The Eagle and the Dragon

by Chris Duffin

  Life at Home Begins to Deteriorate

  With no classes in my morning block, I often worked as a busboy or a dishwasher late into the night. When I awoke early in the morning, it was common to see Pat or my mom digging through my pants in the half-light, pulling out cash so that they could purchase food, supplies, or beer from the local store. They always framed this as borrowing money, although I never saw most of that money again.

  I wrote off what they took and accepted it as my contribution to the household. Over time, however, my parents began to drink more and more. At this point in his life, Pat was quite incapacitated. With a broken arm and weakened lungs, he couldn’t work, and winning his disability settlement meant that he no longer needed to. Perhaps unsure what else to do with himself, he spent most of his time sitting around the house, watching television, and drinking.

  When Pat sat in front of the television and drank, he became obsessed with the news. The news was his world. While this was happening, O.J. Simpson went on trial for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Pat watched the whole trial, all day, every day. When my mom arrived home from work, he started talking to her about developments in the trial.

  It was a long trial and, after several months, my mom flipped. She got home, Pat started telling her about the O.J. Simpson trial, and she yelled, “I don’t want to hear it. Don’t tell me another fucking word about the O.J. Simpson trial. I don’t want to hear about it anymore.” The following day, she arrived home and he jumped up, ran over to her, and started telling her about the latest developments in the O.J. Simpson trial. She was at the fridge door, getting something out of the fridge, and she said, “I told you I don’t want to hear it.” Then she swung the fridge door at him, hitting him full in the face. He was knocked out cold and lost two front teeth, which he replaced with fake teeth. After that, he never said another word about the O.J. Simpson trial.

  My mom, meanwhile, began getting into scrapes caused by alcohol consumption. In Oregon, there’s a single highway that connects Bend, La Pine, and numerous other towns and cities, all the way down to Klamath Falls, where my future college was located. At one stage, this highway connects to I-97 via a T-junction. As an interstate highway, I-97 is a busy road, at least two and, in some places, four lanes wide. My mom got drunk one night and drove through the intersection at full speed, somehow missing the traffic barreling along I-97, and launching the car into the forest on the other side of the highway. To avoid getting a DUI, she ran away before the police arrived. She was lucky to escape with her life.

  On another occasion, she climbed a barbed wire fence as she ran away from another drunken incident. As she scaled the fence, she sliced her arm open on one of the barbs and passed out, probably from the pain. When she woke up she was still hanging from the fence, cut nearly to the bone and bleeding heavily. Fortunately, she managed to get to a hospital and get herself patched up before the situation got any worse.

  Alcohol also fueled fights between Pat and my mom. She often retreated to the trailer or lost herself working on her rocks, as a way to avoid interacting with him. After we settled in La Pine, they had managed to accumulate equipment to work the minerals we had collected in Paulina, so we had a selection of rock saws, buffing wheels, and sanders—enough to turn the rocks into attractive pieces of jewelry. I helped to keep the rock saw supplied with cutting stones. Pat occasionally made some jewelry. My mom, however, did most of the work.

  As a consequence of my parents’ drinking, conditions at home deteriorated quite severely. I think the fact that we were settled in one place for such a relatively long time also played a part. Pat was drunk most of the time and never did any cleaning. My mom worked in the daytime, but when she returned home, she had little appetite for interacting with Pat or spending time in the house. Instead, she hid in the trailer and she, too, was soon drunk.

  The house filled up with garbage, toys, and other detritus. There were trails of discarded waste throughout the building. Both my parents also smoked incessantly, creating a perpetual smoke haze throughout the house.

  Graduating, without My Parents

  The day of graduation, I was over at my friend Greg’s house playing some games. Greg lived about fifteen minutes from high school and we realized that we needed to hurry if we were going to make it in time. We picked up our gowns and I picked up a notepad. I was valedictorian, so it was my responsibility to give a speech at graduation. Like most teenagers, I had a habit of procrastinating until the last minute; I wrote my speech in the car on the fifteen-minute journey into school. Looking back, it would have made more sense to write the speech in advance and practice it several times in advance. As with most elements of high school, however, I was used to coming through at the last moment, so that’s what I did with my speech.

  We arrived at graduation and I gave my speech. We posed for photos and I received some awards, such as best student athlete—incidentally, the same award my mom won when she was in high school. At the time, I didn’t notice my parents’ absence. It was only years later that I discovered they had shown up drunk. My wrestling coach, whose job it was to usher parents into the graduation hall, turned them away, telling them that he didn’t want me to remember my graduation in that fashion. It seemed sad and appropriate that, for all they had done for me, they didn’t watch me graduate.

  Lesson: Discovering Your Strength

  There are many ways we typically assess our success in life. Perhaps you judge yourself on the size of your house, the quality of your job, or how much money you earn. There’s no objective way to measure success, however. We all have our own strengths and we all need to find the arenas in which we can excel.

