Ambassador of Up

How I became an (unapologetic) over-the-toptimist

I was raised by two optimistic parents. My mother loved the phrase, “If you can’t say something nice about someone, then don’t say anything at all.” My father’s favorite day of the year was winter solstice, not because it was the shortest day, but because for the next six months, ever day was going to be longer than the previous day.

Do two optimistic parents raise a doubly optimistic child? In my case, they didn’t directly cause it, but their early indoctrination into the world of optimism no doubt planted the seed. I credit a single three month experience of mounting pessimism for pushing me to overshoot doubly optimistic and go straight to over-the-toptimist. The over-the-toptimist label was given to me by a coworker, Jevan, and staying true to my position, I thanked him for this label that was at least partially intended as a ding against me.

I am the youngest of seven kids. I grew up in a very high energy household. Each member of the family had their own rollercoaster of highs and lows, and the largeness of our family with these seven kids and two very present parents meant that you had your own large support network whenever you needed it. I leaned on different family members at different times to help me with my own lows.

College was, among other things, an opportunity to experience this rollercoaster without much family support. I was 200 miles from my family, I didn’t have a car, we didn’t have smart phones and the internet, and my sole interaction with my family was a weekly collect call to catch up with mom and dad.

What I did have was a very solid friend group. From my tightest high school friend circle of 15 people, seven of us went to college together. And my closest friend, John, was my roommate. This became the foundation of my college support group, and the launching of my “second family”. It wasn’t that we did everything together, but we were around and there for each other when someone was having their own low.

Fall of my sophomore year, I left my first family in Richmond and returned to this second family in Blacksburg. But sophomore year started very differently than freshman year. The novelty of being in college had worn off. This was the year that things got more serious. School work started to get more intense, driving us to spend more time with our in-major colleagues. More of us took jobs to pay for our expenses, having run through our savings in freshman year. New friendships from both of these weakened the ties of my second family. This included even with my roommate John.

I began to struggle with the weight of school and work. But without a shoulder, these struggles were not tamped down in the early stages. This led to a growing darkness that impacted more of my day to day activities. I was surrounded by fellow students, in classes, in the dorm, at my work, but I was not feeling close enough to any one of them to make a call for help. When Thanksgiving break finally came, I had become withdrawn enough that I didn’t seize the opportunity with my family to let it all out, and to let them help me.

I returned from Thanksgiving break, seeing the three weeks ahead before the longer Christmas break as bleak. It was a blur to me, and all I recall saying about it was, “I survived it.” The longer Christmas break was when enough of the family was around to spot that I was off and eventually get me to open up.