Magnificent Desolation_ The Long Journey Home From the Moon - Buzz Aldrin [64]
The reprieve I was feeling after our move to Hidden Hills was short lived, however, as I began to fall back into depression. At first I succumbed to my old ways and retreated to my bedroom, but Joan kept prodding me to get help. I called Dr. Sparks in San Antonio, and he suggested that I get in touch with Dr. Flinn, who had seen me briefly prior to the four weeks I spent at Wilford Hall in San Antonio. Back in the early 1960s, Dr. Flinn had certified me at Brooks Air Force Base, where the candidates for the NASA astronaut program went for their physicals, and had given me a passing grade, tantamount to a clean bill of mental health, with no reservations. Now, in the mid-seventies, he was the head of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA and I was his patient. On June 23, 1972, I called Dr. Flinn and set up an appointment for that same day.
The doctor helped me sort through all that had happened in recent months, and my recurring apprehension about the future. It was quite understandable, Dr. Flinn explained, that I should experience these feelings, since, for a former astronaut—not to mention one who had walked on the moon—it was totally unreasonable to think that I could have gone back to the Air Force and simply served in obscurity. Moreover, the two accidents that were laid at my feet due to “supervisory error” would have been difficult for any commander. When I was made to feel useless and expendable as a result, that exacerbated existing insecurities about leading the test pilot school in the first place.
Dr. Flinn’s explanation made sense to me, but then he sealed it with a clincher. The real problem, he helped me to realize, was that I didn’t feel that I was allowed to have such emotions. As a man, a strong man, a let’s-get-it-done-and-here’s-how-to-do-it man, I was not entitled to fail; when I could not control the situation, feelings of inadequacy and frustration flooded over me. Dr. Flinn helped me to recognize the futility of such feelings, and although it was nice to be regarded as a superman, it was an impossible image to live up to—and I was tired of trying. If someone wanted to go to the moon or even Mars, I could figure out a way to do that, and my competitive spirit would give it 100 percent. But to live up to the image of perfection foisted upon me by others and perpetuated by my own expectations was something I no longer was willing or able to do.
After that appointment, I met with Dr. Flinn periodically until the spring of 1975. During our July 1, 1972, session, we talked about my often misunderstood competitive nature. In his own handwritten physician’s notes, Dr. Flinn recorded this statement: “Others consider him bright, but not smooth or friendly. Competitive. & others may see him as selfish.”6
In subsequent appointments we talked about my apprehension concerning the future, as well as some of the events that still dogged me from the past. When Dr. Flinn asked me about how it felt to be chided as “the second man to walk on the moon,” his question opened a Pandora’s box.
Believe it or not, I told him, I hadn’t particularly wanted to be the first man to step on the moon. While we were training for the mission, I went home one night after work and told Joan, “I wish I wasn’t going on the first landing. I’d rather be on the second or third mission to the moon because we’d get to do a lot more scientific experiments and other interesting things, and wouldn’t have to be slaves to the media, after being the first ones to walk on the moon.”
Yet I recognized that in all likelihood that great responsibility would fall on my shoulders. In all the previous Gemini and Apollo missions, the spacewalks