"Struggling
Toward Normalcy"
Movies,
motorcycles, long walks, coffee and cigarettes, time with friends--common
interests of many 41-year-old males, and for that reason Bryan Halverson's
life could be considered rather normal.
Then there are the voices. Hallucinations. Paranoia. Being shuffled between state institutions. An excessive dependence on and attachment to his mother. Trying to drown his problems in alcohol. Isolation.
Bryan has schizophrenia.
His daily life is a tightrope walk between simple and complex, routine and chaotic. Yet he strives to maintain a normal lifestyle, however difficult that may be.
He is currently living at the Jefferson Lodge, a rehabilitation facility which is, for many people affected by mental illnesses, a middle ground between a lockdown institution and independent living.
He has a full-time job where his boss has become one of his best friends. Bryan's hard work recently earned him a promotion and pay raise.
He has quit drinking.
He has made new friends and thus begun creating a new social world without the confines of loneliness and dependence on his mother.
More than anything else, Bryan wants to be normal and to be accepted. The road ahead for him may be rough--a fear of relapse looms over his plans to move out on his own--but Bryan seems determined, and that is just about all that can be asked of him.
Then there are the voices. Hallucinations. Paranoia. Being shuffled between state institutions. An excessive dependence on and attachment to his mother. Trying to drown his problems in alcohol. Isolation.
Bryan has schizophrenia.
His daily life is a tightrope walk between simple and complex, routine and chaotic. Yet he strives to maintain a normal lifestyle, however difficult that may be.
He is currently living at the Jefferson Lodge, a rehabilitation facility which is, for many people affected by mental illnesses, a middle ground between a lockdown institution and independent living.
He has a full-time job where his boss has become one of his best friends. Bryan's hard work recently earned him a promotion and pay raise.
He has quit drinking.
He has made new friends and thus begun creating a new social world without the confines of loneliness and dependence on his mother.
More than anything else, Bryan wants to be normal and to be accepted. The road ahead for him may be rough--a fear of relapse looms over his plans to move out on his own--but Bryan seems determined, and that is just about all that can be asked of him.