Doom, gloom, but in the end, a winner
I kept a diary of my senior year (1970–71) at Virginia Tech that has been lost, found and lost again more times than a little boy’s mittens. When the thing came out of hiding the other night, I eagerly sat down with the more than 100 hand-scrawled pages. It’s the first time I’ve perused the material since finding out last year that I have Asperger’s.
While there’s the occasional uplifting entry when the student newspaper printed one of my humor columns, most of the content is an ode to loneliness, sadness and feeling overwhelmed.
I see Aspie-itis on every page.
“College,” I write, “is supposed to be where you’re having the time of your life. Well, I’m not having it.”
And:
“There is nothing worse than trudging through 20-degree weather and six inches of snow to the other side of campus to get to my mailbox, and open the lock to find absolutely nothing from a girl or a parent or a response from any of the daily newspapers where I’ve been sending my columns. Does anybody care that I’m here? Am I the only person who believes I can be a writer?”
And:
“I can’t get a date. But who would want to be with somebody who worries about their grades all the time? I know I’m overdoing it, but I can’t help myself. The guys on the dorm say I have no personality. Could this be true?”
My home town is deep in Virginia’s mountains, an area that is on few if any road maps of intellectual greatness. I was intimidated by everything about college. There were more than twice as many students at Tech as my little Abingdon had people. Faculty members had advanced degrees. Most had published books. Many had studied abroad. My side of that ledger? No, no and no.
I just knew I would flunk out unless I maximized every opportunity to hit the books. It wasn’t unusual for me to spend more than 15 hours studying on one subject in the days leading up to a mid-term or final exam. If even a small part of me believed I wasn’t prepared, it opened the gate for a panic attack.
I struggled to find male friends, and usually defaulted to give-up mode when it came to girls. I had very little spending money and no car. My number came up early in the 1969 military draft. Vietnam beckoned unless I did something. It was my nature to do nothing.
“My fear of the Army,” I wrote, “is the fear of the unknown.”
And:
“I had a job interview today with Herff Jones. It would be a miserable, unsatisfied life if I don’t do what I want to do which is write. I have no lifelong ambition to sell class rings.”
And:
“I made a 59 on the labor production test to Melvin’s 83. Very discouraging. The thing that bothers me is that I studied and he didn’t. Melvin says it’s because I don’t have any common sense.”
Pretty bad, right? The early-life blueprint of a guy destined to be a loser.
Feeling sorry for me?
Don’t. Because I have turned out rather OK.
I joined the Army Reserve and did an end run around Vietnam.
I found a woman I care about and who cares about me. We have two great children and two wonderful grandchildren.
I kept writing columns. A batch caught the fancy of the editor of the newspaper in Evansville, Ind., who hired me to come to the Midwest and pen them on a full-time basis.
I have earned a good bit of money. I have published books. I have traveled abroad. I have a nice car.
I still get the occasional panic attack. I’m still not a big fan of the unknown. I’m still looking for a way to import common sense. While I have a personality, it spends most of its time in park.
For sure life dealt me a tough hand. The diary confirms it. Sad. Lonely. Doom. Gloom. Chronic worrier.
But I beat back many of those bad things, and neutralized some of the others.
I never gave up, not even when hope was measured in smidgens. Deep down, I always believed that everything would work out if I tried hard enough. If I was dogged enough.
In the end, I’m standing.
Tall.
A winner.
