The Linn County Home Christmas party, 1977 and Julia Wilkins reacting to Chris Dewey, June 1977 ~

I wrote about the Linn County Home Christmas party in the preceding blog entry.  There’s not much more to say about the event and I’ll write about the staff dynamics in subsequent blog posts with more particular photos.

Chris Dewey had one of the most playful minds of anyone I’ve known.  Here he dropped his trousers when I went to photograph him.  So I photographed him dropping his trousers.

This was completely unexpected for Julia Wilkins and the photos are of her laughing at Chris and the situation.  

Julia reminds me of paths not taken in my life.  

I was then deeply in love with my wife, Janet.  We met when I was a 17-year-old first-semester freshman.  We were talking marriage by February the following semester and married the spring of my junior year.  Before Janet I had not dated any single woman long enough to call her my girlfriend and had dates with no more than five women.  I then believed that Janet was my soul mate, but I also recognized that I had no experience with anyone else.

As I scan these old photos I think back on my life.  When I was in college I was severely depressed and unaware of my own mental illness.  My relationship with Janet was part of the dysfunction that fed my depression.  I did everything she asked whenever she asked.  I was raised to have no needs and so I found my joy in satisfying the desires of others - seeing the joy reflected in their eyes.  Of course I would go out to find a series of deeply unhappy women who would, for a few years, find happiness with me until they didn’t.  

So I was thinking, how would I have lived my life differently?  If not Janet, then who?  

Julia, maybe.  Fun, smart, pretty, nice.  Back then I didn’t put “nice” among the characteristics I was seeking in a life partner and that is perhaps the key to my difficulties and resultant pain.

This game of historical ‘what if’ summons the next question, ‘so what?’  The sole constant in all my dysfunctional relationships has been myself.  My individual dysfunctionality sought and matched appropriately dysfunctional women until I had learned whatever lessons it took to avoid repeating the cycle.  It would have helped back then to have the major depressive disorder diagnosis.  It would have explained my emotions and self-destructive behavior to myself.  It would have sent me looking for a causation to the depression and a cure.

Another aspect of the situation was that I felt unattractive.  I had asked seven girls to prom my junior year in high school before I got a date.  In my first few months of college I had asked out a few women and was told ‘no.’  I had already realized that romance is a matching game - I just had to find my match.  I just hadn’t realized that matches were much rarer for some people than others.  I thought I was lucky to have any woman interested in me.

I had no crush on Julia then.  I remember having brief erotic thoughts about her when I passed by her dorm room and overheard her tell friends, “I am so horny!”  I stuck my head in to the room and said, “Aren’t we all!” to her embarassment.  I have not carried a torch for her over the years.  I look back and think funny, smart, pretty, kind, a very attractive woman.  A path not taken because I wasn’t seeking that path then when I should have been.  If I were given a do-over and placed back there then knowing what I know now, I would have had a different life, a second life.  If I were placed there then without knowing what I know now, I would have had to endure the same hard lessons life needed to teach me but in a slightly different narrative.

Pilgrim’s progress, but for the 21st Century.  Different paths with similar lessons, either learned or not.