It looked like it had all come together.
September, 1993. Beginning of senior year. A schedule that was pretty much a milk run – with all of my general-ed requirements and major credits filled, I could load up on things like tennis and Intro to Computer Science, along with that Shakespeare course I’d always wanted to take. A month working for the Dean’s office resulted in my becoming the teaching assistant for PSCI 101, so I was getting some CV-building credit. A sudden flakeout by someone I didn’t know resulted in my being offered the post of sports editor of the campus newspaper. And I was on the verge of finally getting shut of the girl who’d done so much to ruin the first three years – and better yet, replacing her with a bright and witty six-foot blond, just like I’d always wanted.
And that’s not even counting the external factors, like Clinton in the White House or Alabama defending a national championship or me riding a new Saturn SC2. The music from those days is mixed – U2 meets The Music Man meets the best of Bananarama (!) – but almost without fail, it’s bright and upbeat and says “you know what, hang the last three years, it’s going to work out this time!” And for a couple of months, it actually did.
That was before I realized just what “schizoid” really meant. Like, serious DSM-IV schizophrenia. At least, that’s the only explanation I’ve ever been able to come up with. And one of the great regrets of my life was not having my fairy godsister to tap me on the shoulder and say “you can’t save her, but you can still save yourself.”
I guess the critical accomplishment of the last five years was learning to be my own fairy godsister. =)