High Anxiety, Part 2

“I got I! I got it! I got it...I don’t got it.” Mel Brooks, High Anxiety (1977)

And would you believe it, Mel Brooks and Tim Conway used to dine at my fave Old Town Pasadena Sicilian pizzeria. First time I saw ‘em, just relaxing without a care in the world and enjoying the best ever pasta, meatballs (with currants, onions and pine nuts), bathed in freshly made sugo, I alerted owner Cesare, “Do you know who those guys are?” Cesare: “Sure, that’s Mel anda Timmy.” Ah, the memories. But I digress.

So, I’m writing a few months following my recovery from maybe the nastiest case of high anxiety any retired dentist/scribe/elite athlete could’ve ever suffered. I couldn’t help myself nor control what was happening outside my bubble. I thought my retirement investments were gonna get liberated. I was a mess. And trust me, I know the dentite crowd can exhibit all the possible human psychological frailties that show up in humankind; I just hope I’m not a carrier.

I started thinking back. Did I have a history of anxiety, paranoia, and/or multiple personalities? The evidence that surfaced during my trip down memory lane was convincing. I saw a clear timeline of HIGH ANXIETY.

I really can’t remember my first anxious experience and it was probably a blessing I had no clue at the time. All I know is that I was confined and growing within a small dark space for months before suddenly being scooped out into the bright lights and spanked for freakin doing nothing wrong.

Things were awesome for about three years. I had the greatest parents in the world and an older brother who always told me I was way better than the dog he’d wanted for the past five or six years.

But then it happened, the tricycle ride from hell. One minute I was motoring around like a junior Olympian, but then I realized (the hard way) that doing tricycle wheelies is no joke. I tipped Leaning Tower style to my right and did not tuck and roll. I stuck my landing with my right hand and broke my arm. I was cool. But Mom had never seen a broken arm; I heard her ask if “we should call an ambulance” I LOST IT. HIGH ANXIETY, “I GOT IT.” I began my 4-word mantra, it went, “I want my Daddy. I want my Daddy. I want my Daddy.” I may have been asleep while having my fractured radius set, but I was still wearing my best Billy Idol snarl.

It was clear sailing all the way to high school. I was chill, never nervous Jack. If it was a free throw, base hit, or spelling bee, my 12-year-old Jack smiled, “I got this.”

In high school, several things happened. I started out at 5’6” and weighing 100lbs; what followed was not a big-time growth spurt. My professional athlete prospects dropped to less than zero. Testing showed an aptitude for science and math. I chose health, either medicine or dentistry. Medicine took forever, there was no balance, and then you got a bypass. I chose Dentistry in the 10th grade- that’s when everything started falling apart.

I was a high school loaner who played sports. I didn’t say much. I shared classes with the same twenty kids for FOUR long years. My brother was worried, he’d complain to my parents, “He doesn’t talk. What’s wrong with him?” I’m like, “I can hear you.”

In college, I became extremely competitive, and that’s what happens when your first quarter GPA reads 2.13. And the day after the news hit home, I began working in a warehouse from three to midnight and carrying 18 units. I was either going to dental school, or the jungle. I didn’t have time for anxiety.

In dental school, I played the victim and became paranoid. I turned around a Woody Allen quote. Just because they were all out to get me didn’t mean I was paranoid, right? Wrong. Four years of compound HIGH ANXIETY would leave its mark.

Somehow, when nobody was looking, I escaped dental school with paper documentation proving I was legit.

For the next 25 years, I walked a tight rope. I wanted everyone to like me, but I always had to have the last word. Relationships, idle conversations, tennis matches, and even tossing rocks into some river in the Texas Hill Country were all about competition and having the last word and winning, even if I lost. My Office Manager (who remains my best friend) used to sit back and observe, “And you wonder why no one has snapped him up?” I was complex: I had HIGH ANXIETY, approval addiction, and imposter syndrome…before the syndrome was even invented.

One practice advisor even paid for me to have four sessions with his Personal Coach. He yawned a lot during our sessions. Dang, I was boring the therapist; wasn’t that a positive sign? Truth be told, sharing columns for the past 26 years has been my own way of managing HIGH ANXIETY episodes.

And leading up to the day after April Fools and my meltdown, I kind of knew what was coming. I’d only published TWO articles (I used to churn them out weekly.) Negativity can beat creativity if you let it. And sometimes you gain perspective from events you never saw coming, even, or maybe especially when the darkness makes “anxiety” look like a day at the beach.

And for me, it seems the best substitute for the counseling I undoubtedly needed but never got, is still looking for humor and irony and writing about it. As Leonard Cohen wrote, “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Find the light, and for me, write about it and feel the joy.