Letters to the Editor
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You will be okay
really. Live through it. It is not that bad. You have children, and a wife. Just deal with it like the rest of us. Use your music hobby, have fun with it. Appreciate your children and your wife. Love the taste of your dinner. Live. Stop worrying about the rest of it. Just live. Smell the air, watch your children. Stop looking at your naval. Really, there is so much beauty out there,....right under your nose. Just see it. Open you eyes. Remember how gorgeous it was when your baby was born? Every moment is that gorgeous.
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Cary, my suspected cousin...
...this sense of relationship, of familiarity, of, god forbid (for your sake) family -- is why I frequently whup on you when you've gone and confused your writing and your advising. Next thing I know you've gone and literized a response to someone in desperate need and it is positively brilliant and I say so.
I hope you can forgive that, because this sense of connectedness may actually be me seeing me in you, with or without the dna connection.
And today you have done one of your better jobs of writing advice, and again it makes me feel like one of us may be the other's doppleganger because one thing I think we share concerning the letter writer in question is that we care about him. I don't always find it within me to care about a writer whose asked for your help, yet you manage to plunge on in anyway. I admire the hell out of you for that, even when it gets on my last nerve.
In this particular instance both the preface and the actual letter and response left me feeling like we'd been out back watching the lightning bugs and talking about this whole business of writing/advising. It actually helped me, I'm sure it helped the letter writer, and hopefully the positives it drew from all but a few trolls thus far helped you as well. In that summer evening, staring out at the bay kind of way.
That's all. It's good. Sometimes it's damn good.
We writers have to learn to live with a disproportionate sense of rejection. Then go out back and just watch the light on the water.
Glad you're not going anywhere.
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A cure for all "depressed" privileged white American middle-class suburbanites out there
I am sick to death of people like the LW - who are in a better position lifewise than 99.9999% of the other 6 billion people in our wretched world - whining when they have NO ACTUAL PROBLEMS in their existence.
"No creative outlet"?? Boo-frickin'-hoo. Go buy a canvas, brushes & paint....or pen & paper....or a guitar or piano, and fckin' create something already. Or at least try to.
Meanwhile, I've got a general panacea for the blues all these suburban white "middle-class" (i.e. filthy rich compared to the majority of humanity) American wallowers:
STEP 1.
Think about these questions:
Did you get enough food to eat today? And clean water to wash it down with? How about your kids? Have you never had to look into a starving child's eyes in real life?
Did you manage to get to work and back without fear of roving militias? Suicide bombers? IEDs? Gang rape & ethnic cleansing?
DO you have a comfortable, dry, roofed place to sleep tonight?
DO you have access to healthcare? Have you nothing to fear from polio, TB, AIDS, malaria, Ebola and other communicable diseases?
Are you kids able to go to school - instead of toiling in sweatshops so that Americans can only pay $10 for a pair of pants at Walmart? Or instead of toiling all day on a farm to support your family?
Are you white - and therefore part of the only group of people in the world who never, ever have to worry about being oppressed, profiled and discriminated against?
>>>
STEP 2
If the absolute f#$kin' gratitude you should - SHOULD - be feeling about how lucky you are after Step 1 somehow does not alleviate your depression, then Step 2 surely will:
VOLUNTEER. Give something back to the world where you live in such a better state than almost all of the other 6 billion of us.
Go to the United Way and other youth programs; work with poor and homeless kids who have gone through/are dealing with adversity your privileged McMansion=dwellin' suburban arses could never remotely comprehend.
Instead of idolizing The Housewives of Orange County and other shameless bourgeoisie, idolize the minority single mothers who hold two+ jobs just to be able to take care of their kids. Idolize the honest, hardworking, taxpaying blue collar people of this world who your fellow suburban CEOs see as peons they can layoff to bump up their stock options.
Listen to their stories. Discard your suburban/Republican/white scorn and hatred of the poor.
VOlunteer at a home for the elderly, Help out Meals on Wheels, and spend some time with lonely old folks...maybe you'll feel a whole lot less depressed realizing you actually have a spouse and kids who are in your life and give a shit about you.
IF NEITHER OF THESE STEPS help your depression, then there is no hope; might as well rid the world of your presence, since you are the most execrable form of human life.
Why? Because billions - yes BILLIONS - of people would give and do anything to have the quality of life you have....and yet you choose - yes, you actively CHOOSE - to piss it all away feeling sorry for yourself.
And there is no pill to help you with that.
Your life is beautiful. Be thankful for it....and happy for ALL that you have been given.
Otherwise, who knows? YOu might just be reincarnated as that starving Ethiopian child who dies of hunger before their first birthday....
Perspective, much? =)
P.S. - Hey Cary: what an elegant justification you wrote for your egomaniacal delusions of grandeur!! But please understand: I and most of my ilk do not hate YOU, mi amigo; we only loathe your complete absence of humility.
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Thank you Cary...
I have been stuck on Army time for some months in a town comprised of greater than 70% "Young Earth" Creationists. Your writings as well as those of George Dvorsky at SentientDevelopments have almost literally saved my sanity!
For you Letter Writer, a poem is in order"
MEN AT FORTY
Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.
At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it moving
Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.
And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practices tying
His father’s tie there in secret,
And the face of that father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something
That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.
~ Donald Justice (1925-2004)
My advice: Hunt up some material by Carlos Xuma.
I think that it will speak to your condition....
MEDCOM Major