Wow, tear in my eye and I haven’t even started yet.  Like most of you, I was always the odd one out.  I lived in my own world and made my own rules.  I never thought anything of it because that’s the way I had always lived.  It was safer to live inside myself than to face reality.
So many years went by and I just rejected
Anyone and everyone, I refused to be touched.  In my early teens I had visions and heard voices that told me to do really bad things.  I did a pretty good job of blocking them out.  
We all got older and I got olde too and life just continues until I finally complete lost touch with reality.  I don’t mean just kind of lost touch, I mean I complete lost it.  It was gradual but those gradual steps were huge steps.  11 years ago I started hearing voices and getting paranoid, then a few years later I was actually seeing things and hearing things, then I was completely gone and living in a world that didn’t exist.  
I had gone through ECT and meds and hospitals.  
This post isn’t about religion but what kept me grounded was my family!  The responsibly I owed to them and the deep down love I had for living. 
Last November I decided to come off all my antipsychotics because I wasn’t feeling any better, in fact I felt worse.  I was fat, I just didn’t really care about anything.  I drove a car with mold growing in it, I hadn’t cleaned my house in months, I stunk, I was a slob.
I got off my meds and within months I had worked on my credit, worked on improving
At my job and worked on family.  In a few months I got a new car, got a promotion at work, met new friends and started to care about myself again.  
I’m not saying to get off your meds.  God knows I needed them at one point.  I just want everyone to know that there IS life after meds.