feat: add personal essay on living with mental illness

posts/living-with-mental-illness.md

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+---
+title: "Living With Mental Illness"
+date: "2026-02-24"
+summary: "An honest account of my journey with schizophrenia, ADHD, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and everything that comes with them."
+---
+
+Content warning: this article discusses suicide attempts, psychosis, self-medication with alcohol, and chronic illness. Please take care of yourself.
+
+---
+
+I have a lot of diagnoses. Schizophrenia. ADHD. Anxiety. Depression. Insomnia. Nerve damage. A heart condition. Lumbar spine degeneration. Diverticulosis. Some of those are mental health conditions. Some are physical. Most of them have some impact on the others. All of them are part of who I am.
+
+I'm writing this because I don't see a lot of people talking about mental illness honestly - especially not schizophrenia, which carries more stigma than many other diagnoses. I want to change that, at least in my small corner of the internet. So here it is: my story, as openly as I can tell it.
+
+## It Started When I Was Sixteen
+
+Around the age of sixteen, my hallucinations got bad enough that I attempted suicide.
+
+That's not an easy sentence to write. But it's the truth, and the truth is what this article is for.
+
+The hallucinations were both auditory and visual. And the worst of them had a name: Ragnarok. He was a persistent hallucination - a demon who had his own identity, his own voice, and a singular purpose of feeding me negative thoughts, constantly. That was probably the worst period of my life. I was at my lowest point, drowning in something I didn't have a name for yet.
+
+That's how I ended up in therapy and, eventually, with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
+
+## The Diagnosis
+
+Having a name for what was happening was a relief. Finally, there was an explanation. But it was also terrifying.
+
+> There is a *lot* of stigma around schizophrenia. Most people's understanding of it comes from movies and TV, and those portrayals are... not great.
+
+The first medication they put me on was Seroquel. It worked - in the sense that it quieted Ragnarok and brought the hallucinations down. But the side effects were brutal. I felt like a complete zombie. Not like a person, just like a shell going through the motions. That's not living.
+
+So I did what a lot of people do when treatment feels worse than the illness: I stopped going to therapy. I couldn't sustain it. And without that support, I just... struggle bussed. For years.
+
+## The Retail Years
+
+I spent a long time working in retail, and I won't mince words: it was miserable. The environment was high-stress, high-pressure, and absolutely not designed for someone managing a chaotic brain. The hallucinations never fully went away during that period - they just became the background noise of my life. I self-medicated with alcohol, because I couldn't sleep without it and I didn't know what else to do.
+
+Looking back, the insomnia and the schizophrenia were feeding each other in a vicious loop. Sleep deprivation makes psychotic symptoms worse. Being symptomatic made it harder to sleep. I couldn't fall asleep, couldn't stay asleep, and was pouring absurd amounts of alcohol into myself to try to bridge the gap.
+
+I'm not proud of that period. But I also don't think past-me deserves judgement for it. She was doing what she could to survive.
+
+## 2020: The Year Everything Shifted
+
+At the end of March 2020, I left my retail job. I had a decent nest egg - unemployment settlement, cashed out pension - and my plan was to take six months off, play video games, and then eventually go find work in Human Resources.
+
+I got bored after two weeks.
+
+I'd always loved tech, so I figured learning to code might be a fun hobby. I started working through freeCodeCamp, and something clicked almost immediately. It was genuinely fun. And then my ADHD brain - which I wouldn't be diagnosed with for another year - decided it had found its new obsession.
+
+I was spending 10 to 12 hours a day, every single day, learning to code. I hit burnout hard in August, took a couple of weeks off, and then picked it right back up. By the end of 2020, what had started as a hobby had become the foundation of an entirely new career.
+
+But here's the thing that mattered most: once I left that retail environment, my major hallucinations subsided significantly. The change in stress levels, the change in environment, the removal of that constant grinding pressure - it made a real difference. Ragnarok faded. The demons got quieter.
+
+## Coming Out
+
+In January 2022, I came out as transgender.
+
+It was, honestly, a lot of anxiety at first. Coming out is not a small thing - there's vulnerability and fear baked into every step of it. But I started HRT in June 2022, and fairly quickly after that, my mental health started to genuinely improve. Not just stabilise - *improve*. There's something about finally being yourself, in your own body, that has effects that ripple out into everything else.
+
+Transition has been one of the best things I've ever done for my mental health. I didn't expect that going in, but here we are.
+
+## The ADHD Revelation
+
+In 2021, I was diagnosed with ADHD.
