I am concerned that this does not fit into the wrapping up of this story—there is one chapter left—and because this concern is highlighting of differences I will write it anyway.
The concern is partly to do with continuity, the sense-making I—and, so, hopefully you—have of this story. How one thing leads to the next, with this thought-between stopping the continuation of meaning. Again I’m back to the tired trope of story arcs, narrative purpose, and greater logics to a greater everything.
I do not have any schizophrenic friends. I have met people who are schizophrenic, I know them on a casual basis, their first names, and some of their interests. I have also known people who didn’t know they were schizophrenic—despite attending psychiatrists—psychiatrists who later told them they were schizophrenic. I had an inkling they were schizophrenic before they knew themselves: this shouldn’t be surprising to anyone from a hidden, or not-obvious-on-the-surface minority group. We can see ourselves in others like us, we are kin so recognise something shared between us all.
The particular recognition I feel in schizophrenia is the acquiescence to grander meanings. A willingness to understand, and the distance we unknowingly reach for to assume the purpose—or lyrical truth—in everything. There is an acceptance we are flawed—but that we also have the ability to know— however immaterial our knowing may be—that there is always a way to conceive, we just first have to accept such exists, that we can form it into being.
For many—outside of schizophrenia—our understanding appears unintelligible. That there is no pattern to it, no reason, that it is ‘madness,’ weird individuality, or simple unthinking rudeness. Schizophrenics know there is patterns and reasons to everything, no matter how disruptive that pattern may be. There is a language beneath all that happens. At times we are acutely aware of this. Other times we live at peace with ourselves, unknowing.
This knowing—or knowing in non-awareness— this hearing of an under-the-surface language may, sometimes, form as an intuiting of what someone’s particular emotional state is, what their thoughts are dealing with, what they don’t want to say that they don’t even realise themselves. But if I were to see that emotion in someone—one they don’t understand or recognise—it would not surprise me if another schizophrenic understood it too, whether I explained it to them or simply pointed it out. This is how I recognised someone else as schizophrenic, at one point. They saw a thought within me that I hadn’t fully conceptualised. They didn’t make a big deal of it, it was simply a matter of fact.
Another person may mull over it, see the harm in saying it aloud—speaking in tongues—they may take is as an offence. This friend I knew simply allayed my yet-to-be-founded fear, and so set me at ease. We could talk about whether their telling-me-of -this-thought created it for me, or simply surfaced it—we knew it didn’t matter because we took it as another reason within all other reasons. I knew it as truth, their intuition told them it was.
For me—often—there is little to judge others on. There’s a willingness to see through problems, not quite ignoring them, but emphasising the humanity beneath. If there is meaning to everything, a greater humanity to all, then small differences are of little concern. Yet small difficulties, for me, are big issues for others. Such as this interruption in the flow of the story. You might not see the common language to it, but the story exists even if it’s only learning it word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence, appreciation-by-appreciation, and eventually seeing that all as a whole.
If you don’t see this as another chaotic link in the greater chaos we find reason in then that is normality. It is not to excuse what I’ve done, simply to say this is who I am, what I do and have done. This is my meaning—or some of it, temporarily—forever within all meaning, both small and large—not exclusively, but potentially, fully, embarrassingly, minimally, maximally, and without any meaning.
Maybe, in some way, I have taught you, or somehow allowed you to read this story, from the beginning—with many pointers—to now—when understanding is just assumed—in a manner where you see how I see, speak how I speak, and think how I think.
If I have done so, in any minor way, I have achieved in my task.
Index - Part 4 Chapter 1