Story & Lesson Highlights with Aleo Covi of Glendale

We’re looking forward to introducing you to Aleo Covi. Check out our conversation below.

Aleo, a huge thanks to you for investing the time to share your wisdom with those who are seeking it. We think it’s so important for us to share stories with our neighbors, friends and community because knowledge multiples when we share with each other. Let’s jump in: What do you think others are secretly struggling with—but never say?
There are a few things. I need to clarify that I can’t provide psychiatric advice. I’m not equipped, and when people with mental conditions feel safe enough to open up to me in the hope that I can provide guidance, I’m sad to let them down by telling them I can’t provide specific kinds of advice. I want them to talk to people who can. I can only describe what has worked for me personally. Even describing that is often to a limited extent
I think one big one is when people struggling with mental illnesses or disorders feel heavy stigma when they become involved in circles filled with people who may not voice their opinions–positive or negative–on mental illness. But just because people in those circles aren’t voicing it doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking it. I’m sure a lot of churchgoing individuals with mental conditions feel like their fellows in church view them as possessed by some demon, though the fellows may not express it verbally. This causes a lot of distress in people with mental illness or disorders, but they may never bring it up because they’re afraid of putting anything out in the open.
Living with Schizophrenia is tough for people, but my heart also really goes out to people with similar or more intense conditions. For example, I have a soft spot for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder. That’s the one people problematically describe as “multiple personalities.” I don’t have that condition, but wow – that one is even more stigmatized than Schizophrenia, and Schizophrenia is stigmatized a lot. In fact, one of my characters has something similar to what could be labeled as DID. He’s a little yellow alien who has two personality states. Their names are Yogo and Piku.
I wish people in churches were, in general, more empathetic and objective about how they perceive mental illnesses and disorders without slapping on the demon possession label. People with such conditions need to find haven in their Christian communities. Unfortunately, the stigma makes people feel unsafe. People who need that feeling of safety the most, in the spaces where that safety should be provided… Those people never feel they can be both open and safe at the same time. It really sucks, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
I’ve learned to have a relationship to faith that I like to think of as somewhat healthy. I make countless blunders, and at times I don’t feel like the sharpest tool in the shed, if you get my drift. But I have to remind myself that I’m okay, even though I make moral failings constantly. I’ve been through some things, but one thing that gets me through tough times is thinking, “I know so many people who have been through worse, and got through it. How did they get through it? How can I?”
A lot of people stop at “So many people have it worse,” as though it’s supposed to give comfort of some kind. That has never worked for me. It makes me more glum. Don’t stop at “So many people have it worse,” but keep going. Go even farther than “they got through it,” and go all the way to “How did they get through it, and how can I?” This is a valuable tool to reference when despair haunts anyone. While it may not be so effective when sadness overwhelms someone to the point where they can’t think straight, it’s highly effective if you can utilize it to at least a small degree. Very, very highly effective.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m an artist and musician with a love for storytelling and experience sharing. Often, my work involves adorable monsters who embark on exciting galactic adventures. These narratives I weave are often infused with mental health themes and mythical lore.
Telling such stories are near and dear to my heart, because I myself have Schizophrenia. I am very privileged to have the tools, resources, and relationships I have had to made it possible for me to recover substantially. I haven’t experienced symptoms since early 2022, which is beautiful. My last breakdown was in 2019, so I like to tell people that finding something like recovery is possible. However, I still need to be careful. I take medication, I’ve been eating better, sleeping longer, and exercising more. All the good things. And I’m getting better and better at taking care of myself. Recovery has not been easy, though. In 2017, I literally thought I was the pope. In the hospital, I was too busy to obey the nurses because I was performing ‘exorcisms’ and giving speeches on other planets. Those nurses were tenacious saints with superhuman patience. I make light of my past delusions in a lot of my content, and I’m relieved people enjoy them. My funny videos aren’t meant to make fun of people with serious delusions. They’re meant to encourage people telling them, “Look – I’ve come far already, and I can laugh at the past now, which shows I’ve healed a lot.” So far, this seems to give people joy and hope for themselves or their loved ones.
But my life isn’t one hundred percent about Schizophrenia, nor is my content. For a while I was reluctant to make myself the “Schizophrenia guy,” but then I mused a bit about it and thought, “Why not? I might as well be known for my experiences.” And it has helped my art grow tremendously. People tell me my story, content, and recovery help them a lot with their own struggles and doubts. This is a very nice and validating truth to receive. I want to keep doing that.
Because I have Schizophrenia, I’ll likely never have children. This makes me sad, because as a kid I would read bedtime stories to my little brother. Stories I had written and illustrated for him. I had grown up heavily influenced by authors like A. A. Milne, who wrote Winnie the Pooh, and Kenneth Grahame, writer of The Wind in the Willows. There was Wilburt Awdry, who created the original Thomas the Tank Engine books. Frank Baum, the one behind the Oz books… You name it. They wrote books for their kids. I figured one day I would write stories for kids of my own. It looks like that day will never come, so I create stories for the children I’ll never have. Kids I wish I’d have, but likely never will due to my illness.
My biggest audience is adults around my age and slightly younger, which to me is great. Adults love cute monsters and stories filled with adventure. It shows me that adorableness doesn’t just have to be enjoyed by kids. I’m a grown up and I build certain narratives because I enjoy them. It makes sense that other people around my age would enjoy them as well. Maybe it’s their nostalgia of being raised on Japanese video games and Studio Ghibli films and Disney and such that makes them receptive to quirky monsters overcoming personal hurdles while saving the galaxy from evil. Among my online community members, I suspect there’s a spark of hope in some people who are tired of despairing. A hope that tells them one day, they’ll live a life filled with fantastic adventures too. I believe in my community in general, but I really especially believe in those people, because I am like them.

Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
That’s a really deep question. What comes to mind is how sure I was that I was ugly, unlikeable, and that God hated me. I really wanted to be someone else. I wasn’t accepted by kids my age in the communities I grew up in. I was shorter than them, and my skin and hair were darker than theirs. Because I looked so different from the rest of them, I can’t help but feel that was a factor in the distance between myself and them. I was interested in different things, like science and technology. Because I was homeschooled, I didn’t have much social exposure because the most consistent social opportunities I had were only Sundays during church. When I entered public high school in eleventh grade, I found it impossible to read body language and facial cues. I didn’t understand social norms and I didn’t understand boundaries. Even in college I had trouble taking hints and respecting people’s need for space or even knowing when they needed company. When people needed to be heard out, all I would do was talk because I didn’t know how to listen. I learned these things later in life.
As a kid, I was so afraid that I was inwardly a bad person. Like I said, I thought God hated me, so I hated Him strongly. It’s not like I’m not the best person in the world. I feel like I can get pretty shallow and mean at times, but it’s something I’ve worked on considerably. Even though I’m not some kind of saintly pious person, I do want to be someone my friends and family will think of as having been after God’s heart. You know, after I’m gone. It feels like a lot, but I have to remember there are so many factors in life that aren’t up to me. I may be unable to control how people remember me, but I sure can do my best to give people any warmth that I can provide.
As a kid, I wanted to live past the age one hundred. With everything going on with my health-related things, it’s unfortunate that it’s likely I won’t live very long – but I’m working on my health. Who knows? With technology developing so quickly, things are becoming possible that were previously impossible. It would be cool to live to the age seven hundred or something wild like that. It’d be awesome to explore the galaxy and such. Just imagine! And I want to tell your readers not to worry, I’m not slipping into delusion. I literally just think it would be cool to exceed even my kid self’s expectations in a ridiculous way.

What did suffering teach you that success never could?
Suffering taught me not to be cruel. It taught me not to seek to control every situation or person around me. Suffering taught me joy, and in a strange way, it taught me that I wasn’t worthless. I think people who have overcome some period of suffering in their lives may intuitively understand what I’m talking about.