+
+My reaction was essentially: *oh yeah, that makes all the sense.*
+
+I'd had it my whole life. The hyperfixation on coding. The years of inconsistent school performance. The manic episodes and tendencies that nobody could quite explain. The difficulty maintaining routines, the difficulty stopping once I'd started something interesting.
+
+And the memories. My brain, it turns out, makes up memories. I can have vivid, detailed recollections of things that never happened - events I would swear on my life occurred, that everyone around me will tell you simply didn't. That's not something most people associate with ADHD, but it's a real and disorienting part of how my working memory functions (or doesn't). Growing up, I just thought something was wrong with me in a way that had no name.
+
+Going undiagnosed for twenty-nine years meant decades of struggles that had no explanation. My own mother used to describe me as "spazztic." That word carries weight - the way people around you name your chaos when they don't understand it, when *you* don't understand it. You just know you're different and you don't know why.
+
+Getting the diagnosis was one of those bittersweet relief moments. Yes, it's good to finally know. And also: wow, that would have been useful information thirty years ago.
+
+## The Full Picture
+
+The anxiety and depression came bundled in with everything else - the depression especially feels like it's been there as long as the schizophrenia, all tangled up together. The anxiety followed a few years later. Both are managed with medication. I'm on, as I affectionately describe it, a crap ton of medication.
+
+The insomnia has also been with me for most of my life. I can't fall asleep. I can't stay asleep. These days I'm on prescription medication that helps considerably, and that's made a real difference to everything else - because when sleep deprivation is feeding your other conditions, getting sleep under control has knock-on effects.
+
+Then there are the physical conditions. Diverticulosis is newer - the dietary changes have been a struggle, giving up foods I love for health reasons is never easy. But the other stuff: nerve damage, a heart condition, lumbar spine degeneration. Those are harder to sit with emotionally.
+
+> Those conditions aren't going to get better. And if they get worse, my quality of life will probably tank. That's genuinely terrifying to live with.
+
+Chronic and degenerative conditions carry their own mental and emotional weight that's separate from anything else on this list. The uncertainty, the anticipatory grief for capabilities you might lose - it's its own kind of burden.
+
+## Tech Has Been Different
+
+I want to be clear that tech is not a paradise for people with disabilities or mental health conditions. I've faced discrimination. I've had clients who were less than understanding of my erratic, ADHD-driven schedule. I worked for one employer that was very much a "good ol' boys" club - where every female employee, myself included, had our ideas dismissed and got steamrolled in every meeting.
+
+But overall? Tech has been significantly better for me than retail was. My employers have been more flexible, more accommodating, and more willing to work with the reality of how my brain functions.
+
+When it comes to disclosure, I don't lead with my diagnoses in interviews. I'm an open book and I'll share whatever feels relevant, but I've rarely needed to formally request ADA accommodations - things tend to just get worked out naturally. Mostly it comes up on its own, especially after a rough few days. And in tech, I've found that most employers have been pretty chill about it. That's not universal, as the discrimination I mentioned proves, but it's been the norm.
+
+## Remote Work Changed Everything
+
+If I had to name the single biggest structural factor in my mental health stability as a tech worker, it would be remote work. Not therapy. Not medication (though those matter enormously). Remote work.
+
+Working from home means I get to control my entire environment. I blast my music. I take breaks to play with my cats. I work whatever erratic hours align with how my brain is functioning that day - and I make up for the scattered hours by working stupidly long ones when I'm in flow.
+
+What a bad day looks like depends on which condition is causing it. An ADHD day means I'm manic and scattered, constantly switching between tasks, probably saying the most unhinged things in Slack. An insomnia day means I take a slow morning and ease in. A depression or schizophrenia day - which are rare now, but still happen - means I just take the day off, full stop. I can switch my notifications to my phone, step away from the desk, decompress, and come back when I'm ready. In an office, none of that would be possible.
+
+And then there's masking. In an office environment, there's an enormous amount of pressure to perform neurotypicality all day - to look busy, to hold it together visibly, to hide the chaos. At home, that's just not a thing. I try to be put together when I'm on camera in a meeting. The rest of the time?
+
+> I get to be my unapologetically authentic self. And that is when I do my best work.
+
+## What It Actually Looks Like Now
+
+Day-to-day, schizophrenia for me mostly means corner-of-the-eye visual hallucinations and random sounds. Most of the time, I can tell they aren't real. I know the difference between what's actually there and what my brain is generating. That ability - to recognise and reality-check - is something I did not have at sixteen.
