Public Comment

I've heard it said, the issues dealt with when we are in our twenties consist of relationships and careers. I was no different than that, except I did not fully establish myself with either skill. 

When I was in my twenties, I was fairly employable, and I worked many jobs. At most of them I couldn't make it. But I was a success at about a half dozen of them, to me meaning I kept the job six months or more and could do the job. When I was in my twenties and worked, it boosted my self-acceptance because I wasn't doing something institutionalized. 

I had girlfriends when I was in my twenties and met my wife when I was thirty. I became engaged to my wife the same day that I was released from the hospital following a psychotic episode. Joanna was a first because she wanted me even through a psychotic episode. Other relationships, if the going got tough, they'd split the scene. 

Even though I had limited successes at work and relationships in my twenties, it didn't translate to a lifetime of success. There were a lot of factors working against me, and I was not able to get a lasting toehold on working. 

When I was nineteen, I was threatened by men with guns who wanted to do a "stick-up" on the supermarket I was hired to clean. If I'd had any sense, I would've resigned from my job immediately after. Going back every night to the nighttime cleanup of supermarkets became a terrifying activity, and it triggered a relapse, one that would have come about eventually anyway. At the time I'd gone noncompliant, so the relapse was coming. The fact of being threatened with being killed only hastened the otherwise inevitable relapse. 

But at that age I was quite resilient. I recovered from the relapse, handily. I worked in electronic repair in my early twenties and also at temp jobs, and at some other jobs. And I dated. 

But people and events kept coming out of the woodwork, and I kept getting knocked flat on my butt. I was assaulted. I had issues with pining after a friend who I wanted but who wanted to keep it platonic. I went noncompliant again at age 25, and it was a decisively bad relapse that followed. It was not that I did anything illegal, wild or dangerous. I'm speaking of the lasting effects on my level of function that followed. 

Mental health professionals term it "the revolving door" syndrome. It is the pattern of continually relapsing and going back into the hospital. This terminology comes from the 1980's and it is outdated. 

In modern times, if you relapse too many times, you will not keep getting re-hospitalized. You will either die on the streets, or you will lose your soul in prison. Now more than ever, we cannot afford to mess with our mental well-being. Relapsing is not an option. 

If I had wanted to be employable, now, at age fifty-nine, there are a couple of things I could have done a long time ago that would have made this possible. 

However, no one can predict the future, and it is very cliché to say "if I knew then what I know now..." 

As it stands, I have multiple health problems, and I would never make it in conventional employment. If I'd made a major push toward that, at let's say, age 40, I might have overcome the various obstacles, and by now I would be acclimated for a job. I wanted to be a famous author, but I did not understand the basic reality that a good writer maintains a day job for the first ten to twenty years of his or her writing career. 

I've said this in the past: Writing will put a feather in your cap, but you can't eat a feather, a feather will not fill your gas tank, and a feather won't put a roof over your head. 

I've come upon a time in my life where I pay the price for not mastering employment and relationships, which are skills in our domains in our twenties. Too many setbacks took place. I was noncompliant too many times. 

No one can predict the future. So, I don't rule out that tomorrow I could resoundingly be a success. And because there is still hope for me, I continue to try. 

Jack Bragen is author of "Instructions for Dealing with Schizophrenia: A Self-Help Manual," and has also published three short fiction collections.