Why?
At 18 I wasn't dealing that much with suicidal thoughts yet in my life. No one not my father or my mother had ever been to college (even though my father was valedictorian of his senior high school class in 1934 in Seattle). He was an electrical contractor and of course when to night school to learn about being an electrician and electrical contractor and line loads and making electrical architectural plans for houses or factories or warehouses or whatever he was building at the time. My mother had finished high school like my father but hadn't been to college either.
So, neither of them had studied psychology at all and had never been to a therapist in their lives because that wouldn't have made any sense to them at all. My mother's statement regarding the Great depression and world War II was: "Do what you can and the rest Can."
In other words deal with what you can in life and the rest you stuff and bite your lip and move on.
But, this wasn't working for me by age 21 because I was moving towards suicide (I realize now) because of whooping cough at age 2 and a concussion at age 8 or 9 which gave me seizures at night from ages 10 to 15 years of age which is called Blunt Trauma childhood epilepsy (or the only kind you can grow out of when your skull grows bigger and relieves the pressure upon your brain.
So, I was dealing with what I would call: "Medical PTSD which was untreated for the most part by any doctors because my parents didn't really believe in doctors much beyond stitches or fixing broken bones and that's all because of their religious views which were more like Christian Science points of view.
So, reading a magazine in the Palomar college Library in 1971 actually started to save my life. The magazine was and is called "Psychology Today".
But, what I realized is I could dump a lot of my family pride that I had been taught and only to deal with things that actually might keep me alive through my 20s so I might live to 30. So, this is what I did and it worked.
I studied psychology, philosophy, and Cultural Anthropology and found a way to save my life so I didn't self destruct like many people I knew that did in the 1960s and 1970s by various means from car racing to rock climbing to motorcycles to drugs and alcohol.
Then in 1974 my son was born to my live in girlfriend and myself and then I realized I had to stay alive to raise my son right. So, my son being born has saved my life ever since along with my other 2 biological children since then.
Though College was helpful in staying alive, actually having a son and getting married saved me much more than going to college did in the end. But, at this point I have about 8 years of college since 1966 studying Computer Science, psychology, Anthropology and philosophy. Eventually I went to UCSC and studied Anthropology because my wife and I at the time wanted to help save Tibetan culture because we felt Tibet culture both social and religious was an important thing that could prevent humans from going extinct at the time.
However, unfortunately we divorced before we could live out that dream and then I remarried in 1995 to my present wife and we had another daughter who is in her mid 20s now.
The point of all this is I have found that studying various things made me more well rounded and able to survive my life from all I learned along the way and relationships helped my life be worthwhile ongoing.
I found that I always did better being married and raising children and running businesses than anything else in my life.
However, I have always loved to travel the world and meet amazing interesting people wherever I have gone too.
By God's Grace
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