Letters to the Editor
-
Sounds like narcissistic personality disorder to me...
I'm not any sort of an expert, but reading up on that disorder might shed some light. The compulsive, guiltless lying, the profound self-absorption mixed with equally profound insecurity, the tendency to blame your lies on outside circumstances ("betrayal of my childhood dreams" made me become a liar? Come on). On the other hand, if the letter writer really is 18, these could be normal symptoms of adolescence.
I'm disturbed that Cary didn't address the lying part at all - that was what really stood out in the letter for me. I would say, try to address it now with therapy, so you don't turn out like an (ex) friend of mine who has alienated pretty much everyone around her with her extreme lying, manipulation, scheming and constant demands for absolute and adoring attention (like a child), who is still frantically trying to place blame for her actions on everyone but herself...it's a sad place for an otherwise intelligent and talented person to find herself in at age 32.
-
"Since You Asked" reaches escape velocity
I don't know...there's something about Anonymous's letter today ("My childhood dreams...") that makes me think it was written by no contemporary 18-year old, but an older aspiring novelist and/or fan and mimic of Cary's interests and sensibility. It's not just the writing style (also like Cary's), but that the childhood described seems to have happened in the 1950s at the latest, or is a fantasy itself.
Has "Since You Asked" has become its own art form and venue, an elegaic verbal tennis game in which each player longs only to play on, and neither lose, nor win, nor die.
I don't know...
-
What have your parents been doing for 18 years?
First, your parents must have one hell of an insurance plan if you could spend five days in the hospital with unspecified pain and get pumped full of morphine to boot. What kind of doctors give morphine to a minor? (I asssume this happened before you turned 18) What were your parents doing while you were in the hospital? And didn't any of the doctors suspect that the pain was not physical? Were they keeping you in the hospital for some other reason? It sounds to me as if you have spent your entire life crying out for your parents' attention and retreating into a fantasy world when you didn't get it. Maybe it wasn't Peter Pan you were looking for,maybe you just wanted someone who cared enough about you to recognize you as an individual, to say , "How are things going?" or "What did you do in school today?" In short, it appears that your parents have done nothing to help you grow up, to help you reach a stage where you are able to use your rich imagination to build a career and life for yourself in the outside world. Maybe, just maybe, it's not their fault. Maybe they didn't get a lot of attention growing up themselves, maybe they have been preoccupied with other things, maybe you and they are on totally different wave lengths. Whatever it was, you have to find the help they didn't give you. Assuming this letter is real, writing to Carey is a first step. If you are still covered by your parents' insurance, see if it will pay for counseling sessions. If you are still in school, see if there is someone--a teacher or guidance counselor-- who will help you find low-cost therapy. You are not a lost soul. Not yet. But you need to reach out, to fight very hard to save yourself. That's not something you are used to doing. But be brave. It you reach out, eventually you will succeed in finding what you need.
-
Michaelben, that is so weird....
I too had an overwhelming feeling that this was set in the 1950s. I don't know what details are giving that impression, though. Maybe its just because the parents came off as so cold and distant, something we associate with that time.
-
A Good Writing Sample...
But a fake letter. This piece has all the indicators of a memoir workshop sample: keen detail, explicit examples that evoke time and space and emotion without labling them. Circling back to the pink spot, the removed wart, was a nicely placed metaphor for the disorienting and unexpected rudeness of reality.
Notice how the writing was less structured and detailed when describing the fallout of shattered dreams, the lying. By the way, no one spends five days in the emergency room. You squat in the ER until they decide to admit you. You don't get morphine for stomach pain -- you get enemas and x-rays. And morphine causes the kind of unrelenting vomiting even a disoriented, disillusioned teenager wouldn't forget. When I was ten, I spent five days in the hospital for (real) undiagnosed stomach pain, and I observed enough quirky details to fill a book. This writer, with his/her skills, who gave us an entire paragraph filled with the imagery of an 11 year-old waiting for Peter Pan, couldn't have resisted them.
-
you need to connect with those around you
It's snowing outside right now. I read Cary's column every day. I read all the comments. Often I think it's quite obvious that Cary has been through quite a bit of therapy. Those advising the Letter Writers to seek seek seek therapy baffle me a little bit. Clearly, the advice given here is similar to talk therapy.
Regardless, I find the assumptions of falsehood a bit jarring. Why denounce a letter as fake? What's the point? My car is broken down.
What I am sensing in this letter is a lack of solid friendships. I don't have any real friends in this city, but I have a few, scattered across the country. They are the best people I know. They keep me sane. If I didn't have them, didn't know they existed, I simply wouldn't be sane. I would resent everything taking place around me. I would have no exit strategy.
I don't think the road you are going down is easy, but I wouldn't rush to diagnose. I can't tell you how to find the people that will matter to you, but I do feel this is an important step in this process.
The letter writer's fuzzy connection seems to be a lack of any emotional investment in others, not in himself. If LW does go to therapy, I suggest group. If he decides to skip it, I think a writer's workshop, book club, or something similarly group-focused would serve just as well.