+
+The ADHD, even medicated, is a constant presence. My executive function is still rubbish. I have calendar notifications set for things like taking a shower and eating meals - not as suggestions, but as genuine reminders I actually need. My sister reminds me to drink water. The external scaffolding I've built around myself isn't optional: it's how I function. Without the ticketing system, the calendar, the reminders, the routines - things don't get done.
+
+I'm still working on finding the right medication cocktail, which is its own ongoing saga. As of right now, my ADHD meds were just adjusted and I am an absolute mess - which is why I took last week off work. My sister helps me enormously. Having that support network matters more than I can express.
+
+Managing mental illness is not a destination. It's not something you solve and then it's done. It's ongoing. It's a constant, sometimes frustrating, always-adjusting process of figuring out what works right now, because what works right now might not be what worked six months ago.
+
+## What I Wish People Understood About Schizophrenia
+
+The media portrayal of schizophrenia is so wildly divorced from the actual lived experience that it almost doesn't bear comparison.
+
+It is not constant, dramatic hallucinations. It is not "tripping balls." It is not the dangerous, unpredictable violence that gets portrayed in horror movies.
+
+> Schizophrenia, for me, is an overall lack of grasp on reality. It's the world not quite holding together the way it should. It's knowing, intellectually, that something isn't real while your brain insists it is.
+
+It looks different for different people. But it does not look like what the movies show you.
+
+## What I Wish People Knew About ADHD
+
+People hear "ADHD" and think it means you can't focus. That's not quite right.
+
+The more accurate description is that your brain does not have a volume dial for attention. It has an on/off switch, and you don't control it. When something captures your interest, the switch flips on and you are *locked in* - sometimes for hours, sometimes to the exclusion of literally everything else. When something doesn't capture your interest, no amount of willpower will flip that switch. The attention just isn't there.
+
+But it goes so far beyond focus. ADHD is a full executive function disorder. It looks like this:
+
+> "Okay, I need to do the thing. Wait, what was I doing? Oh right, I was going to check Bluesky really quick. ...Forty minutes later... Wait, no, I need to do the thing. Actually, I should have a smoke first. Wait, what was I doing? Oh, I gotta pee."
+
+ADHD is spilling coffee all over yourself because you forgot you were holding the cup. It's knowing there are exactly 46 slats in your blinds because you counted them three times during a meeting. It's setting your phone down on your desk directly in front of you, and then spending fifteen minutes looking for your phone.
+
+> It's not laziness. It's not a lack of trying. It's a brain that is genuinely fighting against you on the most basic task management, every single day.
+
+## The Upsides (Yes, There Are Some)
+
+I said earlier that my success has come *because* of my conditions, not in spite of them. Let me be specific about what I mean.
+
+My ADHD has made me the absolute queen of writing tickets. If something isn't in a ticket, it does not exist in my brain - it will be lost to the void. So I ticket *everything*. Every task, every bug, every idea, every follow-up. My Asana board is colour-coded, sorted by due date, grouped by project, and it is genuinely beautiful. My colleagues can pull it up at any moment and get a complete picture of everything I'm working on and when it's due.
+
+That system didn't come from discipline. It came from necessity - because ADHD left me no other choice.
+
+And my anxiety? The crippling, exhausting fear of failure and of letting people down? It means I am *constantly* asking for feedback on my performance. Constantly looking for ways to grow. Constantly trying to be better. The fear that drives the anxiety is real and unpleasant, but the behaviour it produces has made me someone who actively shapes their own professional development rather than waiting to be told how they're doing.
+
+Your conditions are not just obstacles. They shaped the way you work, the way you think, and the adaptations you've built. Those adaptations often turn out to be genuine strengths.
+
+## To Anyone Who Is Struggling
+
+If you're reading this and you recognise yourself somewhere in it - the late diagnoses, the wrong medications, the self-medicating, the years of white-knuckling it through environments that weren't built for you - I want you to know this:
+
+You can still find success. Not *in spite of* your mental illnesses, but *because* of them.
+
+The hyperfixation that made me lose twelve hours to coding every day? That's ADHD. That's also how I built a career from scratch in under a year. The resilience I have, the depth of empathy I carry for people who are struggling, the way I understand what rock bottom actually looks like - those things come directly from everything I've been through.
+
+Your brain is not broken. It's different. And different, with the right circumstances and the right support, can be extraordinary.
+
+I'm still figuring it out. I might always be figuring it out. That's okay.