachment, and problems with memory. Trying to be fun, active, and achieve the grades I wanted overruled my desire to be healthy.

Why be fat, tired, and stupid when I could be fuuuuuuuun (at least that’s how I thought of myself)!

My story with alcohol, like most people with schizophrenia, is . . . complicated. Eventually, I’ll tell that one. But, this is the story of a good day turned, well, not so good.

I remember the date because that was the day Daredevil Season 1came out on Netflix. I’d been dying to see the show, so I set aside that day to watch the whole first season. With 10 hours of tv ahead of me, I decided to skip my classes. It was either go to class and finish the show Friday night, or skip classes and still be able to go out. So, I made a predictable decision for a 22-year-old and emailed my professors that I wouldn’t be able to make class that day.

And, hey, a special day like this calls for some drinks! (Or, at least, special drinks – and I had some Heineken ready for just the occasion).

From when I started the show around 9am until sometime after lunch, it was just a pretty standard lazy day, empty beer bottles and leftover Chinese to go orders littering my coffee table. But at some point in the early afternoon, I realized I couldn’t see the faces of the people on the tv. Where the beautiful faces of Matt Murdock and the Kingpin should be was just skin. No features like eyes, noses, mouths. Nothing, just skin.

I figured I was just drunk. Back then, I had a little routine that I would do to check how drunk I was to see if I could go out on my little, Christian college’s campus. Some squats, walking back and forth in a straight line in the living room, jumping jacks, and some balancing exercises. A decent mini workout if you disregard the copious drinking.

Did it all at a passable level, and I seemed fine. I didn’t stumble or fall over. I picked up a book and read aloud. No noticeable slurring or stuttering. Weird. I decided to take a nap. Thought maybe it was just a little glitch in my brain. My graphics card just wasn’t keeping up, I guessed.

When I woke up from the nap, I turned the tv back on and tried to get back into the show. However, the strange problem before had changed into something out of a horror movie. The faces on the tv were now horrifying and disfigured. Three or four eyes, two noses, long, segregated mouths filled with sharp teeth. And blood everywhere. Splattered across these “faces” and seeping from every orifice. Their voices sounded the same, but their faces were unrecognizable. A comic book show turned into the scariest horror show I’d ever seen. I turned off the tv, got my phone out, and got on YouTube. Hoping that somehow Netflix was just messed, I clicked on random video after video. All the faces nearly unrecognizable and equally frightening.

This wasn’t a glitch. This wasn’t alcohol. This was my schizophrenic mind.

Prosopometamorphosia is a somewhat rare visual hallucination of altered and distorted faces. It can be experienced by someone with a psychotic illness or be the result of a neurological condition (such as stroke, epilepsy, or dementia).

Hours later, I was asked to go get ice cream with some friends. When my friends arrived, I realized my problem wasn’t limited to digital faces - my best friend’s faces all disfigured and terrifying. I tried to be calm, to hide my fear, but a couple minutes after starting our walk, a friend pulled me aside and asked what was wrong.

I told her, “I can’t see your face.” And then I tried to explain exactly what it was I was seeing.

My friends had been with me through the many strange and curious things my mind had done over the past few years. They calmed me down when I was manic and irrational. They didn’t make weird comments anytime I asked if something was real or not. They texted me when I’d cancel and asked if I needed help. They were always there for me, and always willing to breach the abnormalities that my life had spiraled into.

I would say they looked at me in horror when I told them of this new development but I’m not sure. I do know that I looked at them with horror, though.

Eye contact can be hard for me. Often my eyes dart around a room because of the hectic things my mind creates. It’s not always due to this particular horror, but when it is, I’m not just distracted, I’m scared.

I always, for the most part, try to hide what my mind is doing. I tend not to talk specific hallucination. But, even an untrained eye of someone that’s just met me notices that the way I look around isn’t normal.

People have been offended that I’m “not paying attention.” But, I am. Or, at the very least I am trying. People have said “it’s rude” because I “keep looking” at something or someone. But if you say a 15-foot shadow monster, wouldn’t you look?

Prosopometamorphosia has come and gone for me over the years. It’ll last weeks at a time and then be gone for months. It was one of the reasons I had to leave a job that I was both good at and liked. It makes interacting with people difficult. It makes watching tv unappealing. It makes my anxiety skyrocket.

I don’t write on this blog, for full public view, for sympathy. I just do it to help establish some honesty about what schizophrenia is. I want people to better understand what my mind does, because the transparency is one of the few ways we can break down the stigma surrounding it.

Schizophrenia gets a lot of stigma; I’ve experienced it and so have many of my friends (those with and without the illness). I think it’s because it just doesn’t make sense to people. They have a tough time understanding the way in which I experience the world. And, honestly, it’s scary. But it shouldn’t be scary for you (a normal person).

It’s kind of like how we talk about frightening animals:

“It’s more scared of you than you are of it.”

And that’s true for me, too.

You should be less scared of me than I am of you and your scary, fucked up face.