Mental Health Support

My third try I graduated, mid 'eighties, but mostly because they didn't want me around any more. Things are tougher now.

A dean of the college said to me, "I think you should go to graduate school, Hunter. But NOT here."

I'd burned too many bridges.

He wasn't yet a dean when he got me kicked out of school the first time for fighting with one of his teaching assistants. A very uncomfortable situation. The T.A. threw chalk at me, then erasers, and then books. Big fat books. I'd called his one of his curves "bullshit." In my defense I didn't throw anything back at him, just words, but campus police were called, and they knew me. I got an "F" and a don't come back. I was punished with a "take a mental health leave of absence or we'll expel you forever" timeout.

When I repeated the course a couple of years later, different professor, different TA, I got the highest score in the class.

I already had a reputation with the campus police as a mild mannered and affable diversion from their usual two o'clock in the morning calls. Much more cheerful than the crappy drunk-and-disorderly, vandalism, drug abuse, date rape, and domestic violence calls. Their graveyard shift routine of taking Hunter home was almost as fun as free donuts and a coffee break. Or free pizza. Free pizza I could wrangle. I had connections. Taco Bell too. Extra goodwill if they interrupted my roomies and a young woman answered the door in a state of irritated long-legged undress and glimpse of areola.

Okay, ha, ha, Hunter lost his clothes on the beach and a concerned citizen called 'cause they thought he was suicidal an trying to drown himself. No, I was swimming.

Or we picked him up trespassing in an industrial park and his feet were bleeding. No, I was simply running and I forgot to put on my shoes.

I've always had a vision of this world as it ought to be, and I've lived by that. It's almost certainly not accurate, maybe not even sane, and I've suffered the consequences, but I am what I am.

I'd still be moving furniture, working warehouses, or setting tiles, all good honorable work, but sometimes even sitting on my butt most of the day writing code I wake up in the morning and wish I could still take NSAIDS without my stomach complaining and blood in my stools.

Coffee and Motrin is NOT the breakfast of champions. But coffee and other serious meds almost keep me functional.

Hang in there.