[Aurelius710]

I have been reading a little bit on Thomas Eagleton, the Missouri senator who was the running mate for George McGovern in his 1972 Presidential campaign. He was forced out 18 days later after revelations of him being hospitalized for depression and receiving ECT to try and combat it came to light. The logic was essentially, "Do we want such a man near the nuclear codes?"

Partly out of curiosity and partly because I'm around too many Poly Sci nerds (myself included), I decided to put myself in a similar hypothetical (Congressional Candidate Aurelius is being attacked by his opponent for his mental illness) and figure out how I would respond. I could sit in front of a camera and talk at length about bipolar disorder as an academic topic. I could talk about it as a personal topic. I could lay out my medical records and my medications for public scrutiny, but that's not what people are going to want to know. They're going to want to know, "Can you definitively tell us that you are not going to end your life on the floor of the House or alternatively that you are not going to strip naked and promote legislation to save pink elephants and yellow pixies?" Now, those are definitely extreme examples, but the fact remains, I can't honestly say I will never exhibit manic or depressive symptoms in the future or exhibit them to such an extent that I will have to take time off for treatment. I admit that, and according to the conventional wisdom, I'm finished as a candidate. “Do we want such a man making our laws?”

Going through that in my head led me to a depressing realization. No matter how high I go, no matter how much I achieve, no matter how compliant I am with treatment and medications, no matter how stable I have been, there will always be someone who says “He's not allowed to touch the fine china.” All of my achievements become less, “Look at that!”, and more “How has he not failed?” It becomes a toxic blend of patronizing risk aversion. “You're bipolar! How can we have you making the big decisions? Your illness might make you mess up!” The politician metaphor aside, what I want to be when I “grow up” would entail taking on a similar amount of responsibility, stress and the like. And, quite possibly, an encounter with the same kind of patronizing “do-gooder”.

I told my therapist about this and he thinks this is the reason that I feel stuck. He believes that I'm resigning myself to a dead end retail job with a year left in my schooling because I'm afraid of finishing up, getting my 'big boy job' and then being “exposed” and discriminated against in one way or another. Putting aside the fact that's not an unfounded fear, that doesn't tell the whole story. I'm not actually afraid of discrimination. I'm afraid of not being able to effectively combat it, go around it, charge through it. I'm afraid of looking around and finding faces with masks of unfounded concern saying “This is for your own good.”

I feel the wind coming out of my sails. Where I once was the courageous sailor sailing through my critics for the Great Unknown, I now feel more like Don Quixote tilting at windmills again... and again... and again, and falling off my horse again... and again... and again. My brave new world has been traded for an impossible dream. It's exhausting, feeling like I have to fight tooth and nail for every single good thing in my life and coming up against a brick wall.

Well, maybe there's a crack in that wall. My therapist has offered to sit with me during our next few appointments and help me come up with a complete game plan for heading back to school, finishing up and getting on with my freaking life. If I can finish up school, well, I've always been good with impossible dreams.

Thanks for listening.

[dshantel]

You are not alone in feeling this way. Bipolar depression has caused me to drop from college. After that I just went and got my Cosmetology license since I do love hair and makeup. I figure with that I can dictate to some degree when I work and how much I work so as to not screwing up things with other people.