Late one Friday afternoon in June 1988, I was 22, I picked up Student of the Year awards in Communications and Political Science (shared) at Sierra Community College.
A couple of hundred people showed up, including my step-mom.
My teachers said nice things about me. My Literature professor Ray Oliva said I was supposed to get the award for English. My Poli-Sci prof Larry Wight said this was a two-year award.
I’d been knocking around the school for three years, simultaneously working construction and radio news at KAHI/KHYL. The past six months, I’d finally gotten serious, and achieved straight As for the first time in my life and been accepted into UCLA to major in Economics.
I was looking forward to university. I had $25,000 in the bank. I had clear direction — I was going to be an economist. Daily journalism was shallow when compared with the depth of academic work, publishing papers and books and lecturing to adoring co-eds.
Only one thing was wrong — I was sick. For the past four months, I had walked around feeling like I had the flu. It only varied in intensity. It was like a case of mono that never went away. Nobody knew what was wrong. Nobody had a diagnosis or a prognosis. Nobody could tell you what to do.
About a year later you’d get the waste paper basket diagnosis of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and that solved little. There was no known cause and no known cure. Rest seemed to help. Most people got better after a year.
When the ceremony was over, your step-mother wanted photos. She had you stand in front of the fountain.
This is your favorite picture of you.
Whenever you’re frightened, you still clasp yourself in this same way, arms folded across my chest, hands holding on for dear life, the hair “business in the front and party in the back.”
It was almost the Sabbath but you weren’t worried because you were no longer under law, but under grace.
I think your thoughts went as follows: This was supposed to be an evening of triumph for me and I just feel scared. What’s ahead? How can I make it through university weak like this? What went wrong? I drove myself too hard and I cracked up and now I’m the walking wounded.
You knew there would be many triumphs ahead if you could just get on. What you didn’t know was that no matter how many times you were feted, your life would always careen from crisis to crisis. Sexual exploits and media recognition and sterling speeches would ground you temporarily but the attention would fade and you’d be left starving.
You were never very good at the day-to-day work of developing relationships and building community. Instead you preoccupied yourself with the search for such gigantic achievement, such big fame, that it would fill the hole in your soul.
Now you know there is no achievement big enough to fill that hole. No award matters. No cover story. No quantity of women will sate you. There’s no religion high enough and no pornography low enough.
You stood in front of the fountain that evening with the setting sun kissing you goodnight and for all you knew, that’d be all she wrote.
You’d spend much of the next six years in bed, and the two decades after that hobbled. You didn’t know then that you’d never again run marathons. You’d never again pull off 1200 push-ups and 120 pull-ups in 40 minutes.
You had no friends with you that evening. You hadn’t bothered to accumulate any over the past few years. You’d just been very busy. Busy reading and busy working. You’d had no sex, no requited love. At 22, you were still a virgin. You figured good things would come once you had success.
Son, your pain and confusion, your fear and trepidation, they will be with you always. Other people will have friends and spouses and lovers. You will have your keyboard and your evenings in the sun and they will be your solace for your failure to connect normally with others.
Looking at the picture more closely, looking in your eyes, I see that everything that you felt sure of — namely, yourself — is broken. You don’t believe in God and you can no longer believe in yourself. And aside from your parents, who have to, nobody much believes in, is invested in, in you. Sure, they’ll give you awards, but nobody has elected to share your lot in life.
It was hot that evening. You liked standing near the fountain. And as your mother took that photo, you longed for the girl who wasn’t there, the one who nearly passed out from the fumes in your VW Bug whenever it turned a corner, the nice Seventh-Day Adventist girl at Pacific Union College, the one who would go on to marry a Jewish psychiatrist.
