Mental Health Support

If my meds fail and the last smidgens of OCD or curiosity fail me then I'm dead.

It hurts too much to eat, to move, to live.

It's my good fortune, and in spite of my "natural" brain chemistry, that overwhelming suicidal urges haven't overcome me.

In my most empty places I'm running with bloody bare feet, or not eating, or both, a skeleton man, 6'4" and a 150 pounds. But I've always had things I need to finish, even when they are crazy irrational things and I'm living isolated in my car in a church parking lot.

There was a time in my life when my university post office box and my Science News subscription were my only anchors in the "real" world. Everything beyond was painful madness. The campus police accepted me as an entertaining break from their usual sordid routines, "mostly harmless," and they would take me home, wherever that was.

I think my Army Air Force officer grandfather was a similar sort. He wanted to fly, he wanted to build airplanes, he often suffered the "blue meanies." But the Army put him to work keeping people indispensable to the world war II effort out of trouble. He was the handsome captain in a crisp uniform with the big black car and driver carrying the "get of jail free card." An Air Force officer who didn't fly.

Somewhere in that time he learned the mysteries of titanium, and was later hired as an engineer. His proudest moment was when men landed on the moon using bits of metal he had designed, supervised the making of, and held in his own hands.

I'm a bit more private than that, but maybe some things I've written, and bits of software I've created, are important. Even if I'm not significant, my wife and kids are.