My Life The Way I See It

I live in Edmonton north London. I rent a supported flat in a care home. You see I have a mental disability. Sometimes I feel quite normal. Other times I don’t. My diagnosis has three components: paranoid schizophrenia; borderline personality disorder; and depression. Things started to go wrong after I left school at 18. Possibly it was triggered by the transition between childhood and adulthood. I’m not playing for sympathy, just stating facts. However, it hasn’t all been gloom and doom. I’ve had my fair share of happiness as well. We are all born to experience good and bad. This can be hard to accept when things are tough. Oh how we long for paradise, especially when we get a sniff of how good life can occasionally be. But we are not destined for eternal bliss, atleast not in this world. You may think I am stating the obvious, but it is sometimes easy to overlook basic facts.

I am 54 years old. I currently have a long, shaggy, grey beard that makes me look a bit like Aqualung on the cover of the famous Jethro Tull album. I don’t like it. I keep meaning to shave it off but something always stops me. I think it’s because appearance is a superficial thing and I feel it’s what’s going on inside you that makes you who you are. However, people often judge you from the way you look so I suppose it is important. The better you look, the better you feel. Conversely, the better you feel, the better you look. Your weight has a big influence on how you look. I am overweight. The correct weight for someone of my height (5′ 10 or 178cm) is about 11 stone 7 lbs. That’s 73 kg. I weigh 16 stone 3 lbs or 103 kg. This means I am 30 kg or 66 lbs overweight. That’s 30 bags of sugar I’m lugging around with me all day. Why did I let myself get like this? Well for one thing my antipsychotic medication induces hunger and slows down my metabolism. Also my low motivation – another symptom of schizophrenia – has reduced my desire to exercise over the years. These slow accumulative effects have acted over a 30 year period to make me look the way I do now. I am prepared to admit it is basically my fault.

To lose weight, of course, I need to eat less and exercise more. I’ve been trying to space my meals out as much as possible and keep the meal sizes down. Another problem is I hate throwing food away; it seems such a waste. I don’t do much cooking and I rely heavily on takeaways – I can hear the groans from you already – so my fate seems to be sealed. If I’m not careful my obesity could lead me to an early grave. I try to take the problem seriously but I need to keep my anxiety level under control aswell. Stress is another major cause of mortality, especially in the west. All these factors interact in such a way as to make me think I am probably f****d whatever I do. My goal of trying to reach the age of 100 seems a trifle ambitious at times I must admit. Perhaps I can last a bit longer before I order my next burger…