Before we get to the good stuff, you might be wondering — what in the world is schizoaffective disorder?

From the National Alliance on Mental Illness, schizoaffective disorder looks a little bit like this…

Hallucinations, which are seeing or hearing things that aren’t there.

Delusions, which are false, fixed beliefs that are held regardless of contradictory evidence.

Disorganized thinking. A person may switch very quickly from one topic to another or provide answers that are completely unrelated.

Depressed mood. If a person has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder depressive type they will experience feelings of sadness, emptiness, feelings of worthlessness or other symptoms of depression.

Manic behavior. If a person has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder: bipolar type they will experience feelings of euphoria, racing thoughts, increased risky behavior and other symptoms of mania.

In short, if you take schizophrenia and depression (or bipolar disorder) and mash it together, you get a thing called schizoaffective disorder.

On a more personal note, schizoaffective disorder makes me (just me… I can’t speak for everyone that has schizoaffective disorder since it affects us all differently) terrified of seemingly mundane things.

For example, let’s take the horrifying flute lady scene from It and I’ll paint you a picture of what it’s like to have schizoaffective disorder. Side note- this was the scene that made me turn on all the lights and yell at my poor, innocent friend.

Spooooooopy!

See that spooky ass lady on the left? The one with the flute? See how the kid is covering his face? Schizoaffective disorder makes me believe that all portraits are terrifying. Paintings are the worst. I grew up with a mother that loved hanging painted portraits in every room .My would eyes distort the imagery and the faces. They became these decomposing, terrifying pieces of nightmares, plastered against the walls of my home.

I could feel their eyes traveling against my skin, as I walked by.

They would breathe a low hum of words I couldn’t understand, into my ears.

I hated those damn portraits.

The worst? When I closed my eyes to go to bed, I swear the portraits would move. They came out of their frames and stood over my bed, watching me. Taunting me.

But really, watching me.

Reading about living with schizoaffective disorder might make you think- alright, so you get hallucinations and you experience things that aren’t real.

You know that these things aren’t real, right?

Sure. They’re not “real.” But to me, with schizoaffective disorder, it’s an eternal conflict of telling my brain that “it isn’t real” when it is there, plain as day, as real as the words that I have written on this post. (Are you hallucinating the words on this post?)

But hey, if you want to experience the terror for yourself, watch this clip from It.

And that’s the reason why, as an adult, my walls are completely barren.

My actual walls from my actual home. Totally empty and white- just the way I like it.

Of course, the nightmare rollercoaster didn’t end there. At this point, I am transfixed. I am triggered after trigger and it feels amazing to see all of my fears played out on my friend’s television. I took a break and paused the movie, every 15 minutes, to collect myself, but we pushed on.