30 Year Old Schizophrenia Disabled Single Mother Seeks Education Grant

by Kelly
(Seekonk, Massachusetts, USA)

My disability is a complex and lifelong disease, schizophrenia. When they first told me I was furious and upset. I was in disbelief and denial.

I was having delusions that people were following me and watching me. I even thought that there was a tracking device in my cell phone, TV and car radio.

It was crazy. I thought the people on TV and the radio were talking about me. I was scared, frightened and hallucinating.

The doctor thought I was on drugs the way I was acting, but I wasn't. I was out of my mind, hearing voices and crying.

But one night in my month-long hospital stay I prayed to God that it would stop, before I literally killed myself. I said the Hail Mary 100 times before I finally feel asleep, to make the voices stop.

The next day, a guy named John, actually a teacher at my son's father's high school said he had the same thoughts, and he seemed so normal.

He said he threw his Blackberry off the Newport Bridge because he had the same thoughts of people following him.

When he said it, I found it funny. It seemed like other people struggle with this disease and they're living okay, so maybe I wasn't doomed for life.

I went through a rough time. I was not eating, sleeping or even going to the bathroom. All I did was watch TV and cry at every song, every show, even until this day I have a hard time watching television.

But I have come a long way and my parents really took care of me while I was going through this period.

I'm currently collecting disability to get by, but I've decided to go back to college to get my degree to become an art teacher. My passion is art and I enjoy beauty in everything.

I even want to become an entrepreneur some day, but first I have to get my teaching license to take care of my son. I need to make at $750 a week to take care of the both of us.

And nowadays you have to have a pension or annuity or something to be able to retire. I know my generation is going to have two careers, because we will be working into our 80s.

I predict the first job will be practical: teacher, cop, nurse. Our second will be our passion. We'll get our master's degree and become professors, principals and judges, or perhaps own our own businesses.

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