  If this sounds like a cliché, that’s because it’s true. You will never know where your strengths lie until you begin to challenge yourself, step out of your comfort zone, and explore your capabilities. The idea of being a tryhard is often treated with disdain. I think that’s a mistake. Until you expend effort, how do you know what you’re good at? You can only discover your own greatness through trial and error.

  When I lived in a cabin in La Pine, there were numerous other families in similar situations. Many of those families contained kids approximately my age. As far as I’m aware, I’m the only one who made the decision to go to college. Most lived under the assumption that the horizons they knew dictated their choices and opportunities in life. Of course, that became a self-fulfilling prophecy. They led the lives they expected to lead.

  The only reason I made it out of that environment was my willingness to explore my potential and discover what I could do. I never realized I could tell a compelling story that would inspire people to step up and help me, until I did precisely that. I didn’t know I could become an excellent wrestler until I continually put myself in a position where I needed to discover my strengths. I should have been a terrible wrestler. For a year, I was a terrible wrestler. Even when I finished high school, my technical abilities as a wrestler were extremely limited. Yet I discovered that what I had on other wrestlers my age was an ability to figure out what worked for me. My indomitable will to improve also helped. That was enough to carry me to the final match in the state championships, and it would have carried me to victory in that match if I hadn’t allowed an anonymous trash-talker to turn my head.

  If you want to achieve anything worthwhile in life, I encourage you to become a tryhard. Experiment until you discover your unique skills and what you have to offer the world. Figure out how to drive your life forward. When you know who you are, you can shape your reality.

  This is a continual process, of course. There is no single definition of who you are and what your strengths are. Keep trying, keep learning, and keep evolving.

  Leaving for College

  By the end of high school, I had a scholarship with OIT, enough funds to purchase essential materials for college, and a Chevy LUV I purchased for five hundred dollars.

  My cher
ished Chevy LUV, my first vehicle. I bought this when I was sixteen years old, through working evenings and weekends as a dishwasher.

  Greg was going to Portland State. Before our lives diverged, we decided to take a trip down to California to see my dad, with a detour to San Francisco to visit my brother, Mark. I had a two-seater, three-cylinder Honda from the early 1970s, and we drove down to the town of Santa Rosa where my dad was living. On the way home, as we drove back north, the engine of the Honda blew up. We struggled to keep it moving until we reached the next town. We eventually pushed it to a junkyard in some northern California town where I sold it for twenty-five dollars to cover the bus fare back to Portland with Greg.

  I had rigged a stereo in the Honda, so I salvaged the amplifier and the speakers, threw them into a duffle bag, and we both caught the bus from northern California to Portland, where Greg was already living. There was a bus from Portland to La Pine, but I missed it two days in a row because I was hauling a duffle bag that weighed hundreds of pounds. On the third day, I finally caught the bus and made it back to La Pine. By this time, I had only one day left to get to college in time.

  My mom put together a care kit for me, which included a handful of Q-tips wrapped in aluminum foil, along with some other things she had scrounged from the house she thought might be useful. I threw some clothes in a bag and tossed the duffle bag full of speakers onto the back seat, fired up my Chevy LUV, and set off on the drive from La Pine to Klamath Falls.

  Klamath Falls is relatively close to La Pine, about one-and-a-half to two hours down the I-97. As I dropped into the Klamath Basin, the terrain started to shift. High desert was replaced by flat, level woodland, primarily ponderosa pines. Klamath Lake itself is a wildlife preserve for the many species of birds that pass through the area. Klamath Falls was the largest place I had ever called home, populated by around twenty to thirty thousand people. OIT sits on the south side of Klamath Lake, a little north of Klamath Falls. From one side, the college offers a stunning view over the town and the lake. From the other, it opens onto treeless slopes and an unobstructed vista of the Klamath Basin.

  When I first arrived in college, my roommate was a friend from high school. His presence provided me with a comforting reminder of the world I had left behind in La Pine. At the same time, I felt enormous relief knowing that I was moving into my own space. It was a place where I could write the next chapters of my life on my own, knowing that I would have time to study and that, if I earned money, it wouldn’t disappear from the pocket of my pants. As I settled into my new room, I was slightly awestruck. I had made it to college.

  Chapter Six

  8. Novelty

  1995–2000 (Age Eighteen to Twenty-Three), Klamath Falls, Oregon

  I didn’t feel very good. I was anxious, on edge. My body was shaking. I knew I’d feel better soon, though. I stepped into the shower and felt the hot water pouring over my body. That had a cleansing and rejuvenating effect, albeit not as powerful an impact as the two beers I’d brought with me.

  I’d been on a bender for several days. Coming off a major session was always tough, and I didn’t feel ready to go cold turkey. I needed to taper off the alcohol. A morning shower with a couple of beers seemed like a good way to make myself feel a bit better before facing the day.

