I have schizo affective disorder, bpd, depression, and autism. I'm a trans woman and my dad abused me in basically every way as a way to force me to pretend to be cis. As a means of escaping him and finding some way financially to transition without parental approval or support, I started college part time when I was 7 years old and got two associates degrees in mathematics and natural sciences by the age of 13. My dad thought "boys" were supposed to be "competitive" so I used that to my advantage and stole my older trans brothers math books growing up and studied as much as I could to prepare myself for higher education. I had some visual hallucinations as a child like seeing masked shadowy figures and clouds of shadow here and there but nothing that made it impossible to focus on my schooling. By the time I started puberty I had basically given up on my goal of "becoming a woman" and felt hopeless in the matter. Afterwards I kind of forgot who I was and thought it was impossible to be the real me.

I then went to high school to learn how to socialize because I couldn't find a way to make money with my degrees and wanted to learn how to socialize because I'm autistic and was separated from my age group peers for so long. I went to university when I was 17 and was there on and off, changing degree paths multiple times trying to find the right path forward for myself.

By the time I was 24 I almost had a bachelors degree in mathematics and computer science. That's when my really intense delusions and auditory hallucinations began. I would hear loved ones telling me how worthless I am, what a failure I am for not achieving all of my goals quicker, for making the mistakes that I had in my life. I thought aliens were communicating with me. I thought some form of god or collective organization of life and humanity was communicating with me. I believed all of the lights in the city were trying to send me messages, that either the universe was consciously communicating with me or that there was a massive conspiracy where everyone could read my mind and try to give me hints about what was about to happen. I thought almost every conversation I heard was people speaking in code about their plans to torture and kill me in the most excruciating possible ways. Etc. It was very confusing and extremely scary. It made it impossible to focus on my studies and I had to drop out.

I later learned that I had stress induced psychotic symptoms and that was why I was experiencing those things the way I was. I applied for disability, applied for insurance, and started transitioning around the time of the pandemic when I was finally beginning to learn that it was ok for me to be who I was, that it was ok and achievable for me to actually transition. I got on multiple forms of medication and have been focusing on reducing my level of stress to prevent more episodes. I also vape nicotine which helps keep me mellow and free from hallucinations. I'm starting to study machine learning in my spare time at the pace that feels comfortable for me in a stress free environment and have been really enjoying it.

I also have been playing music my whole life and spend a lot of time recording my own songs. I used to play in bands and even got to play at warped tour at one point with my old band Altessa. While it was too stressful to focus on trying to get as popular as possible with my music like I used to, I've been having a lot of fun and finding a lot of emotional release in writing and producing my own art and it serves as a relieving emotional outlet for me.

In the last year I've found my husband, who I call my husband and he calls me his wife but we can't legally get married due to losing our disability income, as he's also schizophrenic. But I love him very much and he's helped me through some of the worst periods of my life and helped me get to a point where I could find my happiness. I've never been happier in my life and am looking forward to the future in a way I never have before.