Life Before Bipolar Disorder

To lighten up this blog, I'll contrast life after bipolar disorder with life before bipolar disorder. Before contracting bipolar disorder, I was an unusual person, but otherwise I was normal. I went to high school in the late 1980s and graduated at the top of my class. I attended the University of California at Berkeley for college in the early 1990s. I played trombone in the University of California Marching Band, and I had many friends.

I had two goals in life: graduate from Berkeley and attend the most prestigious university for graduate school that would admit me. I was extremely driven, even spending 20 hours straight studying one day. I did take breaks for meals, but otherwise I spent that whole day studying. I majored in physics.

In my junior year, I landed a job at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where I built and tested particle detectors for research in nuclear astrophysics. The next year, I transferred to a different research group where I made and tested X-ray mirrors. At the same time, I worked for a physics professor who researched experimental atomic and nuclear physics.

I never had a girlfriend at Berkeley, but I had many candidates. Some of the names included Heather, Anna, Gabrielle, Teresa, and Jennifer. I had never gone on a date until I went to college at Berkeley. In some ways, I regret not being more assertive with the women in college because I can't find a single woman nowadays.

Berkeley was fun, in spite of the hard work. As a member of the marching band, I attended every home football game. Band members socialized a lot and there were many band romances, even marriages.

I studied a lot, often pulling all-nighters. My hard work paid off. The U.S. Department of Defense in 1993 awarded me a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG Fellowship). I also won Honorable Mentions in the fellowship competitions of the National Science Foundation and the Ford Foundation. I had applied for 16 universities and colleges for graduate studies in physics, and 11 of them admitted me for either the master's degree or Ph.D. programs in physics. The last university to admit me was Harvard University.

So in 1993, I had everything I wanted: a bachelor's degree in physics from UC Berkeley, an NDSEG Fellowship, and admission to Harvard University to pursue a Ph.D. in physics. It was at this point that I first heard the voice claiming to be God. I had my fun before the bipolar disorder, and once it reared its ugly head, my life would never be the same.