I attribute a good part of my troubles growing up to Berkeley. This tiny Bay Area city with the big reputation has legions of fans who love the steady climate, where every day feels the same. They embrace the progressive, hippy-influenced culture and left of left political views which are not to be questioned for risk of being labeled a right wing Republican.
I, on the other hand, was part of a lost generation, born and raised there. We were like the proverbial handicapped children locked in the attic, lost souls with little direction in our lives, laboratory rats in a social experiment gone amuck. Berkeley was the embodiment of so called ‘solutions’ which created more problems than they set out to solve. It was a mashing together of creeds, ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds in an attempt to pretend that everyone is exactly the same and receptive to the same educational and parental needs. This well-meaning conspiracy kept many of us kids in the dark about who we were, where we’d come from and what our potential was. As a result, most of us never felt the glow and charm of Berkeley as experienced by those who arrive there at later points in their lives.
I should have had all the tools at my disposal in order to get by in the world and be happy, but I didn’t. The Berkeley Public School System, it’s teachings, and its social environment were supposed to provided any additional answers and experiences I needed. They didn’t. Any problems that came up, and there were many, should have been easily solved. They weren’t.
I couldn’t explain what my problems were- I only knew that there were many and I felt stupid for asking questions. Making matters worse, I didn’t know how to communicate effectively, especially about personal and emotional issues.
It wasn’t until I grew up, traveled the world, interacted with many different personality types and did a lot of soul searching that I finally began to put the pieces of this puzzle together. Each time I unlocked a key to the mystery of my painful past, the research yielded the same conclusion about Berkeley, and my upbringing in particular. It was summed up with the following assessment: “No wonder I was so fucked up.”