Abnormal Life

What is normal? I certainly don't feel that way. Most people my age have a full-time job, have their own homes, drive an SUV or minivan, are married, and have children. Thanks to bipolar disorder, the gift that keeps giving, I have none of that. At age 37, I still live with my parents, am hopelessly underemployed, and am pretty much abnormal if you define normal as the way I observe most people my age live.

In the real world, I find it difficult to introduce myself to people. "What do you do for a living?" is an evil question for me. I cannot just say, "I don't work because I'm disabled." I pretty much have to make up a story. The next question is usually, "Oh, what is your disability?" because it isn't obvious unlike missing limbs.

Mental illness is still the unacceptable disability in most people's eyes. It isn't a "real" disability. When I did tell people frankly about my mental illness, I received a variety of reactions, mostly negative. You can read my rant on that subject on an earlier post.

I'm attending a party for newly admitted local students to my alma mater, UC Berkeley. I have my doubts about attending this party because I didn't have such a stellar career after graduating from college. I know the new admits are going to want to hear from alumni such as myself what are their chances at good careers after graduation from Berkeley. Still, I know most of them want to know what my alma mater, their potential future college is like.

I can tell the new admits about my exploits in marching band and my attendance at football games. I can tell them about my research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. I can tell them what classes are like and what the city is like. Still, I can't really tell these young folks what life after graduation is like because frankly it's horrible and terribly abnormal for me.

Yet, the president of the local chapter of the California Alumni Association encouraged me to attend anyway. I can say that currently I am working on a professional license, but hopefully nobody will ask me where I work because I don't work anywhere now.

You may sense some anxiety on my part about going to this party. Still, I have to live in the real world. I can't stay home with my folks all the time. It's just unrealistic. When I do venture out in the world, my bipolar disorder comes with me. My entire ugly history of psychiatric illness comes with me, no matter how normally I act.

Abnormality seems to terrorize me all the time. Why don't I have a job like everyone else? Why do I live with my parents at middle age? The answers is simple. Mental illness robbed me of my life. Most people my age have been working in their professions for almost 20 years, and many have attained high positions such as school principal, tenured professor, senior engineer, and so on. While they were working professionally, mental illness was slamming me as I struggled through graduate school to earn a Ph.D. in physics.

I was going in and out of mental hospitals from coast to coast (really!) I started out at the country club called McLean Hospital, where Harvard University sends its graduate students like myself. I ended up at Las Vegas Mental Health Center, the armpit of the mental institution world. While people my age were getting promoted, making more money, getting married, and having children, I was stuck in places like McLean Hospital and LVMH.

Is it any surprise I have no job, no money, no girlfriend or wife? While I was chasing the Ph.D. and losing my mind as a result, everyone else was working at real jobs. Is it no wonder when you're mentally ill, life is so abnormal?