Finally I am able to detach myself from the cause of saving the undergraduate literary magazine at Harvard in the 80’s, the Harvard Advocate.
Someone close to me at that time said that he would love to see the Advocate go down under me. I just didn’t understand. I had only been on the magazine for two months before someone invited me to run for President. He explained that the one person who was running wasn’t liked and they didn’t want him on the board.
To me it was a ridiculous proposition. I called myself a “joker” to try to explain but he wouldn’t back off. I became irate, panicked, and confused. Finally I asked my father what to do and he said simply “Yes.” That I should do it. He explained that he had been Secretary of the Physics Society at University in England and that it was very hard. I went up to school still not knowing what to do. I asked one of my roommates and she said more or less the same thing. “Yes.”
My impression was that the Advocate was going down and that I was the only available person to save it.
I made a beautiful (embarassing?) speech and won. Then, I was frantic for what to do. I had no idea what the Advocate President was supposed to do. If they had called the position “Editor” I would have know to refuse. I just hung around the building. I did get the building cleaned up and others collaborated with this. I had no idea what I was doing.
Finally someone said, “You’re a figurehead.” I was waiting for someone to step in and say you can stop now. But it never happened. I was drained of all my resources. The community at large didn’t all know the scoop and in a really negative sense my ego got pumped up. I talked about being “publically humiliated” and the like. I completely lost my personality. I had been a very feminine, congenial person. I had a problem (as discussed as nauseum.) I knew that I was going to have trouble working. I became a hulk. I had acquaintances but not friends. My roommates had been stand-ins for friends and they abandoned me. I was too embarrassing.
Forty years later I am finally talking about this.
That happened because when I got back home to Summit, NJ in a desperate state of exhaustion at the end of the Presidency at the end of ’83, my parents told me I had been a good President, which was not the news I needed to hear; and my mother said that I was arrogant. I had just received a letter saying that instead of a voluntary leave of absence I was forced to withdraw; only for one semester instead of for a year and there was no work requirement. But still.
My mother and father had no idea the trouble I was in. It has followed me to this day. At this point it is a question of me taking the bull by the horns by myself.
I have said so much of this before over and over. But finally things have changed. With me.
In hindsight I recognize that the Advocate REALLY WAS going down! That was something that I couldn’t evaluate at the time. The place was a shambles and the outgoing leadership was eager as anything to leave it in my hands and run. Everybody had lost interest. It was such a beautiful place/concept/memory but it was going out of style. I had this bizarre credential: I had just written a computer program that generated essays on poetry, I won’t elaborate, that doesn’t belong here. But it was a harbinger of what was to come in literature. The laptop, e-mail, the scanner-printer-fax-copier, and more. My Dad was hi-tech! Even I didn’t really known that in a conscious or conversational way. I was so insecure! I was the future!
But they totally took me down. Because they didn’t know either!!! nobody did!!! Well, there were a few but it wasn’t enough to hold me with all my problems. I slid into a massive personality/depression/OCD slide that I am only now coming out of TOGETHER WITH THE UNDERSTANDING (and this is what I get out of it) that I have organic personality disorder and EXACTLY what that means to me and to every person I ever knew or hurt or did not hurt or who hurt me…
So, tonight I am full of forgiveness.
This is the biggest, the hugest part of my healing. To just let all that go!!! Did I have any direct or indirect actual impact on the course of literature for good or for ill because of my involvement with the Harvard Advocate?
I know I didn’t like to see jars of peanut butter in the windows when I walked by during one summer when I was staying in Cambridge not long after I left. And there were a couple of raunchy issues. But recently I found them here on WordPress and there was an air of responsibility and control that was pleasing. I just fear that through me the Advocate outlived itself and was put to ill use.
I loved the Advocate the moment I walked in the door. I did not want to have to run it, I just wanted to be part of it. Maybe they just didn’t want me there and were trying to scare me off. I wanted it to be my niche. My situation was that If I didn’t accept the apparently bona fide offer to become President then there wouldn’t BE an Advocate any more. Also, I was running from an invitation to run a section in the computer course in which I had written that program. I knew that I wasn’t able to do that. I knew that I was disabled in some way that made me feel very embarrassed and that I couldn’t explained.
Well I sort of made it to age 60 and finally, figured it, I have organic personality disorder, so many different sources, all four types. This is not official yet but it will be. It adversely affected me in both social and sexual situations, which made me very difficult to work with as a patient. So what I would up with was 40 years of psych care.
But what I have is my son; and my ex. A lifetime of love.
(……….n th’aliens………..)
Un.Bon.Mot 