Tag Archives: youth

Thoughts On Friendships

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Overall, I am happier and more free than I was in the long term care home. The biggest thing I miss about the long term care home is friends. I made several friends during the eight months I lived at that small town hospital. It was fun seeing people younger than me having successful marriages, careers, and families. I haven’t been around people younger than me much in my entire life. When I was in school, I spent most of my time with people my own age, like most students. In college, most of my friends were a couple years older than me. I didn’t like the socializing part of high school, at least not during school hours. I absolutely loved the socializing in college. My college had less than 600 students, but we had students from a majority of states and a few dozen countries on six continents. In my fraternity (I was in a frat the first two years of college), our president and vice president were foreign students. One was from Netherlands and the other from Japan. My longest dating relationship was with a woman from Iowa, and she was a couple years older than me.

When I applied for disability and moved to low income housing in 2006, I didn’t realize what a hit my social life was going to take. I was the youngest resident when I moved there. Some of the elders didn’t like that I was there. Some thought that I shouldn’t be on disability because of my intellectual pursuits and how well I was managing on my own. That’s the cruelty of invisible disabilities. I’ve been to church several times and out in public a few times since I moved to the suburbs of Oklahoma City three months ago. I’ve noticed that some people are actually more helpful and sympathetic now that I am in a wheelchair, at least when out in public. I no longer get questions about ‘what do you do.’ Even though my mobility is gone, it’s kind of a welcome relief to not have to lie to people about not having a career. Most people, I have found, don’t have the attention span for me to explain that I have a mental illness that prevents me from sustainable employment. Sure, people in general are more sympathetic now than twenty years ago. But I still fear most people don’t entirely get how real mental illness really is.

I still haven’t made any new friends since I moved here. I am starting to put faces to names my parents have been talking about for the last few years. Most adults my age and younger I have met here are married, have families, and careers. My oldest nephew is going to graduate from high school next week. Seeing my brother and his wife’s oldest son grow up is making me realize I missed out on a great deal because of my mental illness. I would have never acknowledged it in my twenties, but I am now convinced I would have made a good father and husband had I never developed mental illness. I think I would have had a pretty cool career too. My brother and his family made me realize just what I lost due to this illness. I imagine it will hurt even more if I live long enough to see my nephews and niece have children and careers of their own. It will hurt seeing my brother and his wife grow elderly together and have decades worth of memories, prestigious careers, their own home, and have lots of loved ones in their elderly years. The big reason I moved down here rather than stayed in Nebraska is that I fear that I will need my brother and his wife to help me out after our parents are dead. Seeing my elderly parents up close every day for the last three months made me realize that they are not the healthy and vibrant people of my teens. These last three months I’ve spent more time with my parents than probably the previous eighteen years combined since I graduated college. Even in college, I didn’t go home very often. I was just too busy enjoying having a decent social life for the first time in my life.

My five years in college was the only time in my entire life I didn’t feel like a complete outsider. I loved being around people who shared my interests and thirst for knowledge. I loved the class discussions. In college, I discovered my love for writing. I discovered my love for economics and investing. Learned some really cool stuff in my chemistry and biology classes. Read a lot of books, many of which are making their ways unto banned book lists (those are the exact kind of books teenagers and college kids should be reading). Read a lot of the classics of philosophy, literature, history, etc. Found out I have a natural talent in picking good stocks. Kind of a pity social security disability puts a cap on how much one can have in savings and remain in the program that’s so low.

In college, I met people who were nerdier than me. I mean, I met dudes who built computers, wrote computer programs, played in garage bands, played trivia games, collected comic books, played Dungeouns and Dragons, Magic the Gathering, etc. I even had friends who did Civil War reenactments and attended Renaissance Fairs during school breaks. I never knew anyone who did any of those things in high school. I would have loved all of that. But, I didn’t have many close friends before I went to college. Most of the guys at my rural high school liked to hunt, fish, drive ATVs, go to beer bashes in cow pastures twenty miles from the nearest cops, etc. The kind of stuff my parents wouldn’t allow me and my brother to do. Looking back on it decades later, I’m glad they never let us do that kind of thing. When I was thirteen, my dad told me that people should be kind to nerds and dorks because they would someday rule the world. Like most thirteen year olds, I thought he was full of it. Turns out he was right. Even as a first grader, I knew my mind was going to be my future. I enjoy being an adult far more than I ever did being a kid, even with heart failure and mental illness.

