A Fried Egg Tells Me I’m Getting Better

On what recovery and rebuilding after a schizoaffective episode actually look like, one small thing at a time.

Photo by Jukan Tateisi on Unsplash

Sometime at the end of last year, I wrote a piece about what Schizoaffective Disorder taught me about myself and how there are things it has taken from me that I will likely never find again. The time, the confidence, the relationships, and a lot else.

What I didn’t write in that piece is what happens after a schizoaffective episode ends and the process of recovery begins.

One of the people reading through that piece had a very important question. Dr. Smita asked:

‘When you’re in the middle of rebuilding after an episode, what helps you recognize that a “new beginning” has actually started — even if it feels small or fragile?’

This piece is my attempt at an honest answer.

You see, the episode itself is one kind of hard. The rebuilding after is a whole different beast. And while the episode is out there for the world to see, the recovery phase is quieter and entirely invisible to everyone around you. Because people see you functioning again and assume “you’re back!” What they don’t see is how much it cost to get there, or how long it actually took, or how many small ordinary things had to come back one by one before you could say you were back.

I have schizoaffective disorder. For me, that means episodes that can, and very often do, involve voices loud enough to drown out conversation, moods that drop or spike without much warning, and a mind that has the ability to make the ordinary real world feel completely unreliable.

The episodes pass, of course. But I honestly don’t believe that an episode’s passing is the same as recovery. And recovery isn’t the same as a return to normalcy.

That said, here are a few of my favorite things that show me I’m slowly, but surely, recovering from an episode.

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The world gets louder before it gets easier.

One of the first things I notice after an episode isn’t always relief. Instead, it’s noise. As the voices inside the head get quieter, the world outside suddenly feels louder, as if nature’s performing the cliche about filling a vacuum. The television volume is a bit too much. A door closing too hard is too much. The construction machines downstairs are too loud, dammit!

And this contrast takes some getting used to. I’ve been told that until it does, I tend to snap at things I’d normally ignore.

I do feel that this is still recovery. Just that it may not look like recovery.

My own voice comes back

During an episode, the voices inside can get loud enough that speaking over them is like trying to hold a conversation next to a speaker at full volume.

Or as I once tried to explain to a friend, it’s like being in an interview while the interviewer is also playing a horror movie, a YouTube video about optimizing finances, a hip-hop playlist on Spotify, and the assistant is asking them if they’d like sugar in their coffee.

So I go quiet. Nearly completely silent sometimes. Because to be able to talk, I have to be able to focus and listen and comprehend. But in the middle of an episode, that simply…doesn’t happen.

The first sign that things are shifting is that my own voice starts coming back. To my wife first. Then to the dogs. Then phone calls if necessary. And then, eventually, finally to the rest of the world.

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I start talking to my wife again. Really talking.

During an episode, she types things out and shows me the screen because the voices make it hard to hear her properly. I ask her to repeat herself four times and still often miss it. We’ve considered learning sign language, and I’m sure that eventually we will. But until we do, it’s this clumsy communication.

She has a dual role during those periods: partner and interpreter. And she (magically, I imagine) carries it without complaint.

When the rebuilding phase starts inside my head, I notice a shift in her too. As the dual role drops away, she herself has a little more energy, a little more ease, and I can hear her again (most of the time anyway), we can talk again.

And this doesn’t have to be just translations anymore. We talk about food, and how terrible her colleagues are, and how the dogs could do with a bath, and how the painter did a terrible job with the primer, and how I’ve been undersalting my food, and… you get the idea.

As small as that return sounds, to me it feels like an enormous breath. And a huge signboard with normalcy painted on it.

I write to work saying, “Starting back today. But slowly!”

When I had a job, this was an email that I both dreaded and needed to send at the same time. I had to be honest about the pace at which I was trying to make a comeback. And I had to be sure I wasn’t overpromising anything. And I have to fight the shame of having been away from work for an extended period of time. And I was happy that some form of routine was returning to my life. It was a confusing mix of emotions every time that email needed sending.

If you’re wondering, the fear during this part has always been about relapse. A sudden rush back to full output feels like a risk, and so the return must be gradual: a week of slow re-entry before anything resembling normal productivity. The typos slowly go away. The responses get longer and more elaborate over time. The book on the careful mental mathematics of rationing energy can be closed temporarily.

The fear fades as the symptoms reduce. But it doesn’t fully go away ever. Instead, it sits with you through the whole early part of the rebuilding. Think of it like a micromanaging middle management employee checking in on that project every couple of hours.

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The plants get watered

There are things I stop doing (have to stop doing, really) during an episode that I don’t notice I’ve stopped doing until I start again. Watering the plants is one of them.

It’s quite an ordinary thing. I’m aware it’s an ordinary thing. But the coming back of ordinary things is exactly what the rebuilding process is made of.

I smother the dogs

During an episode, I have very little to give. The dogs get fed because they need to be fed, of course. But beyond the basics, I’m running on less than empty.

In the rebuilding phase, that changes. I find myself spending more time with them, worrying about them, covering them in more love than they strictly need. I suspect what looks like affection from the outside is also, at least partly, the relief of being able to give again. Of having something to offer after a period of having almost nothing.

Unlike me, the dogs tolerate all of this graciously.

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A fried egg appears

Breakfast is the first meal to come back. I’m not sure exactly when it disappears during the episodes. You see, memory isn’t a good friend during those periods, and time becomes a fuzzy thing.

I’ve never really been a breakfast person, but the kitchen has always been a grounding sanctuary for me. So, I find myself in the kitchen again. And because I must take things slowly at first, there’s nothing complicated to do; it’s got to be a fried egg.

During an episode, I often ‘forget’ to eat. Sometimes, because there’s just no appetite, and some other times because it’s too much to get myself to eat something. In the rebuilding phase, the appetite returns enough to want something specific, and that is a signal. A signal from the fried egg that I’m getting better.

I call my therapist without turning on the subtitles

This is the moment I know the rebuilding has worked.

During an episode, I use live subtitles on my phone or my laptop for calls. The voices make it hard to follow spoken conversation in real time, and if I absolutely cannot avoid a call, the subtitles do the translation my brain can’t manage. It’s a practical solution. It also marks, clearly, where I am; for me and my therapist.

But when I can sit on a call with my therapist and follow her words directly without running over the transcript constantly, that’s when I know I’m getting back.

It doesn’t sound like a fanfare music moment. But what it is, is a phone call that feels, for the first time in a while, just like a phone call.

I suspect what I really want to say is that the rebuilding phase is not a dramatic thing at all. There’s nobody to mark it and no moment when someone gives me the well done speech. Instead, it’s a fried egg or a watered plant or a conversation about dinner or just a call that doesn’t need subtitles.

It’s all very small and ordinary and invisible from the outside. Which, I suppose, is true of most things that actually matter.

If you’d like to read it, here’s the piece I mentioned earlier.

[embed]10 Lessons Schizoaffective Disorder Taught Me About Myself Working with my mind hasn’t always been easy. But it has been revealing in ways I never expected.medium.com

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