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four Gladys If anything, I think that one of the problems with us at that time was that we were too selfless. To think about yourself and your own needs was almost looked down upon. It was selfish. It was disloyal to think about yourself before you thought about what was good for everybody. The young kids today have much more a feeling of themselves as individuals, and I think you have to start with that. You’ve got to know something about yourself before you can go anywhere. There was no looking into yourself, no trying to deal with your inner feelings. You couldn’t waste your time doing that. You had to give all your energies and your thoughts, your ideas and strength and love to everybody, to mankind. And I suppose that sort of fit in pretty well with me because I really didn’t have too much love to give to myself. It was just great for me to be able to forget about myself in that sense, to give whatever I had to this more general idea. I felt like a heroine in a way. I felt important, and I felt strong. And when I marched in the May Day parade, boy, I felt proud to be a part of that group, to be standing there, letting people know what we all thought, and what I thought. It did a lot for me. When I was sixteen, I graduated high school and went to Brooklyn College. But that was a bust. I guess all of the seeds of my breakdown were working in me. I couldn’t study. I couldn’t do anything. I can’t really say what led to my falling apart, but when it started, I stopped my political activity. I somehow never connected with the YCL at Brooklyn. I guess I couldn’t make the transition from high school, from something I knew, people I knew, into that A RED FAMILY 37 larger situation in Brooklyn College. I just couldn’t get started there. I was in awe and felt out of place. I was frightened. I was overwhelmed. And I ran. I had seen my brother and sister go through this, and my father and mother, too. When I was studying or reading, my mind just wouldn’t stand still, stuff couldn’t get into my head. One just doesn’t feel as inadequate as I did at the time without knowing something was wrong. I just knew somehow that I couldn’t be as dumb as I thought I was. There was a period where I didn’t see a soul. I would sneak into classes and sneak into the library. I didn’t want to face anything, and I didn’t want to live. I didn’t talk to my mother about it. My brother was sort of the head of the family, and by that time he was a little bit all right again. He would vacillate between being kind and sympathetic, and then screaming at me, “You’re stupid!” So there wasn’t much stability there. My sister was out of the house and was taking care of herself. She wasn’t too much help to me at the time. I didn’t have anybody to talk to. I just couldn’t go on living this way and finally just nagged my brother and sister to death. I told him I felt I had to get some psychiatric help, and I got to a psychiatrist. And then there was the long haul to get well. I dropped out of school and was going to the doctor for a long time. I had a series of jobs during part of that time, before I got very ill. I always looked for the kinds of jobs where I thought I would be able to do something useful. I worked in a war plant, a United Electrical Workers union shop, the U.E., around Fourteenth Street, making dies for bullets. The die, a piece of steel about two or three inches long, was narrowed down to a short cylindrical tip. It had to be a certain size, and you had to stand there and sand it with some kind of abrasive cloth or paper, and keep measuring with your micrometer until you got it exactly right. It was assembly-line work, and I just kept doing that. It was tedious work, but again, I felt there was a purpose...

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