I dithered over how to write my first blog post for my first
shared with Everyone I Know in the Waking World, blog. That’s one advantage of
being an introvert: when it comes time to read about my thoughts, I have the
ability to endlessly shock. It’s just that unlike the more gregarious, often
I’m too happy in my own mind to elaborate upon—with enthusiasm—what exactly I
think about relocating, about America, about archives, about museums, about the
nature of art.
And let’s face it. Compared to everyone else in my family
and a vast majority of my friends, I—as Cait put it recently in a Facebook conversation—“do it my own way,
son.”
This generally means nothing more glamorous than I’m a
salmon swimming upstream most of the time. I’m not that concerned about being a
salmon. It seems to have been working well for basically a quarter century.
Writing for the anonymous, milling internet crowd is
different than writing something while knowing that the people who love and
raised you will read it. But I figure that it’s time to start doing both at
once. My life’s gotten interesting enough, so let’s begin with relocating to
Norwich.
It’s been a good three months since I’ve stepped foot in
California, the sunshine drenched land of my birth, and I couldn’t be more
content about it. I did, however, walk into a Hollister store at the mall today
and get a wee bit nostalgic.
I didn’t hate it, and I don’t hate it, but I’d always had a
suspicion I didn’t belong. That I needed to be somewhere else. I wanted to
travel. I spent so much time in middle school, as soon as I realized that one
could go out of one’s country for college, looking at British schools. Why the
United Kingdom? Excellent question. Still don’t have the answer. Could have
been one too many readings of Sherlock
Holmes. Maybe my strange fascination with Jack the Ripper. Or all the
repeated viewings of ‘The Mummy’ with Rachel Weisz. (And Evie is a badass,
okay?)
The friends I’ve had since then all remember me looking at
Goldsmith’s, UCL, and yes, Oxford, while the counselors were prepping us for
Cal States and UCs, or maybe Ivy Leagues. I simply didn’t want to stay. London,
in particular, was an obsession. I couldn’t tell you why. I still can’t. A
religious person might say something about being ‘meant’ to be there, and for
once I’d have to agree with a religious person. (More on London later, though:
I’m still David Copperfield with these first few posts.)
Senior year of high school came; I got into Oxford. They
weren’t giving me financial aid, so I didn’t accept the place. Maybe I should
have gone, anyway, because I when I think about how much I’ve borrowed to get
my BA and MA, it throws me into an immediate and vitriolic critique of
privatized education, how the standards of entry should be based on academic
and (more importantly) intellectual aptitude, and never how well someone can
whack a ball with a stick or how much their parents can donate to build a new
building. But then, I’d be one of the ones who would have benefitted from
keeping the ball-whackers from being admitted predominately on the basis of
their ball-whacking skills, so there’s my bias.
I spent six years in higher education in my home state, all
of which were seminal and foundational and instructive and formative. I just
never felt ‘right.’ I was also, often, frustrated and a bit bored. (Just as an
example: my mannerisms and values aren’t very Californian and I don’t think,
now, that they’re exactly all that ‘American,’ either. Assuming that we can
quantify these things, which is debatable.)
It wasn’t something I thought made me special; it was
annoying because it wouldn’t just leave me alone, in peace. I don’t regret
anything I’ve done and I wouldn’t trade it: I’m here now. While I won’t say
that every childhood dream can be achieved by hard work and determination, this
one was—with its fair share of recriminations, ‘what the hell am I doing with
my life, why can’t I be like everyone else’ moments, and plain bitterness while
I watched other friends come to Europe and the United Kingdom for their
master’s degrees and doctorates.
Some of that had to do with mood shifts that were, I know
now, quite beyond my control and not totally prompted by anything that happened
(or didn’t happen) to me.
2013 was a pivotal year. Some people’s lives start right
after high school. (Or, more often, that’s when they end.) Mine decided to
start a bit later and provide me with a quasi quarter-life crisis. It’s all
been great, really and truly great, but also really and truly unnerving. 2013.
I got my MA. My mom got remarried to Rob, who may as well have been my stepdad.
My stepsister on my dad’s side had a heart attack and lived through it. The
British Consulate lost my passport right when I needed it to come to Norwich
(thanks, friends). I met someone online through mutual acquaintances; she
became a best friend. I moved out of the United States. I started a doctoral
dissertation.
I was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder in February (just
before my birthday—happy birthday, me), which has to be part of the story. Unlike
a lot of people who are diagnosed as adults, it was just increasingly apparent
that I’ve had the symptoms for an obscenely long time. That was part of the
problem in seeing a problem: because I’d lived with them, they were normal to
me. I’m still trying to figure out the best ways of working with it, but it
wasn’t a scary prognosis because it gave validity to all that I’d felt—since I
was a kid—that I’d squirreled away, ignored and didn’t address, because I was
so high functioning and achieving, thereby thinking nobody would believe me if
I told them that sometimes, I really was okay with the thought of dying. Sometimes I
was so sad in the most abstract ways. Sometimes I felt invincible and
blindingly special. Sometimes I got infinitely frustrated that people couldn't pick up on stuff the way I could. All the time, these things would come and go like times of
the day, or seasons. (Actual seasons—not Californian seasons.)
Ironically, it’s one of a very small number of labels with
which I am comfortable. Ask anybody who knows me well enough and they’ll tell
you, I shy well away from absolutes and viewpoints made into convenient bumper
stickers. The label felt freeing, in a way, because I then ‘knew’ it wasn’t all
in my head. Well, of course it’s ‘in my head’—it being a mental illness
and all—but as a turn of phrase we always mean that question negatively, don’t
we? ‘Stop being overdramatic. Don’t be silly. It’s all in your head.’
Now that I am in England, it’s been interesting going
through NHS channels to be seen for a psychiatric need. I can’t say it’s any
better than what I did in the states, but it’s not worse, either. I will say
that no doctor I’ve spoken to is as keen to jump on the medication train, even though
I am within the bipolar I realm, and that is nice in some ways. I appreciate
the reticence. Medication is not a magic bullet. It scares me, if you want the
truth, and counseling is not my favorite activity either because I don't like talking about my feelings. They're just feelings and it's easier for me to pretend I don't have them, since mine happen to be a chaotic snarl two-thirds of the time. In spite of all the brain issues—my moods have been much
more pronounced (or at least, noticeable to me) since high school, and the past
three months have witnessed a ‘jump’ in their severity and frequency due, no doubt, to the 'triggers' of moving and starting a new degree—I
am more content than I have ever been. I
have to remember that contentedness can’t be conflated with my immediate
‘moods.’ In other words, just because I'm having a black day or week or even month(s), it doesn't mean that my happiness or conviction about doing what I do is a lie. My life is settling into something I am proud of, and enjoy.
Here are my tales as told in cyberspace, and I hope that
even if you don’t agree with my perceptions and underlying commentary-- or love
the shenanigans I’ve gotten myself into-- that they all make you think or even just chuckle.
