I wanted to share something that has been on my mind the last couple days, as I process a potential diagnosis of schizophrenia, or something similar. I have experienced psychosis for most of my life, and so I don't really have a baseline for who I am and what I like, without it. Some of it is scary, but some of it is kind of anecdotal and just sort of quirky...I guess.  I was raised/forced to dance as a kid, my family owned a dance studio and I wasn't allowed to not dance lol, so I have always been relatively involved in "the arts" for lack of a better word. I ended up finding a bit of success dancing professionally before ending up back at home for safety reasons. The reason I bring this up, is I am SO FUCKING FRUSTRATED about how fetishized I felt by the community of "artists" in LA. I think a large part of why it has been so difficult for me to get the help I actually needed is because, in retrospect,  many of my peers believed my delusions, thought they were fun, or least pretended to believe them when it was convenient for them- which was obviously really dangerous for my mental health. Throughout my 7 years in LA, a handful of people used my psychosis narratives as inspiration for their shitty art, WHILE simultaneously demonizing and ostracizing me for behaviors that were a direct result of my psychosis. I used to be flattered by this kind of behavior and it is only now that I am genuinely realizing how painful and destructive it was for me. Anyways. I wish people respected schizo people more, especially when attempting to profit off them and while I am in the mood to send some angry emails and pout and throw my fists around and scream I am just gonna vent on Reddit and try to get back to my life bc I need to do my laundry and stuff.