A longform essay exploring the firsthand experience of Jonathan Harnisch—artist, author, and advocate—living through schizophrenia, dystonia, akathisia, and chronic neurological agony.
There are no good metaphors for what Jonathan Harnisch feels. That’s because pain—real, disfiguring, mind-consuming pain—burns through metaphor. “It’s not that I’m suffering inside a prison,” he says. “It’s that I am the prison. I’m the cell, the bars, the locked door, and the scream no one hears.”
For decades, Harnisch has written with startling clarity and poetic fire about living with schizophrenia, CPTSD, and various movement disorders, including dystonia and akathisia. His novels (Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia, Pervo – Third Alibi) and film projects (Living Colorful Beauty) are, at once, raw memoirs and surreal diaries—documents of someone trapped in his own nervous system, yet lucid enough to transcribe the nightmare in real time.
“There’s this assumption,” he says, “that schizophrenia is about hearing voices or being ‘crazy.’ But it’s also about feeling the entire world implode inside your body, moment to moment. It’s as physical as it is mental. My muscles pull me into knots. My skin burns like it’s been peeled off. I sweat, I shake, I cry, and yet I’m silent. That’s the kind of illness this is.”
The Disease That Won’t Let Go
Harnisch’s account of dystonia is almost theological. It’s not a condition, he says—it’s a crucifixion. Dystonia causes muscles to twist and spasm involuntarily, often with unbearable force. It’s often idiopathic. It disfigures posture, movement, and mood alike.
“You go to walk to the kitchen, and your legs don’t belong to you. They might fold. They might snap sideways. You might fall. I’ve fallen hundreds of times. Sometimes I crawl, sometimes I give up and starve for the day. And the kicker is, you look normal enough. No one sees it.”
Akathisia—the most tormenting symptom in his constellation—makes rest impossible. “It's like every cell in my body is a wasp trying to escape. You pace, twitch, rock, groan. You want to peel your skin off. It's hell—actual hell. I have had no peace in my own body for years.”
A Nervous System at War with Itself
What makes Harnisch’s narrative so uniquely devastating is the way he weaves the physical and psychiatric into a single architecture of suffering. “Schizophrenia tells you you’re being watched, punished, poisoned. Dystonia makes your body act as if it’s true. It’s the perfect horror loop.”
Doctors have often misread or ignored him. He was placed on antipsychotics that worsened his movement symptoms. “They called it side effects. But side effects don’t make you scream into a pillow for seven hours a day. Side effects don’t make you beg for death just to rest.”
His accounts describe weeks in which he could not sit still or lie down without burning nerve pain. “I live like a haunted puppet—burned out, writhing, shaking, always trying not to scare the people around me.”
Isolation, Paranoia, and The Betrayal of Systems
Harnisch is no stranger to abandonment. “Friends? Gone. Family? Sued me. Doctors? Shrugged. I have been through a thousand private apocalypses and all anyone sees is a guy with a house and a cat.”
He is keenly aware of the paradox of visibility. He’s published widely, has financial means, and still cannot find medical professionals willing to take on his case seriously. “I’m too sick to be believable. People think because I write about it, I must be okay. But I write because I’m not okay.”
Many of his readers know him for his relentless documentation of suffering. He does not sugarcoat. He does not apologize for despair. And he does not seek pity. “I want understanding. I want the record to show: this is what happens when the body and mind both betray you, and the world turns away.”
Why He Still Writes
“Some days I can’t even open a jar of peanut butter. Other days I can write ten thousand words. Both are true. Both are me.” Writing, for Harnisch, is a form of agency. It’s a stake in a world that has otherwise tried to erase him.
“My body is disintegrating, my mind is fragmented, but if I can get a sentence out—one that burns with truth—then I exist. Then I matter.”
He doesn’t believe in recovery, not in the Hollywood sense. “There’s no light at the end of this tunnel. But sometimes, in the tunnel, I find a kind of radiance. A sentence. A purr from my cat. A message from a stranger who read my work and felt less alone.”
Postscript
Jonathan Harnisch lives a mostly reclusive life with his beloved cat, Georgie. He continues to write, dictate, and document his experiences with brutal honesty. “I’m not an inspiration,” he insists. “I’m not a tragedy either. I’m just a person—burning alive in his own skin, trying to make it beautiful for someone else.”
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