Even as much as I love about being a wise middle aged man with a few gray hairs and chronically bad knees, I do miss a few things about my youth. I miss my best friend. She and I are in our forties and have been besties since age fifteen. I miss my health. I’m starting to realize that it’s not the ‘good old days’ the elders miss nearly as much as it is the health and vitality. I miss my health and vitality, but I love the knowledge and wisdom I have acquired. I love that I am still in contact with the best friends I ever had. I love that I have adapted to my mental illness and am able to talk about it with a large audience. I hope this blog stays up in one form or another long after I’m dead. Makes me wonder if medical science will eventually find a cure for mental illness. I think eventually it will be cured, just not in my lifetime.

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Graduations, Reunions, and Life Choices

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Got my lease renewed for this year.  So I don’t have that hanging anymore.  Also got a few new shirts in the mail from my dad this morning.  Thanks Dad.  I appreciate it.  Ever since I went more minimalist than most people a few years ago I have less of everything, including clothing.  This means I wear what I do have more often and have to do laundry often.  Maybe I should pick up some more clothing just so I don’t have to do washing and replacing clothing more often.  Unfortunately clothing wears out if you wash it a lot and wear it quite often.  I found this out through my own experiences.

Been going outside more often lately even with it being a damper and colder than usual spring.  I still don’t drive much except when necessary.  I fire up my car at least every few days just to make sure everything is in proper order.  Even though I no longer take road trips like I did even a few years ago, it is good to know I could if I had to.

I might be making a couple trips this summer.  I have a family reunion in Colorado at the end of June I might be going to.  And my twenty year class reunion is the first weekend in July.  I’m still undecided if I’m going.  Sadly, many of the people I spent the bulk of my time with in high school live far away and probably aren’t the types to go to reunions anyway.  Some days it’s hard to believe I’ve been out of high school for twenty years.  Other days, especially when I’m in the grips of mental illness, it feels like someone else’s life.  An incredible amount has changed since I graduated high school in 1999.

I occasionally break out my high school annuals and photographs of high school and college friends.  I remember when we graduated high school, one of the speakers said something to the effect that we wouldn’t truly appreciate the power and beauty of youth until we were older.  So true.  I guess the biggest thing I miss about high school and college is how easy it was to socialize and make friends in those environments.  I was a geeky kid I admit.  I would have been the stereotypical nerd in high school and college except that I had a lot of physical strength (but no coordination).  I was on the football and track teams in high school and did intramural softball in college.  I probably couldn’t have done any other sports as a kid.  I wasn’t fast enough for soccer or coordinated enough for baseball or basketball or quick enough for wrestling.

Another thing about school and college I miss is the academics.  Even though I never got straight A’s in any level of school, I still did pretty decent in classes.  I did well enough grade wise and test wise to qualify for some really good scholarships.  I am so, so glad I graduated college debt free.  I couldn’t manage on a disability pension while paying off loans.  It was tough giving up on the MBA program once I lost my graduate assistant job.  But I wasn’t going to continue on in school if I had no way to pay for it outright.  Debt scared me then and it still scares me even though I haven’t had debts for years.  I don’t know if I even have a credit score anymore simply because I don’t borrow money.

My eldest nephew recently graduated middle school.  He will be starting high school at a large suburban public school this autumn.  So he may be going to college in four years.  I don’t really have any advice for the youngsters except remain flexible and open to new experiences.  We have no idea what jobs will be around in even ten years.  Many jobs could be eliminated due to automation and artificial intelligence.  Of course, many new jobs could be coming too.  I can’t in good faith advise any kid on what career path to take.

I won’t even tell them to ‘follow your heart.’  I saw too many people take that advice and end up with degrees that have few job prospects, at least right now. Yet, I remember an interview Mark Cuban gave on a business news show a couple years ago and he said to the effect that if machines keep taking over jobs, then people with humanities and liberal arts degrees might be in demand more than even business and technical fields within ten years.  Wouldn’t that be ironic; for years kids were discouraged from being arts and humanities students for fear they’d be able to do nothing but make coffee and work fast food.  Soon we may say the same thing about accounting, business, and delivery drivers.

In short, we don’t know what will be available.  In fact, the youngsters coming through the ranks may have to retrain every few years for new job skills.  The tech and science isn’t going to slow down anytime soon.  It is actually getting faster.  We could be going into a really cool future but it could be a rugged journey to get there.  The next generation or two could be quite rough as we navigate the biggest change to civilization since Industrialization got going in the lat 1700s and early 1800s.  I hope we are up to the challenges.

