When I was young, I was anxious. If you had asked me, say when I was ten, eleven, or even sixteen, I wouldn’t have understood what you were talking about. “Me, anxious? No way.” However, tracking backward from now, there were signs. And looking at my twelve-year-old daughter, there are similar ways of being we share. She has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety. I wasn’t.

My adolescence was defined by three traits: I was reclusive; I was a jokester; and I was a runner. The latter was of the athletic, not the escapist, type, although escapism had its appeal. With everything else, especially anything requiring social skills, a fell short.

I was socially awkward and lived on the periphery of peer groups and among family. At most events, I usually found a corner in which to hide, or I’d wander off to another room or outside, especially when (1) there were more than a few people around or (2) the conversation wasn’t directed at me. The back and forth of social interaction eluded me. 

What all this must have looked like to others was brought home by a memory from high school. Only recently have I come to understand it as the closest thing to a diagnosis I ever received. During senior English, while discussing the lives ahead of his students, Mr. Griffey, my high school track coach/English teacher, jokingly told everyone I would end up a hermit living on a mountain top. I would spend my days running up and down the side of the mountain. 

At the time, I was peeved. Not a nice thing to say to a kid, I thought. It was prescient. Not that I’m a hermit or live on a mountain—although at times both sound appealing. I have the disposition for it. Others probably experienced me in similar ways, but only Mr. Griffey put it into words.

I was also a jokester, a veritable prankster, which masked my social anxiety. When I did speak the goal was usually hilarity. I would quietly bide time, waiting for the perfect moment for comic effect.  It was me at my finest. Then I would retreat, job done.

Part of my being a jokester was also knowing when and how to pull a prank that drew the least amount of attention to myself. In eighth grade mathematics class, I snuck into the classroom and unlatched the levers holding the blinds in place above the windows. They were big, heavy aluminum blinds, at least four feet wide and six feet long. 

Every day, ten minutes into class, as the morning sunlight started to inch across the room, Mr. Hanson, the math teacher, would slowly work his way toward the windows, lecturing as he went. When he reached the wall, he’d slide his body between the last row of desks and the window. Without taking his eyes off us and still in full lecture mode, he’d grab the cord and let the blinds down. 

The day of my lasting notoriety, Mr. Hanson pulled the cord, and the blind came crashing down on him and the student’s desk he was next to, the slats engulfing his body like an aluminum octopus. 

Being the only one who didn’t jumped out of their seats and screech, I was caught dead to rights. Mr. Hanson sent me to the office. I never went. Instead, I stopped in the lunchroom for an early lunch. 

My ducking into lunch had nothing to do with adolescent rebellion or bravado. I was scared to death about the trouble I was in, at school and home. I sat in the lunchroom panic stricken, unable to enjoy my fait accompli. Yes, I was a prankster but still a recluse.

Running was something I fell into when it dawned on me, after six years of effort, I was a fourteen-year-old athletic failure. Too small for football; too short for basketball; and too blind for baseball (I had lost my glasses years before), I went out for track and field to pole vault. The first two weeks of practice, in the thirty-five degrees of early March Indiana, everyone ran regardless of what event he was doing. We’d head out like a pack of feral cats on two-, three-, four-mile loop runs on country roads. Jostling and joking would turn into battles of survival. The strength events athletes—the shot putters and discus throwers—faltered first, then the sprinters and other field events, and finally the distance runners. By the end of the two weeks, I was running circles around everyone, including the experienced distance runners. I had found my calling. For me, there wasn’t anything better than a sport where the audience isn’t paying attention to what you’re doing 90% of the time. 

So how do I get a self-diagnosis of anxiety out of all this? How is the coupling of being socially awkward yet hilarious a reflection of living an anxious existence defined by fear of what others may say or do or what I may say or do? And how does running alleviate some of this? 

Here’s how:

·      Sign #1: I could never, and still can’t, sit still. At least one leg is always moving. It annoys people to no end, especially when my knee bouncing sends vibrations across tables or is audible to others. My only high school girlfriend used to grab my bouncy leg when we ate lunch together. It drove her crazy. We didn’t last more than a couple months. 

·      Sign #2: I was always afraid of (1) disappointing people and/or (2) being treated poorly. I was a yes person, especially with adults. I’d do damn near anything to avoid conflict, disappointment, wrath, etc. Show a little ability, like with running, and everyone is happy and nice, at least about running. 

·      Sign #3: I always assumed everyone was watching and judging me…poorly. I assumed if people had the choice, they wouldn’t talk to me. That hasn’t changed much but now I know it’s in my head. 

·      Sign #4: I never talked about my personal life, especially my family life. It seemed abnormal, embarrassing, downright shameful. Humor and running are great for distracting others from the darker aspects of life. 

·      Sign #5: My interior world was richer and more interesting than any actual life. I lived a veritable Walter Mitty life. Running fueled my imagination. My imagination has sustained me for years. 

Still, is anxiety the cause or did I just live a shitty adolescent life forged in generational trauma and peer bullying that I somehow managed to survive because of humor and running? Well, yes, I think so.

My anxiety has never left. Much of the list above is still true today. Because I’m now conscious of it, I’ve managed to corral it. I can name it.

My daughter’s experience has been different. She goes to therapy, has a 504 plan in school, and because of her parents, talks about her feelings ad nauseum, but only with us. She also has the diagnosis, which goes a bit deeper than anxiety. She knows she’s anxious and lets us know where she falls on a scale of 1 to 10 so regularly she’s now a betting line in Las Vegas.

Still, the similarities between us are clear. She lives on the periphery of groups. She talks of not fitting in. She’s antsy and sometimes distant and self-absorbed. She can be scattered and move from highs to lows and back again at the drop of a dime. She’s also creative and imaginative. And she’s empathetic and an ally to others. The latter, I believe, was fostered by her diagnosis and is something I’ve only come to the last twenty years or so through self-diagnosis.

I fell short on empathy for many years, which gets me to my main point: There’s reciprocity born of understanding between self and others. The more we know ourselves, the better equipped we are to understand others and vice versa. While this is a truism, I came to the knowledge only after many years of beating myself up and, in turn, figuratively beating away friends, or at best not being fully there for friends. 

I see enough of my young self in my daughter that a diagnosis for me is unnecessary at this point in my life. I already am getting good  therapy—therapy that squares a fuller understanding of who I am with an openness to who others are. It’s the wonderment that comes from watching my daughter conquer faster and easier the very things that held me back.