Am I Normal Yet?

Dear public, online diary,

today I was walking on campus when I realized that I didn't stand out from the crowd. I  mean that in a good way. I was not sticking out like a crazy sore thumb. I just was one in a thousand on campus. It felt surprisingly freeing to not feel stigmatized, degraded, devalued, and hated. Just for a moment, I envisioned a society where the talents and eccentricities of non-violent mentally ill people can be appreciated. One can dream....
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I am doing just fine in my classes. I am pursuing a Masters degree. I am also taking several undergraduate level science courses in my secret pursuit of a Bachelors in Science. I have not officially declared that I am attempting a second Bachelors, which is why it is secret. Also, if I fail miserably, only my graduate mentor and myself will know about it.

In my private life, I am very private. I have no significant other. My previous boyfriend had no idea that I was schizo-affective. I kind of liked it that way. Well, maybe I didn't like it that way, but I had done a pretty good job convincing myself that I liked it that way. I just told myself it was because I liked my privacy. However, I believe that being honest is a very important to the mental health movement. I want to live up to the kind of life that Elyn R. Saks created for herself. I also seek to pursue higher education despite my illness.

Education is like a safe-haven. In academia, one can engage with people in a field and they would rarely question your private life---all that matters is how much you know in your field. One can hide illness there. Or at least I have convinced myself that I am able to hide my illness. Who knows? Either way, I guess I'll never know what my professors and fellow classmates are really thinking. It's probably for the best, because if I can't know what they are thinking, then it is likely that they can't know what I am thinking and that soothes my paranoid mind.

I still have to complete one homework problem for precalculus. I spent forty minutes on one problem, after breezing through the other 14 problems. Once I got to that problem, I get getting everything except one number right. It was really irritating. The professor gives us infinite attempts until the deadline, but it was to no avail, as I attempted so many times it is nearly the deadline and I still haven't answered question 15.

In my illness, there was a lot of unreality, a lot of fear, a lot of uncertains. In math, there are only facts, logic, symmetry, structure, and calculated asymmetry. There are no uncertains. Everything is hidden under layers of proofs. Kernels of certainty embedded in what appears to be ciphers. It is kind of relaxing to take this precalculus class. Or it was relaxing until I got to question 15.

An Excellent Book On Schizophrenia by Elyn Saks

I just ordered this book, The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn R. Saks, through amazon dot com and it arrived yesterday. I have read all of 24 pages and I'm hooked. It's the kind of book that gets me so excited I can't sit still. 24 pages into this memoir of psychosis and I had to set it down and take a long walk while listening to industrial techno music. I felt the euphoria of someone who had just found somebody who was like myself.

Yes, 24 pages is all it took to make me endorse a book I barely read. From the opening scene at the Yale Law school library's rooftop to the admission of early drug use to her parents--- that's as far as I got before I realized I was reading a book up there with An Unquiet Mind and Prozac Nation.

I am so excited about this book I felt like promoting it before I even finished it. True, only a few people visit this blog, but to you, the random one person who accidentally stumbled here, I encourage you to purchase this book and give it a read.

Due to the nature of schizophrenia it is difficult to find a writer who can detail her/his illness with clarity and insight, as the illness can rob us sufferers of clarity of thought. Many of the memoirs on schizophrenia are written by the close relatives of people who suffer from the disease. There are some notable exceptions, such as the son of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. who wrote Eden's Express (Mark Vonnegut).

Elyn R. Saks really comes out as a major prose writer, as well as a memoir writer, which makes her writing all the more powerful. At one point, she writes that she felt like an "insect on a pin" while being admitted to a psychiatric facility. This is too true. Sad, but honest and well-written.

Please purchase this book! It is a good way to see that a schizophrenic is just a person with a cognitive disability, someone who can nonetheless achieve goals in life.

Here's a link to the book on amazon dot com.
http://www.amazon.com/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Through