Normal vs. Not-Normal and What Is vs. What Isn’t

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whybenormal

I will readily admit that I would, by no stretch of any neurotypical person’s imagination, be considered ‘normal.’  I don’t, thanks in large part to my mental illness as well as my own individual preferences and tastes, find things that most people would find enjoyable to be to my liking.  I don’t like crowds, I really have a hard time trusting people I’ve just met, I don’t enjoy much of what consists of acceptable socialization (i.e. going to bars, going on dates, small pointless ‘chit-chat’, attending large social gatherings in enclosed spaces, etc.), I certainly don’t like arguments or debates (as I’ve already expounded on in a previous blog entry), and I don’t see why it’s socially acceptable to appear like I’m dumb or lacking knowledge.  I’ve read so many books on ‘socially acceptable behavior’ that flat out states things like ‘the smartest man/woman in the room/group/organization/etc. is putting a bulls eye on their backs and is inviting ridicule and ostracizing themselves to the group.’  

I never understood the tendency of people to treat poorly those who are smarter or stand out from the norm (or average) in anyway.  I use smarter as an example because I’ve always held my smarts/intelligence/wisdom to be not only a source of pride and identity, but even as a child I knew my intelligence would be my way to carve out survival in the world.  Yet most of my classmates, many of my teachers, and even some of my family members didn’t see things this way.  Instead of the kid who read at a  12th grade level as an 11 year old, they saw the kid who was always picked last in softball, didn’t really like socializing with kids (and adults) with whom he had little in common.  Instead of seeing a teenager who did extremely well in classes like history, english, biology, and chemistry, they saw the kid who struggled to pass algebra and didn’t do well in shop class.  Instead of seeing a seeing a kid who absolutely loved speech and drama productions, they saw the kid who played football but didn’t like it and ‘had an attitude problem’ or ‘had problems with authority’ because he was always asking questions and held odd ideas (many of which in later years  proved to be true).  

Even now people don’t always see me as a mentally ill individual who can live on his own, manages what little he receives from Disability with little to no outside help, writes a quite unknown blog about mental illness, manages his friends (most of whom are loyal friends for life) and social life well, and has never been trouble with the law.  Sadly many people see a man who has no ‘permanent job’ (as if there is such a thing in the 21st century), relies on Welfare (and thus is perceived as a drain on society and taxpayers), is somewhat odd because he speaks out on what he believes (especially if it flies in the face of conventional wisdom), is someone to be pitied because he doesn’t have legions of friends and supporters ( I would much rather have a small, but loyal, base of friends and family who overlook my differences and the fact I’m not normal as opposed to have an army of superficial friends who’ll abandon me with any minor shakeup to their normal lives), and someone who is quite overweight (never mind I’ve been making steps to remedy this sad fact and have lost 40 pounds in 4 1/2 months).

 

tridebeingnormaldintwork

 

In short, I am not normal.  I am not ‘average.’  I am not neurotypical.  I am not popular (nor do I seek to be).  I will not tell anyone just exactly what itching ears wish to hear.  I tell the truth about what it’s like to be mentally ill in a chronically sane world.  Believe me, it isn’t always pretty and I have no doubt lost ‘friends’ and ‘supporters’ over it.  The truth isn’t always pretty.  The truth can be threatening.  I have, since I was 8 years old and discovered I had some unusual intelligence and wasn’t what my classmates and some teachers considered normal, refused to knuckle under and be what I knew I wasn’t.  What I was and what I am is good enough for me.  It is what I was made to be.  It is alright with me that I am what I am.  I don’t understand why it isn’t good enough for most neurotypicals I have met.

Things I Didn’t Know As A Kid, Part 2

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For this entry, I’m taking a break from my regular mental illness writings and writing on something more light hearted.  Growing up, we’ve all had mistaken impressions about what things were really like in the adult world or in popular culture.  I was no exception.

Here is another installment of the depth of my youthful ignorance.  It’s amazing, though.  I’ve been out on my own for ten years and I’m now less intelligent than I thought I was when I was eighteen.  Either the older I get the dumber I was or I just forget what I actually did know.

As a kid growing up in rural Nebraska, I not only had no idea that Minnesotans and Canadians spoke with accents BUT I was ignorant enough to believe that we in Nebraska did not as well.  Way wrong on that one.  Just ask anyone who has ever heard me talk.

Growing up as a hopeless college football junkie, I knew that the Wishbone formation was a football offense long before I knew it was a chicken bone.  Sad but true.  Yet I did know who The President was before I knew who Tom Osborne was.  

As a kid who was an avid reader, the old library in my hometown was a second home to me.  I read so much as a kid that I was well into college before I even imagine why other people just couldn’t get into reading.  Just a matter of practice makes perfect.

