Letters to the Editor
HMD
Published Letters: 11
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People love me, but I can't feel it
[Read the article: People love me but I can't feel it]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dear Cary,
I read your response to this cry for help that sounds so much like what I've been struggling with, and thought I'd add my two cents. Hurting but hopeful, the biggest thing you have to do right now is to stop betraying yourself. The reason you can't feel how much you're loved is (probably) that you're busy telling yourself - without knowing it - that you're not loved. I've been through this myself, and I'm still struggling with it but I'm doing better.
I always felt like nobody really loved me, and that people did kind things - befriended me, spent time with me, supported me - because they felt sorry for me. Now I get that the feeling of love can't exist in terrain like that. I was too busy saying "she just feels sorry for me," or, "If she really knew how I felt..." to see that people had loved me repeatedly, stuck by me, and said (or showed) in a million ways that they loved me.
What you have to do is sit with it, all right, and listen to that quiet voice that is busy reinterpreting everything to fit with your conviction that you are fundamentaly unlovable. Listen to its usual mantras for awhile, and write them down. Notice when those mantras come up, and make a note of that too. Then, once you've heard all of it, you have to start breaking the habits of interpreting things in those ways. It's a habit like any other, and it can be broken. When someone does something nice for you, make a point of saying to yourself, "they're doing that because they love me." Remember that people do things for the same reasons you do. If someone does something nice, they're probably doing it for the same reason that you would do something nice for someone you love - because they love you. Keep thinking that way, and once your thoughts don't betray you regularly, your feelings will come to the fore. You'll know you're wonderful, because you'll see it in others and because you'll stop denying it to yourself.
Don't give up. Especially if you're hurting right now, you'll see even more clearly the ways all the cogs and wheels of your usual interpretations work together to make you feel awful. You don't have to change them all; you just have to make them go in a different direction, by being aware and conscious of that quiet voice that says, "you suck." It sounds simplistic and dumb, but it's really worth it. Keep your chin up, and know that it's only your habits that have to change. I'll bet you're lovely just the way you are.
Holly Dolezalek
Minneapolis, MN
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Way to be stupid, NBC.
[Read the article: Well, we could have predicted this]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When I went to New Orleans for a conference about six months before the hurricane, my CAB DRIVER was talking about the possibility of the levees being breached. The lameness of the response is what's inconceivable, not the disaster.
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Just a convenient cover?
[Read the article: Plamegate, or the truth about Dick]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I wonder if Rove and Co. got wind of Armitage's leak (is that likely or possible?) and took advantage of the situation, spreading the info as far and wide as possible knowing that any investigation would be confused and complicated by the initial leak.
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Wally
[Read the article: The people who claim "the surge is working"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sigh. The worst thing about folks like Pence (and, let's face it, Bush) and their pronouncements that are so contrary to the reality on the ground is that they seem to be what America wants. They want someone to tell them that things are going well, because they don't want to have to think about what we should be doing instead. They want to see proof that their complacency in this issue isn't producing chaos and horror, and so they accept it when they're lied to - assuming they pay attention to it at all. I'm not saying everyone's like this, obviously, but enough are that Bush got reelected and lies like this aren't met with the derision they deserve.
At bottom, the worst thing about the Iraq war (for Americans, not for Iraqis) is that it proves to this generation that sometimes we really aren't the good guys. Rather than face that truth, and take action, a lot of people in this country would rather watch 24, where we are the good guys and things are more clear-cut.
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Zap!
[Read the article: Michelle Malkin plays the victim card]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This statement made my day.
"But in case there's any doubt: Feel free to attack Michelle Malkin as a lousy writer, a third-rate thinker, a talent-free provocateur, or all of the above. But it's wrong to attack her for being a woman or Filipina. Is that clear enough, Michelle?"
Wit, candor, intelligence and principle, along with a sense of humor. This is a combination you just don't see reliably, not anywhere - not the blogosphere, not talk radio, not cable TV. You're my new hero, Joan Walsh.