“It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes into quiet, tender joy.”
—Father Zossima, in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov “No mas.”
Boxer Roberto Duran’s famous plea for mercy.
These were the only words I could think of.
I jotted them down on the back of a Target receipt I had in my pocket.
I crumpled the receipt in my fist and did my damnedest to fall asleep in my rigid hospital bed.
I’ve lived a life full of more blessings than any one person rightfully deserves.
A loving and supportive family, lifelong financial security, good health and an instinctual devotion to the New York Yankees are but
a few of the many riches that have been bestowed upon me.
I’ve long made it a point, through daily prayer and little post-it notes, of reminding myself of these many blessings.
In the years before my student days at Wabash and until a stay in a hospital stress center in March of 2012, I saw my social anxiety as a warped and masochistic attempt to somehow counter those many blessings. Perhaps to better empathize with peers whose parents were divorcing or who were forced to work long hours after school to support a cash-strapped family, or whose learning disabilities were preventing them from passing classes, no matter how hard they were trying.
I spent two years after Wabash earning a master’s degree in English at Purdue. The loneliness and misery I experienced in West Lafayette was largely self-imposed. It was just too damned hard to muster up the courage to go to a department social gathering or ask a girl out on a date, no matter how many people told me that she clearly liked me. I soon found myself stubbornly entrenched in a strategy of withdrawal and retreat.
Toward the end of my time at Purdue, a chance introduction to a girl quickly blossomed into the deepest and most meaningful relationship I’ve ever had. It lasted almost a year. We broke up just before New Year’s Eve.
A couple of months later I was admitted to the stress center. One night in late February, my parents packed some of my belongings in a small duffel bag and drove me to the hospital.
I awoke the next morning with “No Mas” still in my hand. I stumbled to the dining hall and picked up a tray of standard hospital breakfast. I tried to take a bite of hard, over-cooked bacon but fumbled with it as I raised it to my mouth. It fell to the floor. Bending down to pick it up, I noticed the hospital-issued socks I was wearing. I was barely covered in a hospital-issue gown.
By the time I saw the Band-Aid on my arm from the blood draw the night before, I’d completely lost it. Tears streamed down my face. I ran to my room, ashamed and hyper-aware of the eyes staring at me.
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve cried. The unfamiliar taste and texture of the tears was as frightening as the crying itself. With no tissues in sight, I picked up the duffle bag that my parents had packed for me. I dug to the bottom and finally found an old T-shirt to wipe the tears away. I also found a small crumpled brown paper bag I’d left there years ago. I looked inside and discovered a pile of old letters and emails I’d saved from my Wabash professors, Bill Placher and Tobey Herzog.
Now, I’d be exaggerating to claim I was healed on the spot. Yet re-reading those notes, I slowly began to recall that I possessed some admirable qualities respected by these men I so very much admired.
There was a short but witty reply from Professor Placher—in his trademark chicken-scratch script—to a thank you note I’d written him my freshman year after he’d brought two nice bottles of Courvoisier into class for all to try. (It’s a long story, but we were reading The Power and the Glory, and Courvoisier came up in discussion surrounding the Whisky Priest).
There was a beautifully handwritten letter from Professor Herzog, composed with his trusty Mont Blanc pen, congratulating me on graduating and proclaiming that he had no doubt I would find success at Purdue and beyond.
And, among many other letters, there was a brief email from Professor Placher, written just a couple of weeks prior to his death, in which he states he’d be delighted to write me a recommendation letter for Columbia University’s School of Journalism.
From there, my mind began to wander back to dinners and Laphroaig-accompanied discussions with Professor Placher at the Iron Gate restaurant and the day-long hike through Thomas Hardy’s Dorcester led by Professor Herzog.
The tears continued to fall yet were slowly becoming as soothing as they had been despairing.
I still had a hell of a lot of work to do in the days, weeks and months ahead. I’ve had to find courage not to continue to take the easy way out and see my social anxiety as a sort of death sentence, but instead to commit myself to the techniques I’ve learned to better bite the bullet and involve myself in new social situations and groups.
I’m still very much a work in progress. I’ll never be the life of the party or a stand-up comedian. I don’t want to be.
I am, though, slowly starting to learn that doesn’t mean I’m resigned to an Emily Dickinson way of life. I’ve no way of knowing when I’ll be where I want to be, but for the rest of my life I’ll be able to pinpoint exactly where and when it was that I began to get a trace of self-confidence back: February 29, 2012, at 8:13 a.m.
That’s when I re-read that first chicken-scratched note. That’s when I began to regain hope.