I was officially granted disability status in 2002 but was unable to get benefits until 2003. I Was 44-years-old. For almost two years I attempted to build a ‘home.’ But I wasn’t able to do it. Plenty of comfortable room and fine furniture and cheese knives and heavy silver can’t make a home. I have been free of institutions for over 5-years.

I am now 59, even more disabled, and - do you know - I don’t think much on what I will do for the remainder of my life.

Housekeeping. I have a caregiver with me 3-4 times a week. I’m a slob, really, (no, I’m no slob; I try and often fail to accomplish one task or the other - and it turns into a mess; I am not a slob, but I can be needy and, yes, I am messy sometimes). So, my caregiver and I have a strange symbiosis - I do the little that I can do and my caregiver will put things back in place.

This talk of purpose, reason for living, talk of ‘what to do’?

I’m saying ‘yes’ to any experience, now. I’m forging new ways to expand my acquaintances. I’m youthful, once again, just much, much slower these days.

I think - strictly my opinion - that at 55-years-old you welcome new experiences and engage with more, less or different people. Gather your experiences and your friends maybe, oh, annually and take to heart these things and create and open another year in which you’ll arrange your values and needs in new and different ways.

What to do? Be as open as possible with others, with those who know mental illness and what we do and why and the rapid cycling, that overpowering mania and the dirty dregs of major depression. Oh, yes, I was in that ‘major depressive disorder with psychotic features’ coffin for almost two decades, with only occasional manic symptoms. Now I’m am much more manic. Much more and for much longer.

Bill Maher had mixed feelings about reaching 60-years of age. Now, at 62(?), he will point out that he and all of his guests are 60+. Most people 60 or over is thinking of ‘retirement’ and ‘death.’ Our generation - we baby-boomers - we planned and saved for retirement at 65-years-old so that we could have a beach-front property somewhere in the Caribbean. Or the Gulf.

And we pre-paid our funeral and burial costs. Too many dying between 62 and 72. Making it to mid-fifties should call for a decade-long-party to celebrate the (what we always thought would be) the age of retirement.

I must say that I genuinely do not believe that I will make it to 65. I’ll never reach retirement age. I’m on borrowed time now! I am 59-years-old. In less than one year I will be 60 and 60 is old. I believe - just a hunch - that I will die within my 62nd year.

Could you arrange for, and afford, a twice-weekly housekeeper?

Keeping a tidy home - no need for perfection - usually will make you feel better. It might inspire you. Who knows? At 55 you have a wealth of experiences past whilst responding to current and future experiences.

55-years-old. It ain’t a prison.