About Sterling Pohlmann

I'm a writer living with schizoaffective disorder. My diagnosis came in 2002. I experience hallucinations, white-knuckle highs, and soul crushing lows simultaneously. I've been in and out of psych wards four times in eleven years. I haven't been back in seven years.

I write about the things most people don't want to talk about. Mental illness. The hard work of staying married when everything falls apart. The questions that burn in your chest until you wrestle them into submission. I write because I spent years watching news anchors tell me the government was spying on me. I watched entire episodes of TV shows that existed only in my mind. I felt every cringe-worthy thing I'd ever done collapse into single moments that stretched for days.

I'm still here.

My upcoming book, The House of the Rising Sun, is a psychological thriller about a schizophrenic man living in a haunted house who has to discern hallucinations from haunting. It's the story I've been preparing to write my entire life, even when I didn't know it.

I grew up so poor that all I had to play with were words. That's why I write as well as I do. I worked mall kiosks and call centers. I told elaborate lies to six-year-olds about why old photographs were in black and white. I met my wife three separate times before we finally started dating, though neither of us knew it at the time.

I've been married for 11 years. Employed full-time for six. I'm an A student in college. I get my meds through the VA. These aren't extraordinary accomplishments, but the features of an ordinary life done in extraordinary circumstances are still worth mentioning to me.

I write to break down the stigma around mental illness. I write because your story might be the survival guide someone else needs. I write because nothing I have accomplished was possible until I let go of what I cannot control, what I cannot change, and all my precious, flowery, and poisonous illusions.

A lobster grows a new shell only when it is in so much pain its choice is to grow or die. Pain is often the result of growth. It is also often the impetus for growth.

I'm stubborn. Like a rebellious stallion. But sometimes people must be broken to reach their full potential. It's not pretty. It's not ideal. It's arguably immoral. But it remains a hard truth.

I believe optimizing a few areas of your life by 1 or 2 percent can have an immense impact. You can't change who you were. You can't even change who you are. But every day you wake up is a chance to change who you become.

It's like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. Once it forms a cocoon, it is broken down to the cellular level. The only thing that remains are its wings, which were there the whole time. They were unseen, but they were always there.

As are yours.