Life Today

In my past posts, I wrote in generalities about the past, but where am I now? I basically do nothing all day. I receive disability from the Social Security Administation. At middle-age, I live with my mother and father. I do not work as I have explained in my previous post.



I have no friends, at least no friends here in ***FABULOUS*** Las Vegas. I have no girlfriend or wife. Life is miserable. I cannot even explain to normies that I have a disability, because my disabiliy is one you're not supposed to have. I made a conscious decision to not try to make friends anymore because most people condemn me for having a mental illness.



They say it's my fault I contracted bipolar disorder due to my not eating right, poor upbringing by my parents, or my plain immorality. They just want to assure themselves that their "superior" habits and practices are what keep them from contracting a mental illness.



So I have to stay in the closet with my mental condition. I only talk to health care workers, my family, and the employees at stores, restaurants, etc. I try to stay as anonymous as possible.



Since I left graduate school in 2001, I have been unable to obtain full-time employment despite my best efforts. The best I could do was work as a tutor of mathematics and physics at the Community College of Southern Nevada (now College of Southern Nevada). The work was part-time and carried no benefits.



I puzzled my co-workers, most of whom were college students who could only work part-time or had to work two part-time jobs. They could not understand how I could support myself on only one part-time job. I seemed like a normal person when I came to work each day. One co-worker just asked me, "What do you do with all your extra time?"



"I drive my parents to the doctor," I said. It was necessary to keep our car available in the morning since my parents are too old to drive. That was why I worked in the afternoons and evenings only.



"What? You drive your parents every day to the doctor?" said my co-worker.



The basic problem I had with working was explaining my unusual life situation. My co-workers constantly asked me questions about my life history and my current life situation. I didn't want to come out and just say, "I'm crazy, and that's why my life is a mess!" I found myself making up small lies to cover my condition as a bipolar man. The more lies I made up, the worse my situation became at the college.

Then I'd have to explain why a middle-age man like me still lives with his parents. I explained that in a previous post. My student co-workers often lived on financial aid from the college, so they wondered why I didn't have a "real" job as a college graduate with graduate school credit. Why did I not work 8 am - 5 pm, own an SUV, own a house, have a wife and 2.3 children? What was my story, they wondered?

At College of Southern Nevada I was constantly on guard to protect my dark secret. I acted like a normal person, not screaming, "Repent! The end is at hand!" in the hallways. If I were normal, why didn't I live like a normal person (defined as a man who works 8 am - 5 pm, owns an SUV, owns a house, and has a wife and 2.3 children)?

Part of their problem was as young adults, my co-workers at College of Southern Nevada had never experienced REAL hardship. They weren't old enough to have something really bad happen to them (e.g. contract a severe mental illness or physical illness). In their naive young minds, people get everything they want as long as they work hard. They could not understand why I went to graduate school at places like Harvard University and Duke University without earning a Ph.D. Doesn't everyone who attends Harvard or Duke earn a degree? Universities never tell prospective students that their chances of success (graduation AND gainful employment) are less than 100%.

Instead, universities tout their success stories. All the universities I attended send me magazines filled with success stories of alumni. They would never publish my story, a promising young scientist who lost his mind. So my naive young co-workers at College of Southern Nevada have delusions in their minds that upon earning their bachelor's degrees or higher, someone will hand them a check for a billion dollars so they'll never have to work again.