Letters to the Editor
XOXO
Published Letters: 31 Editor's Choice: 3
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First LW, then E.R.
[Read the article: My brother abused me -- now our parents want us all together again!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dear LW -- I think you are getting a lot of good and sincere advice her. I don't have much to add. That place of emotional strength Cary was talking about is a good place. It's kind of a "don't call us, we'll call you" sort of place, though. We go into therapy, and try to become better friends to ourselves. We become protective friends. Sometimes we encourage ourselves to take a risk, for the sake of building strength and flexibility, but we only do this with a spotter, a therapist, a trusted confidant, who is as least as good a friend to us as we are. Because we know what it is to be delicate, to be hurt-able. Sometimes we decide not to take a risk, because we aren't in a good place to deal with the consequences, if things go badly. We make peace with what happened to us, and get the luxury of something almost like comfort, and we cherish that. And then something happens, an external circumstance, or an internal one, and we have to do the work all over again, at a deeper level, looking for a deeper peace. We see things we can't believe we didn't see before, we cry and curse some more, and find new footing in ourselves, on deeper more solid ground. Maybe that footing supports us for a long time, and we get to go about our lives like a regular person. Or maybe it just lasts a few months, a year, and then we have to work again. I do know that feeling Cary spoke of, and over the past few years I have experienced it with every member of my family, individually. I have tried, twice, to accompany myself to gatherings of the whole family, but found that I was more vulnerable than I could bear. Individuals may be able to improvise a little, but when all are together, the family reproduces itself, repeats itself, note by note, with perfect pitch. And lo, I am not at a Thanksgiving diner in 2006, I am bleeding in the mud back in the '70s, and even though I had promised my therapist I would call her if things got messy, you can't get a line out from the seventies to now, because of course time-travel is a fantasy. Having a therapist you can work with is really, really good. But you know this. Whatever decision you make, and whatever its consequences, s/he will help you learn from it, and use it to strengthen your relationship to your strong, true self. That should be the goal, I think, of any path you choose. That way, you can't lose.
I also want to pass a little note to Electro Robot. Sometimes people who have been the victims of violence don't want more violence. Not even to the people who injured us. More violence is not a cure for suffering. It can actually make it harder to heal. Granted, for some people violence against others is their only way of releasing anger, but that was generally the problem to begin with, the way we ourselves came to be injured. I know some rape survivors would be heartened by the thought of you with a baseball bat, but there are also many who would feel nauseous, like, "Oh, here's another person with a storehouse of anger and frustration who wants to use the unhappy circumstance of my life as an excuse to cause great pain and injury to people he doesn't even know, while imagining that he is being gallant." Or something like that. I knew a boy that was beaten with bats. Some other kids thought he deserved it. They were quite certain. They didn't even know his name. Who were they, to know that anyone deserves to be killed that way? He'd be forty-four now. My sister-in-law's boyfriend. I believe you have a compassionate intention, which is beautiful, but does it have to be swinging a baseball bat? Sorry if I'm going on too long about this, but it's such a graphic and awful image. I get a little worried for you, sometimes. Not worried that you're actually going to do something like that, but rather because you sound like you believe that you wouldn't throw-up and cry and wish you were dead, if you did. Worried because you seem to be holding your own humanity more carelessly than it deserves. For what it's worth, I'm sincerely wishing you better than that.
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Stories
[Read the article: Why the Cannes boo-birds are wrong (as usual)]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Andrew, I am enjoying your Cannes reportage (I think that's French for "reporting") very much. I really appreciate hearing about Martel. I don't much care for stories myself. Anecdotes are good. Even parables. Sometimes, rarely, a story about the impossibility of stories. I'll be looking for her films.