The wind blew softly through the trees outside the window. The rays of the sun had long ago been replaced by moonshine on a clear December sky. Caroline sat on her bed with a handful of pills. Was it time? Was that it? An idea of taking her own life clung to Caroline’s thoughts like tar. The small white pills shined bright in the light of the lamp on the nightstand. As if a hard gust of wind had hit Caroline, she was torn from her string of thought. She called the department of psychiatry in Ballerup, rushed out, jumped on her bike and headed towards it. Today Caroline has no memory of the 9 kilometre long bike ride.

It’s been five years since Caroline sat there with her hand filled with pills. Now she’s 23 years old. The suicidal thoughts sometimes resurface, but they are kept at a distance and pushed aside. This is especially because she gets help, but also because her fiancé Lasse Hoeg is there for her.

The fact that Lasse is by her side makes everyday easier. Whether it’s grocery shopping, cooking or just a tighter hug than usual, Lasse is there for Caroline. To her that means less anxiety. It means to have someone to share all the foul thoughts with, but also to have someone to create all the good memories with.

A part of Carolines schizotypy is that she sometimes feel as if she isn’t real. She describes it as a feeling of being in a bubble and doubting your own existence. As if she’s just a piece in a puzzle. That’s the worst part of the disease, according to her. When those feelings strike her, she calls to Lasse.

Besides the feeling of not being real, Caroline’s schizotypy is also to blame when she sometimes sees shadows and has panic attacks. The ADD diagnosis means that if she doesn’t take her medicine she gets easily aggressive and snarls at people for inexplicable reasons. It also means her concentration isn’t always as focused as you’d like. But Caroline doesn’t mind that one particular trait.

Caroline has, as so many others her age with mental disorders, dropped out of multiple educations. To her, attendance is the biggest bump in the road towards an education. But grades already took a drop when she went to the gymnasium, which closed the doors to longer educations such as medicine and law school. Her latest attempt of education was for the SOSU, but she had to drop out because of rules of attendance. It’s difficult to maintain school when energy is in low supply and you have to make time for meetings and self-help group meetings on the side.

Caroline knows that she might never be well enough to get an education. She knows she might never be able to maintain an eight to four job. Even though she wishes to some day complete an education and help others, right now there is just one clear focus for her.

“The goal is to be able to live with it and make a good life. Look at the positives over the negatives.”

This is an extract of a story I made as a project for school, November 2018