  As I stood in the shower, drinking a beer and feeling the soothing effect of the water pouring over my head, I wondered how, within a couple of years of starting to drink, I had become so much like my parents. I never wanted that to happen. In fact, I didn’t touch alcohol at all until I was almost nineteen years old, halfway through my freshman year in college, precisely because I was concerned about the alcoholism that ran in my family. Before I’d ever touched a drop, I feared that I might find it difficult to control my alcohol consumption. It turned out I was right. Soon, I was drinking far too much and far too long.

  Beneath the surface anxieties, I felt as though I was dying. Somehow, I was following a path I had specifically decided that I wanted to avoid. My body felt terrible and I longed to escape the situation in which I found myself. As I leaned back against the wall of the shower, I wondered: am I trying to kill myself?

  Depression issues have plagued my family for generations, creating a litany of suicides and early deaths. Was I doomed to repeat the same self-destructive behavior? Was I finding a way to punish myself for some perceived failures on my part, failures that only I could see?

  Externally, my life looked great. I was twenty-one years old, about to turn twenty-two, and I was standing in the shower of a home I had purchased with money I had earned. For all intents and purposes, I had finished college a year early, having completed almost two degrees. I worked full time as a production manager for a well-known window and door manufacturer, with responsibility for several supervisors and almost a hundred employees across several shifts. On the weekends, I ran my own small business through which I had formed a successful partnership with a small retail store in town. I was raising my oldest sister, who had moved down from La Pine to live with me in Klamath Falls.

  It looked as though I had every reason to feel positive about life. Inside, however, I was falling apart. I didn’t know where to turn. I only knew that, at the root of it, was my drinking. How did I get here? How could I get out?

  Theme: The Positive and Negative Aspects of New Experiences

  This chapter tells the story of my college years and the rest of my time in Klamath Falls. It describes my experiences as I forged an identity separate from my family, embracing the freedom to redefine myself. I discovered elements of my personality that I didn’t know existed, and I also dredged up demons that had been lying in wait for me since I was a child.

  During this time, I learned a great deal about the positive and negative aspects of engaging with new experiences. For me, the changes were based on relocating and having the chance to interact with people who had no idea about my background. New experiences, however, can take many forms, from physical relocation to a career shift to moving into a new mental space, or anything else that shifts your current environment, internal or external.

  In this chapter, you’ll read about some drastic changes in my life, and come along for the ride as my professional life takes off. The period covered in this chapter features significant shifts both in my physical and emotional landscape. As you read it, reflect on times when you’ve made moves to alter your domain, either mental or physical, and what impact those shifts had on you.

  A New Environment, a New Identity

  In college I totally reframed my self-perception, releasing many of the insecurities that plagued me through high school. It was only when I arrived at college and people treated me just the same as they treated everyone else that I realized how much I had been affected by the jibes that were part of the background noise in my high school days. The impact of those comments drove home the message that I didn’t belong. In college, I suddenly felt as though I did belong. Everyone else was in the same boat. They too had moved from comfortable environments to a place that felt new, scary, and uncomfortable. In that context, I was normal.

  My first couple of months in college were about meeting other people and figuring out who everybody was. Five or six of us, who were part of the engineering school, connected strongly and have remained friends to this day. One person in particular—Ben—had a habit of cutting classes on Fridays to take off home for the weekend. Ben had several interests at home, such as building vehicles and hunting, and he left college to focus on those interests.

  In my mind, Ben was screwing up. I looked at him and saw someone who wasn’t focused on his studies, and who didn’t seem to care about his degree. I was convinced that he would flunk out within a year. In later years, I broached the subject with Ben. He told me that he thought exactly the same about me. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Ben noticed that I rarely went to classes, didn’t purchase textbooks, and moved out of my dorm room within the f
irst term. He thought I was blowing off college and felt sorry for my parents, imagining that they were paying for my education only to see me flame out.

  Both Ben and I were completely wrong about each other. We went on to become two of the most successful people from our graduating class, both with advanced degrees and working in successful careers. To the untrained eye, it seemed as though we were slacking off. In fact, college for each of us was only one part of a much broader portfolio of activities and interests. Our seeming lack of commitment reflected our multidisciplinary approach to learning. Ben and I remain best friends and we still hang out frequently. He’s an executive at an international tooling conglomerate and still lives only a short distance from me. A lot of our former engineering friends still approach us when they’re looking for a new job. Not bad for a couple of failures.

  How I Started Drinking

  Halfway through my first term in college, I decided I didn’t want to continue living in my dorm room. People had told me that college would be harder than high school. I was fine with that. In fact, I had looked forward to it. For me, high school was incredibly boring. I was excited to test myself by studying tougher material. Within my first term at college, I was finding it no more difficult than high school and I was bored again.

  The cost of living in Klamath Falls was exceptionally low. I determined that I could break my contract without losing a lot of money, so I moved into a house with three friends, all of whom also came to OIT from La Pine. I didn’t need to spend a lot of time at school, so I moved out, cut my costs, and found a job. My roommates were fresh out of high school. Like many college freshmen, they drank alcohol regularly on evenings and weekends. At first, I avoided drinking, but before long I told myself that it couldn’t hurt to have a few drinks with them from time to time.