Always With You

Always With You: My Psychosis is a raw, deeply personal memoir about trauma, relationships, psychosis, and the difficult process of learning to trust reality again.

Long before the voices began, Shaina Sarich was already carrying the effects of painful relationships, emotional wounds, isolation, and experiences she struggled to understand. Those years shaped the way she saw herself and the people around her. Then, while working in supportive housing, something changed.

She began hearing voices.

At first, they seemed connected to real people in her life and workplace. They sounded familiar, specific, and convincing enough that it became increasingly difficult to separate what was happening around her from what her mind was creating. The voices followed her at work, in her car, in her bedroom, and eventually into nearly every part of her daily life.

Some were cruel and frightening. Others were reassuring, protective, or even comforting. Shaina became emotionally attached to certain voices, especially when they seemed to offer companionship during moments of fear and loneliness. That attachment made the experience even more complicated. Psychosis was not simply terrifying; at times, it also felt familiar and meaningful.

As the voices became more persistent, Shaina questioned conversations, relationships, memories, and the intentions of the people around her. Ordinary moments could take on enormous significance. Coincidences felt like messages. Interactions seemed connected in ways that were impossible to ignore. The boundary between what was real and what only felt real grew increasingly difficult to find.

Her mental health eventually deteriorated to the point of hospitalization and treatment. Medication helped quiet the experiences that had consumed so much of her life. Eventually, the voices disappeared.

But silence was not as simple as relief.

After living with the voices for so long, Shaina found herself grieving their absence. Even though they had frightened, confused, and overwhelmed her, they had also become part of her everyday world. Losing them meant confronting not only what had happened, but also the realization that experiences that had felt completely real might never have existed outside her own mind.

Always With You explores that contradiction without trying to make psychosis neat or easy to understand. It looks at fear, attachment, trauma, hospitalization, recovery, and the emotional aftermath of losing a reality that once felt unquestionable.

Written from the perspective of someone who lived through it, this memoir offers an intimate look at what psychosis can feel like from the inside: the uncertainty, the conviction, the embarrassment, the comfort, the terror, and the grief.

Unfiltered and vulnerable, Always With You: My Psychosis is ultimately about surviving an experience that changed the way Shaina understood herself, her past, and the world around her—and trying to move forward when the memories remain, even after the voices are gone.