As a kid, I always enjoyed Halloween. It was a fun time to meet with friends, dress up in a favorite costume, and gather treats from around the neighborhood.
It is easy to remember my favorite costumes over the years. I was a rabbit one year, and a nurse another. My younger brother dressed up in a dog costume and a pirate costume. There was a year when we were both clowns.
Sparky, our little dog, often got involved as we put a red handkerchief around his neck. Everyone wanted to play with him, and he was on his best behavior. Sparky was at least as excited as we were, as he loved being walked around our neighborhood, and this was even more special, as it broadened his horizons.
Growing up, I could never imagine a future with schizophrenia and its devastating isolation. My childhood was always filled with close friends. My dad served as pastor of a small Baptist church in a suburb of Cleveland called Mentor, a job he began when I was five.
My brother and I grew up in a little white house (parsonage) that the church built for us when I was seven, nestled into five acres of heavily wooded land. As young children, my brother and I built forts from fallen branches, played on our swing set in the woods, and raked away leaves to create a bike path. There was a drainage ditch, and we built wooden boats to set sail along the water. Halloween was another sweet part of my childhood.
I never experienced clinical symptoms of schizophrenia as a young child or high school student. But as a young teenager, I began to withdraw from friends at school. My life revolved around my violin. I was competitive and began practicing four hours a day at age 13.
I became a violin student of a college professor at the Cleveland Institute of Music Conservatory at age 13, her youngest student at that time. Also, at age 13, I joined the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, where I had the opportunity to perform with the orchestra in Severance Hall, one of the greatest joys of my life.
But looking back, I regret that I did not attend basketball games, get involved in homecoming, or participate in other social activities with friends from school. I was too busy preparing to compete on the violin. I loved to win, perhaps too much.
I remember celebrating Halloween years later when I was an undergraduate, beginning my biochemistry studies at the University of Southern California. I saw acquaintances from the dorm dressing up, attending parties, and having fun. But their fun plans were not part of my world, because I was so intensely focused on school.
Sometimes I wonder if my first semester at the university came with warning signs of my impending schizophrenia. Since age 13, I had missed parties and events, choosing to study or practice violin instead. But when I got to USC, I was not part of a special group that would seek me out. I had left behind close friends I knew well and loved to spend time with.
I didn’t realize that going to USC would be both a new start and a jolting blow to my social life. For me, apart from some good grades and from winning the concertmaster position in the USC community orchestra, my start there was a bad one. I was always alone.
Beginning at USC, I recognized my need to attend church, which was one of the best choices I made my first year there. I visited three churches before settling on one filled with serious, committed students and a pastor who had traveled the world. I had finally found friends. The pastor’s wife was a Harvard-trained lawyer, and they would eventually transition to jobs in Southeast Asia. Their career excellence motivated me.
I never imagined that just a few short years later, rather than entering a Ph.D. program to study cancer or HIV, which had been my dream, I would instead be living in a churchyard, outside, with a mind ravaged by untreated schizophrenia.
Today, it has been over two decades since I dropped out of USC to become homeless in the Los Angeles area. And it has been 17 years since I fully recovered from schizophrenia on a very underutilized antipsychotic, enabling me to transfer to the University of Cincinnati and finish a molecular biology degree there with a 3.8 GPA.
Today, I find myself happy and content with my apartment a block from the University of Cincinnati, where I enjoy working as a nonprofit executive director from home.
I am grateful that, this Halloween, I will celebrate with my close friends and my family. I treasure each one, and am thankful that I have found a full life again, thriving despite schizophrenia.