Following the emotional breakdown of my wife after the cancer returned in 2007 after two years of treatments and remission, I proceeded to lose my new job at the marketing agency. It had taken months to work up the courage to accept the position, and it only a lasted a few months after the decision. One of the last things the head boss told me before felling the axe was “I like you better when you smile.”

But I had few smiles to give at that point. Life’s convergences were testing my resiliency. I was caregiver to a wife and father with a child in college and another in high school. I was working hard to keep up yet things were sometimes slipping by. Yet all told, I refused to get into the “woe is me” mode. I was searching for answers though…

I’d manufactured the positivity for that job in the first place. On January 9th of 2007, I’d noted in my journal the ovations being made by the President and VP of the agency where I’d freelanced for several years. And why not? The pay had been awesome at times. Nothing feels as good as taking a $6,000 check to the bank and putting it in the account. I was being paid $100 an hour for my creative work.

I wrote, “If I leave Daily Herald it will likely be for $95,000 a year…$15,000 increase…that’s only $1000 a month more.”

In fact, the offer from the agency came in at $110,000 a year. But the VP and CFO that pushed me to accept the offer also seemed eager to make me feel guilty about it. “Do you really need that much?” they pressed me. Perhaps that was some kind of test. Of course I needed the money. “Yes,” I told them.

At that time, my wife was snoring every night thanks to the after effects of chemo on her sinuses and lungs. For me, sleeping became difficult. Anxiety built within me as a result. A friend at work told me, “Anxiety is just the opposite side of the coin from depression.” That friend told me he was on a daily dose of Xanax, and offered me one. I declined.

“You don’t realize how much stress you’re under,” were his next words. “Depression is like a fog. It make it hard to realize what’s really going on.”

I was gaining weight too. “Now I’m fat around the middle,” I lamented. “178 this morning.”

Granted, I’d been way for years as a distance runner, weighing only 140 lbs and skinny as fuck. But now I was nearing forty pounds heavier than my old competition weight. It weighed on me.

“At least I’ve resisted playing soccer and tearing up my knee permanently,” my journal recorded. “The desire to play is so great.” Even after a torn ACL, surgical repair with a cadaver and another tear, my brain still craved the dopamine of being on the pitch. And feeling like a kid again.

What I’d felt in the wake of the second ACL tear was a form of grief. A grief for a lost childhood, or youth. It threw me into the “second half of life” apart from the games I loved to play. I was now a grownup, and hated not being able to “go back.”

Clinical anxiety

On January 18, 2007 I wrote: “So if I were to accept a general diagnosis of clinical anxiety, what would that mean? Certainly would not make me unique. Plenty of people have anxiety. Plenty of people apparently get treated for it. But how, and why?”

Looking back, it astounds me that it took me that long to acknowledge the fact that I was anxious by nature. I’d been a habitual nail-biter all my life. Worried about winning and losing. Dogged by dread in sales and work and relationships. Of course, I had anxiety.

I went on to write, “Would it affect my writing, painting, performance? Certainly it now is, affecting me…And it likely has for years.”

Epiphany (about time)

Who among us has not had these types of slow-moving realizations? The revelations of self that finally sink in? My journal continued the analysis: “Anxiety. Look at that word. Worry. Lack of confidence. Need for approval. Fear. Stress. Depression. Control. Manipulation. Anything to make it go away and give you a sense of…hope.”

And more: “When I fell in love, anxiety dissipated..until love itself became something to lose, and losing it. Loser. You always hated losing. With a passion. Sow what do I do, if anything? Glass half empty. Glass half full? Write your brothers. Pray and think.”

On January 21, 2007, I mentioned an idea to write a book called Competition’s Son. “So many valid instances and stories to tell.” You’re reading echoes of that here. A serialized life story. Post by post.

On January 30 I wrote an entry that described my attempt to get hired back on at Aspen where I’d had success through 1999. “This is so, so typical of me. Last night I noticed in reading the e-mail reply from Cathy (name redacted) that she had been straightforward in telling me how to get hired.”

I was well aware of one more flaw in my thinking by then. While it would take years to put a name on it, I was recognizing the signs of a condition often associated with anxiety. ADHD. “The invitation was there all along!” I wrote in exasperation. But fear blinded you to it.” Fear, and lack of executive function. My brain often skipped over the most important details of many things in life. It had cost me once again.

Following up on that thought, I wrote…”You also…keep losing sight of what is important to you. What you want to do.”

The ADHD Kid

All of these things were and are classic signs of ADHD. It would be just a few more years before my late wife told me outright “You’re ADD” after sitting through a seminar on the subject through her preschool training.

These days, I look back and realize what a damned struggle life has been due to a brain that is immensely creative and productive, yet lacking in certain mundane functions that people measure you by. It’s an insane world that expects everyone to fall into the same way of thinking in every situation. That’s what I say.

Yet this isn’t “Woe is me.” It’s a chronicle of resiliency. Of hanging in there despite my own flaws and life’s twists and turns. It’s all that any of us can do.