On my Health and Related Circumstances

By Tim "Timothy" Fitzgerald

Despite a incurable handicap revealed on leaving college as an undergraduate, circumstances have mitigated what had prevented my capacity to preform a superior level.

by Tim Fitzgerald

Anyone taking the trouble to view my Smart Voter WEB page guide from two years ago in the League of Women Voters Archives, is surely to come away with questions about my ability to serve the district due to medical condition. So in the interest of honest transparence, I append the first Position paper on myself for the enlightenment and assurance of my readers.

It is true that I have suffered a couple of relapses during my adult years. Suffering we now believe from Attention Deficit Disorder that went unattended for some time -- certainly until I turned 24 or 25 and had already completed my undergraduate studies at San Jose State.

The failure of my health at that time, being a vulnerability that was further irritated by the political temper of the times, it being about 1970 or 71, and my having assumed the role of senior member of Student Government on campus, where protest and violence had become common place in the Bay Area.

As a result, I was confined to a locked facility, at first at Agnews and later at other locations, rather than being treated in a group therapy setting much more appropriate to my circumstances. As a result, in my opinion, my medical condition was complicated by a kind of 'Delayed Stress Syndrome' not too different from that of veterans coming home from Viet Nam.

And it was only that, which later forced me to seek professional help from Public Services, thereafter being placed on medication, which after a period of 30 years has made me chemically dependent - as it does most emotionally disturbed.

None the less, and given the down side of the treatments I received, I went on to obtain and complete three more degrees, while holding down, in most cases full time jobs to pay for my further education. An education I was certain I needed to escape the sigma of Mental Illness and keep pace with job opportunities here in Santa Clara Valley. Never, however, actually working in the high tech industry that is Silicon Valley.

Clearly I am prone to take on too much responsibility just to keep abreast of the competition, and that has led more than once to relapses that further complicate my circumstance given the inadequate amount of services necessary for proper treatment and mitigation of my handicap.

In any case, I should have proven, to the satisfaction of most everyone that I am fully capable of taking on the chores of a Trustee Board Member, despite my disability that doctors and professionals have been able to keep in remission. This was pretty well settled while I was away in Mammoth Lakes, in the Eastern Sierras, after a bitter encounter when I received my inheritance. This provided relief from the use of questionable therapy and medication, and whose program we have followed fairly consistently since I left Mammoth and eventually returned to San Jose to settle.

The estate being absorbed by poor judgment in Wall Street, having been caught unawares by the Market crisis of 2001. Thus much of my advantages in my career, have been followed closely by crisis that left almost no gain in status or success. Hence I am, much as I was in 1982 when I first entered local political contests, hamstrung by the lack of organizational support that normally comes with seeking public office.

I have tried before, to unsettle politics as normal, and represent as sector of society that I know well - the working poor, Marx's Reserve Army of the Unemployed, and Industrial Casualties that have been 'left behind; in the mad dash to succeed in this climate of cut-throat competition. And I know all to well those who started out with far less resources than I, may never get a chance at a normal life given the nature of priorities in this country and the practices of political process as it has developed over the last few decades.

Yes, I was singled out; I think we can concede, to be permanently side-lined early on largely because of the immense contribution I had made immediately preceding my first collapse. But those who have fallen much sooner in life's progress toward undeniable monopoly of opportunities in a capitalist economy, have been deprived in my educated opinion of almost all the promise laid down in Jefferson's claim to 'life, liberty, and happiness.' And in that way, my presence comes at a time when it can not be helped but notice the very great tragedy that I represent, and the lost opportunities that America once stood for.