So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. What truths are so foundational in your life that you rarely articulate them?
What a question… I’ll answer this as honestly as I’ve ever been honest. One truth that’s foundational to my life is my pursuit to make truth itself the foundation of my life. Can you imagine when one is so sure of something that they’d be willing to bet their life on it, and then suddenly the person experiencing all this wakes from insanity? My worst nightmare happened to me. There’s so much about this cosmic wonderland of the universe that we can be so very sure of, and then we wake and realize that what we thought was true was actually rather wrong.
Having experienced strong delusions and hallucinations, I can’t turn myself into an obstinate cement wall in the face of new evidence or experiences. The universe is malleable. It is wobbly and squishy, and at its fundamental level isn’t composed of ones and zeros. That doesn’t mean to say truth is subjective. It does mean that not everything fits neatly into the boxes that twenty-first century western society has defined for us. For so many of us, one must fit either in this box or that box. We must align all our core values here or there. If you’re not in this box, you’re in the other box, and that’s final. I don’t like that way of thinking, especially because the contents of both boxes were mostly invented recently. At least the way they are organized. If one goes to another country or era, those boxes aren’t aligned with the boxes we are forced into here and now. It’s gross.
Maybe that’s why I’m interested in quantum mechanics. Not in a hoaxy quantum quackery way, but in a way that smashes the disposition I used to have that every single thing is “classical.” Black or white, left or right, one or zero. I can’t call myself terribly open-minded, but I like to think of myself as willing to shift my perspective when reasonable. I’m not really too much of a pliable person, but I am budgeable.
Now, I’ll bring up a very public figure: in an interview, Elon Musk mentioned “base reality” when talking about the unsubstantiable “simulation theory” hypothesis thingy. Are humans just in one big computer program? Did aliens invent a giant computer to simulate our universe? We must be NPCs of some kind, right? No, I don’t think that. It’s an interesting philosophical exercise, but not really evidence based, and it’s kinda irritating to me. I think true base reality is pure, unadulterated consciousness. A Being, really, who sustains the cosmos and everything in it. This is whom I believe God to be. The Creator of all created things. This God embedded Himself in the fabric of the universe to make us His family. If you’re confused as to what in the world I’m rambling about, I’d recommend reading Jesus’ best friend John’s book about Jesus’ life on Earth. Really fascinating, cosmic stuff going on in that book. It’s worth a read. Literally, please read it.
So, in summary, I think I’d say I’m trying to be friends with Base Reality. This is foundational to my life, even though I’ve been an atheist a couple times in my life. I taught some friends about this “Base Reality” perspective on God and one even made a video about it that gained a lot of traction. I thought to myself, “dang, this caught on quickly. Maybe it’s worth it to talk about on my own platform.” But I’m hesitant to be so very loudly outspoken about these specifics pertaining to my faith everywhere because… I dunno, perhaps it’s what my friend called out as Imposter Syndrome. Have you heard of that term? Your readers should search it up online, I’m sure many would resonate. I’m also hyper conscious about how dreadfully off-course I can make the mistake of being, in terms of religious values and actions. Again, I’m not some pious saint. I’m just going through life trying not to hold back from being authentic. This really does include the constant battle of not being irresponsible. Schizophrenia can make people rather flighty I’m afraid. I think that part of me hasn’t left, even with the medication. Gosh, I’ve said so much. See how much I like to blah-blah-blah? “Pontificate” is a word I learned recently. I’m trying to avoid pontificating these days. I haven’t been very successful, though.

Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. If you knew you had 10 years left, what would you stop doing immediately?
I’ve devoted a lot of thought to this because the possibility of a shorter life is very real for me. If I knew I had only ten years left to live, I think fear would drive me. Hopefully not fear of death, but fear of never having my stories told. I’d let go of whatever is holding me back from making the narratives I want to finish crafting and the media I want to build. I want to make proper films, and lengthy video games, and all sorts of immersive and interactive media. I want to finish my illustrated story about my Budibaji characters. Those things are the Gold for me. I would work three times as hard to produce those things. It’s an innate need I feel. I don’t know where it comes from, but I know I want to express what I have inside to the world on the outside. It feels right, somehow. I can’t quite put it into words yet.
Right now, the world isn’t the best to be traveled. Things are kind of unsafe. Very much so. Of course, this makes me sad. Maybe I would make it work somehow. I’d love to explore the world, and venture into new places and meet new people. That would be ultra super duper meaningful to me. Someday, this will happen – at least, that’s my earnest hope! Maybe this is a sign for me to start working three times as hard. But then again, I don’t want to break myself. With my condition, I have to be cautious with many things. Still, I’d stop from holding myself back. Right now I feel like I kind of am holding myself back, but I can’t quite place what it is exactly that’s holding me back, nor how I’m holding myself back to begin with. I’m getting closer to cracking that code… I hope.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://aleocovi.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aleocovi/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandro-covian/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@aleocovi/featured
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@aleocovi
  Find my piano music on Spotify under Aleo Covi!