Letters to the Editor
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A site that doesn't even deserve to be mentioned here
Gawker? Cheesy fiction, oh, I mean gossip site and apparently filled with a bunch of self-congratulatory hacks.
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@ macropus
"You are very human Cary and that frightens many people..."
It is true there are those among us who really aren't human. Some of the things "people" do and say is proof.
Nice writing, I really enjoyed the image of the Uncle in the caftan.
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Brilliant
Cary,
Re: what you wrote before the letter --
You know how sometimes you read something so meaningful, something that strikes such a deep chord, that you have to stop dead in your tracks, ponder the words and read them again? (If it's a book, I even put it down for a few minutes.) And then sometimes you pick it up and read the passage a third or fourth time because you can't believe how much you've been touched by them?
Well, I had that rather rare experience when I read this:
"Lack of self-knowledge is truly a luxury of the self-absorbed, and the truly self-absorbed are not those who reveal themselves in publication but those who hold all the cards and yet reveal nothing. It is a luxury of power to avoid introspection, to merrily skip out on the self-interrogation that leads to humility."
These words are not just meaningful to me personally. They should resonate with all of us in the crazy time we live in (don't get me started on the press corps following the Democratic presidential hopefuls...)
Thank you for this, as well as for all the careful, thoughtful, insightful work that you do.
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Don't take it personally
Yo, Cary! Don't take it personally and lay off my oddly colored shoes!
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The problem
is that the LW lives in the U.S.
Why everyone in this country doesn't realize how one's humanity is seriously compromised by living here is beyond me. This is a culture that discourages friendship or deep emotional involvement of any kind, beyond lifeless marriages that are built around the female paradigm of endless, tedious exchanges of "feelings" that, once expressed, the man in the relationship wishes he could instantly take back, given all the trouble they cause.
Then again, I'm a hypocrite for continuing to live here when my expat experience long since showed me a better way. And it's a moot point anyhow, since the U.S. is rapidly exporting its emotophobia to the rest of the known world. Before long there will be no alternatives whatsoever.
Zombies rule!
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advice to LW
Just came back from a short trip to Morocco, so I'm probably too late to chime in, but my advice: try meds, even if you're skeptical. I've seen them work wonders in that they can clear the mind towards action. They can also do nothing. And to Anonymous, January 10, 2008 10:30 PM, I'm sure this was said, but you're entirely missing the point. It is that feeling of blessedness in the first world, from being born into a rich country that is supposedly such a privilege, that can cause such sadness. It's just silly. Do you think poor people, those mysterious creatures in other places, are just walking around feeling miserable? If that were the case- if poverty and instability were the only cause of unhappiness and wealth, relatively speaking, were the only route to happiness, then God, or whoever, would have a pretty sick sense of humor. But things aren't quite that bad.
Beyond that, Cary's advice was very good, as usual. Maybe he is best suited to dealing with a certain type of problem, but he does it very well. I wrote in for advice about a year ago; I didn't take it but it would have been the best course for me to take. I'm not a total worshipper, but I read Cary's column at least a few days a week. It gives me some insight into the world, I hope, and is very, very well done.
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getting out from under without meds
Personal testimony:
When I was in college, I had a serious illness which left me physically incapacitated for about two months. I've always considered myself tough, and it took me collapsing in the shower in the dorm and being discovered by my dorm mates to realize that I wasn't able to continue my classes and needed a break. So I took a break. For two weeks. And then I tried to jump right back in, and this time I passed out in the middle of the quad, walking to class, and just lay there and stared at the sky when I came to, waiting for someone to come and pick me up.
So that was my first semester. And I did recover - physically - but then I started getting really depressed. Like you, I knew, looking at what was happening to me, that it was a physical illness, something wrong with my brain that was making me feel miserable and exhausted when there was nothing to be miserable about. It was like being possessed. But I didn't want to acknowledge the problem, because the problem was ONE MORE THING I would have to work up the non-existent energy to deal with.
So I read good books, and laughed with friends as much as possible, and eventually the sun came out. The end.
But, see, my case is a little different from yours. Mine was almost certainly a temporary chemical imbalance brought about by my physical illness. I recovered mentally as I recovered physically. Yours doesn't have an obvious cause, and it's not likely to go away on its own. When you're in that darkness, there's not a lot you can do to help yourself, because your problem is PHYSICAL. You wouldn't go to a therapist to get rid of pneumonia, would you?
Sometimes bed rest helps pneumonia and sometimes pneumonia goes away on its own. Sometimes you need meds.
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and for Cary
I gave myself a Christmas present: I stopped reading the responses to Cary's column. It's remarkable how much my mood improved as a result. Drinking a strong black cup of evil every day with breakfast wasn't healthy for me.
There are two kinds of internet bitches. The first kind is the person with a strong desire to see justice done. This sort of person can be profoundly annoying, but at the core, means well.
The second kind is here to hurt others. They're rare. But it only takes one or two drops to poison a whole well. Cary's regular readership has a whole handful of these. And one comment from one of these truly evil folks will set off the entire justice league.
It's not always easy to tell the two types apart. And sometimes people trade roles, like changing clothes. Most folks can be provoked into wanting to set things straight and even the best of us have moments of being genuinely ill-intentioned.
Speaking for myself... I wouldn't keep coming back if I didn't love ya, babe. Sometimes your answers drive me berserk. But although I find the responses to the column too poisonous to keep reading them, I found that I missed the column itself.