When I was in grade school, I found it laughable that kids from the big cities on the coasts thought that kids from the midwest rode horses to school or lived two miles from their nearest neighbors or didn’t have indoor plumbing or such other nonsense as if we were still in the late 1800s.  Yet it didn’t occur to me that the idea of there being drug dealers and pimps on every street corner, mobsters buying off entire state governments, and the ‘valley girl types’ were just as ridiculous.  But that’s stereotypes for you.

Even as a kid I didn’t like Mickey Mouse at all.  I was more partial to Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck.  And I used to have endless debates with my friends about who was the better cartoon character.  Think a grade school version of the deeper debates (i.e. Capitalism vs. Communism, Evolution vs. Creationism, Ford vs. Chevy) if you will.  Of course when I’d be losing my argument I’d bring out the heavy artillery and yell “Yeah, well Donald Duck is such a man that he doesn’t even wear pants!” or “Yeah, well how much money does Mickey Mouse have?  Scrooge McDuck can swim in his cash!” 

 The first time I saw ‘Braveheart’ as a teenager, I unintentionally spent the next 24 hours speaking a Scottish accent.  I’m just glad that I didn’t own a kilt or a massive sword.

 My biggest aspiration as an 8 year old child was to “Be rich enough that me and my friends can play Monopoly with real money.”  Of course I’m well short of this goal right now but I could probably start building houses on Baltic Avenue right now.  

 When I was 13 and first heard about the book ‘Anthem’ by Ayn Rand, I immediately thought it was about the writing of the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’  I was a bit off on that one.

When I was in college, I read an email forward titled ‘Jocks vs. Nerds.’  It described how much money Michael Jordan had and how fast he was earning his money and “at that rate it would take over 400 years to have the money Bill Gates has right now.  Nerds win.”  I was telling one of my friends this and he retorted, “Yeah, well how many women would want Bill Gates if it weren’t for his money?”  To which I responded, “Well, at least any paternity suits against him would be automatically false.  So there’s one advantage.”  And I say that typing with a computer program he made famous.

Things I Didn’t Know As A Kid

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Things I Didn’t Know As A Kid 

 

When I was a young kid I, like most kids, thought I knew all that was worth knowing. Of course some of the things I believed to be true, especially about popular culture and such, were often half-truths or out right false. Some of these entries will sound absolutely funny to some people, especially those of my parents generation. Here goes. 

1) I was fourteen years old before I found out that the book ‘The Catcher in The Rye’ wasn’t about baseball. I always thought it was a minor league baseball player from the midwest in the Great Depression Era (like ‘Bull Durham’ meets ‘The Natural’). 

2) I was in college before I figured out that Prince Albert in A Can was a brand of tobacco, not just some screwball adolesent prank phone call joke. 

3) I was twenty seven years old before I figured out that 1960s Political Radical “Abbie” Hoffman wasn’t a woman. His name was really Abbot. But a high school classmate of mine made the same mistake about Pauly Shore back in the late 1990s. 

4) When the movie ‘The Prince of Tides’ came out, I immediately thought it was about surfing. 

5) As a grade school student I was shocked to learn that ancient peoples knew how to make alcohol before they knew how to make soap. Priorities I suppose. 

6) As a teenager I thought it was common knowledge that cholorox bleach (or anything with chlorine), when mixed with ammonia makes a very noxious gas that can quickly burn your lungs and even kill you. I’m surprised even as a grown man how few people know that I encounter in my day job as a maintenance man. 

7) Growing up I never realized just how few places could see the stars in the night sky, let alone as clearly as we can in Nebraska. Heck I could watch the mid Augsut meteor showers in my backyard right in towm and we considered it a bad night if we didn’t see at least 50 meteorites in one night. 

8) When I was in 4th grade and we were discussing eathquakes and the San Andreas lines in California, Mrs. Gruszczynski (probably the best teacher a boy like me could have ever had) mentioned that it was possible with continential drifting that California could break off from the rest of North America. And I just quipped “Then we ought to be buying desert property just outside of Las Vegas. Once California breaks off, and Vegas still there: instant beach and major resorts.” To which Mrs. G responded, “But Zach, that could take thousands of years.” And I said, “Well, I guess start saving my money and will all that land out to many generations ahead.” To which she just smiled and just kind of chuckled like ‘Keep thinking, that’s what your good at, Zach Foster.’ 

I think I’ll rap it up for now. Obviously this is nowhere near the depth of my youthful ignorance. 

“I never met a man so ignorant I could learn nothing from him” Galileo