I have primarily negative symptoms and disorganized thoughts.  My concentration comes and goes all during the day and when I get sick I get suicidal and irrational.  I channel all my moments of high quality thinking into making artwork.  Art provides an escape from the illness.  While I make it I don't feel ill or symptomatic.  I feel in control and strong.  My best strategy for coping with this illness is to make art every day and channel all my hopes and dreams, ambition and drive into becoming a better artist.  Give me ten more years doing this and the art world will find it impossible to ignore me.

 

I'm a lucky woman.  I have a husband who loves me very much and takes good care of me.  We both are smart, read a lot, and have a good sense of humor, I may be sick but I am also happy a lot.  The great irony of my life is that there is so much ability and disability in my life.  Having a successful marriage is something that people without an illness dream of, and I've got one.  But having a successful career has been my life long dream too and I am too sick to go to school or work for more than two or three hours a day.  Maybe part of coping with this illness has been an increased awareness of the value of the "little" things in life.  I love my dog, I love when my husband cooks me dinner.  I love taking the dog for a walk with my husband.  My disease makes my world very small and the people I know few in number.  Making art, a solitary task, fits in well with my limited social skills and fluctuating states of consciousness.

 

The final and perhaps most important way of coping is by taking medication.  I recently went through a medication change and the experience left me with the strong impression that without medication I would be institutionalized for life.  Without the aid of medication my illness is so strong that it destroys personality, all emotional balance, and character.  My marriage, my artwork, and my happiness depend on taking medication.