Music has become the focus of my life to deal with my mental illness. I've had to create a life for myself because my mental illness has precluded me from getting any other kind of work, people don't seem to understand schizophrenia in any sort of effective way, it all seems to be negative towards the illness and I get dismissed.
But when it comes to music I can get up and perform in front of a crowd and no-one knows I've got an illness, I can perform when I'm ill, I can perform well. So it's a job I can do with all my heart, and do sincerely, whereas with normal employment I think people sometimes find me a little insincere, I'm not quite sure.
As a sufferer of the illness I find it difficult to understand sometimes why people won't accept that I've got an illness.
Schizophrenia has to do with delusional thought. You can get trapped into a way of thinking about things that isn't real, that isn't based on the reality of the situation. You can see that things have happened and our minds tend to construct a reason why these things have happened, but when you're schizophrenic you come up with all these reasons that aren't necessarily real.
I've got to have witness on myself all the time. If people have a negative reaction to me reasons will come into my head why they're reacting that way to me.
Sometimes I'm right but quite often I'm wrong and I have to stop myself judging other people by my delusional thoughts. If I have these delusional thoughts and other people can just think I'm being weird or I'm trying to make things up or be difficult - they don't realise it's real to me.
I struggle to distinguish between what is real and what isn't it. Sometimes other people will laugh at me or stir me up a bit, inflame the situation, they think it's funny but don't realise that, again, it is real to me.
I've been to university twice - I studied arts, musicology, drama - and I was very good at study but when I got stressed my mind stopped thinking. So I left university and went out into the workforce for a while, this was before I realised I had an illness, but I went back to university and studied engineering.
I'm an intelligent man but people find it hard to reconcile that I have a university education but I'm unemployable. It's a paradox. They think I'm bunging it on.
It's hard to explain but when I get ill my mind stops, I can't think. Since I had my breakdown in 1996, I've found it very hard to read books or to concentrate and read for a long period of time. I can sit down and play a guitar for three or four hours but generally I only read magazines and things like that now.
I've had that many jobs and usually I start a job and I'm the boss within six months (laughs), but then it all falls apart. I have a breakdown or someone misunderstands something, I make a mistake or I get a bit delusional or whatever, and I lose my job and have to start again.
I remember when I was 23 I went to South Australia for a while and I was speaking with a gentleman in a pub, he asked me what I'd done with myself.
I told him what jobs I'd had and he said, "Oh bull, you're 23, there's no way in the world you've done all those jobs", but it was a fact, a part of my illness but I didn't realise I was ill at the time. I'd excel at something, and then fall apart, and then find something new and excel at that and then fall apart.
In 1996 I decided to get out of music for a while to get away from the pub scene. I retrained and found myself working in home and community care. I found that a really rewarding job, I really liked working with the older people, the frail and disabled, and I really found that I could do something.
But the stress of the work led me into some delusional thought and I lost the ability to organise myself. As a result I lost my job and within a month or two I ended up in a psychiatric hospital with a breakdown.
It was very hard to recover from that and for two years I was like a little boy, following my mother around.
My parents have been a great help with this and I've nearly lived with my parents for the whole time since then. But for a long while I was like a little boy and I had to re-learn just how to find peace in my life.
I started working with my brother and a friend of his and set up some band equipment and every second night we'd just go and play. I started writing music and we started playing parties and so on.
By the time 2000 came along I felt confident enough to start working professionally again and started playing in Singleton with a band called Dizzy Lizard.
We did quite well and worked around the valley for seven or eight years until I'd written enough material to put together an album.
I moved to Wollombi and spent some time in the country soul-searching and recording the album. The band is called Broke Road and the album is The Wattle and The Brush.
Wollombi was a good experience for me. It not only gave me a place to focus on my music but also brought new ideas into my songwriting. I've got 13 songs on the album and have about 19 songs started for the next album.
I can perform when I'm ill. I learned how to sing with my mum as a young boy in church every Sunday. Mum always had the best voice in church and as a little boy I'd stand next to her and I sang just like her.
Part of my core is singing and playing guitar is something I taught myself. Mum and Dad paid for piano lessons but I wanted to play guitar. I had a few lessons but I'm basically self-taught.
It's very much a part of my personality and even though my mind might be troubled, when I start singing and playing guitar I find a base. It empowers me in that people don't see I'm ill when I'm performing. I don't have to talk to people. I go through my routine and people respond to it.
Sometimes when I'm ill I perform even better, but it's very difficult being ill. I don't rejoice in or enjoy being ill but at least it doesn't stop me from performing.
I really have to thank my parents for all of their support over the years. I don't think I'd be here without them, and my partner, Jo, who helped me finish the album. When you have a mental illness you need great support, and that's what I've got.
Schizophrenia Fellowship of NSW
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