Dear Reader,
Yesterday I recounted as clearly as I could what is going on with me.
Wow.
Glad that's over.
Today I feel a weight has been lifted. I hope I have not simply transferred that weight to you. (I guess that is one of the fears we have in speaking the truth about ourselves -- that the truth will unduly burden others.)
It took a few days to gather the strength to inhabit the truth for even a few minutes -- even though, as you will see, this thing is treatable and survivable.
Nevertheless I did promise you the song. And I did sing it at the house the other night, joined by friends including members of the Backyard Tarzans and the Dark Hollow Band, the latter of whom will be performing at the Riptide out on Taraval Street in San Francisco this Saturday night, Nov. 21, and we plan to attend, because it is our neighborhood and we need some entertainment.
I haven't gotten up the courage or possibly the idiocy to sit down and record this song for you, so I'll just say that the title is "My Chordoma," it is in the key of E major, it is not sung to the tune of "My Sharona," and the first few lines are as follows: "My cancer sounds like a 1970s two-door Chrysler convertible / I know it's bad, I should be scared, I should be more uncomfortable. / But I know / It ain't no big deal / Yes I know / It ain't no big deal / On the big wheel / We all ride / On the big wheel / We all ride."
So the title is your clue for the day. And the other clue is that it's a real pain in the ass.
So here's one more little observation: The side benefit of answering your questions is that it takes the focus off me and my little problems and puts the focus on you and your little problems, which are a whole lot easier to solve, or at least to imagine solving.
One more thing. It is an absolutely glorious mid-November day on the Pacific coast of California.
Dear Cary,
I cannot stop feeling bitter, mean and resentful.
I can't remember when I first started feeling this way, and there have been times when it has lifted, although I do remember being angry and depressed as a teenager. My childhood was quite difficult. I am an only child, and my parents were not that easy to get along with. My father was often angry and sometimes violent. I had a relationship with someone much older than me at the age of 19. He was my teacher at school and an alcoholic. I became pregnant and had an abortion. The relationship ended in my first year at university, but not before he had threatened suicide and broken into and trashed my room. I had always done very well at school and used that as a way of feeling better about myself. I then floundered for a few years after a degree at a "top" university, doing various temp jobs and feeling horrendous about my lack of achievement. I then decided to train as a lawyer, which is what I do now. I remember thinking that if I had professional respect, then I would feel OK about myself. The feeling OK hasn't happened; I can't seem to feel any real sense of satisfaction from what I have "achieved." I am now in my mid-30s, in a fairly serious relationship but no children. My parents live abroad, and I have very little family here in the U.K.
My partner and I have plans to move in together early next year. Although I want the relationship to progress, I am frightened that he is not really committed to me and that is the reason why he wants to cohabit. He knows that marriage is important to me and that I want to be a mother. For some reason that I cannot precisely identify, I am really angry at the thought of moving in with him. I am scared of losing the last few years of my fertile life to someone who doesn't really love me. I am not sure if I love him either. He is a kind man, but very introverted and finds social situations difficult. He seems happy to work all day and spend the evenings and weekends surfing the Web or playing on the Xbox. He is intelligent but doesn't seem particularly interested in life around him. Also, I think he is addicted to porn, something he does not try to hide from me.
No one who knows me would guess that I feel this way. I come across as fun, easygoing and reasonable. Inside I often fantasize about meting out death and destruction, although I never would. I want to step out of my life and start again. I have thought about suicide but am too scared.
I did see a therapist for 18 months, stopping quite recently. She wasn't that much help to me. I did start to believe that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with me, and that I had a lot to deal with as a child which may still be affecting me. I lost my trust in her when she started comparing my progress (good, apparently) to that of some of her other clients, whose sessions she described as sometimes "soul destroying." I have always been the "good student" and hated that I had become this again in my relationship with her. So I quit. Also, I couldn't bring myself to tell her things like the fact that my partner seems to be addicted to porn.
The underlying feeling in all of this is a lack of trust. Of myself, of life, of my partner. I don't know which of my feelings are worth acting on and which are just echoes of an uncomfortable past and will lead me astray. I do appreciate the good things in my life: physical health, useful work, a reasonable standard of living, some good friends -- but I am haunted by a tight sadness I can't seem to shake. I am frightened it will leave me isolated, but in some way isolation is what I crave. I don't understand why.
Please help. Thank you.
Bitter and Resentful
Dear Bitter and Resentful,
As often happens when I write this column, I wrote a first draft at the cafe and then after walking home, wishing I had more time, I read your letter again and felt my response did not address the emotional depth of your condition. It is, I see now, a profound lack of trust brought on by past betrayals and disappointments.
So I am going to stick to the conclusion I initially reached -- that cognitive therapy may help -- but will also try, right here, right now, to say the thing that leaps out at me: the big issue, the issue with great power and magnitude, is this issue of trust. Your therapist blundered into losing your trust by comparing you with her other clients. That is indeed a shame. Perhaps she will realize what happened. But you have to find somebody new. Your reaction makes perfect sense. I have a history similar to yours, so I have no problem seeing why you reacted as you did.
You need to find someone you can trust with your life. You also need to find someone with a good, workable method for combating some of the destructive thoughts you are having.
One method is cognitive therapy of the type found in Dr. David Burns' book "Feeling Good." (May I say, though, that I do not for the life of me understand how a man with any deep understanding of the human condition could allow on his Web site a photographic portrait of himself wearing such a ridiculous-looking turtleneck. It is simply beyond me. Maybe I'm being petty and shallow, but hey. I have cancer! Cut me some slack!
Betrayal by people in positions of authority can be devastating. It is often difficult to accept and understand the full impact of it. The fact that one of these people was a teacher and the other a therapist makes a perfect storm of boundary-crossing, against which of course you had next to no defense.
Also: You do not trust the man you are with. That is another dangerous relationship. I would not suggest moving in with him. You need to find the courage to be alone until you reestablish your trust in the universe. Until you find your own strength, until you find a way of living in the world that gives you the confidence you need, until you can sleep soundly at night, you are safer alone.
This is important. You must find a trained person you can trust with your vulnerable self, and you must explore these undermining events in order to find your strength in them. How will you do this? How can you trust anyone after what has happened?
Here is one idea. Do not look for someone you respect. Do not look for someone who impresses you. Look for a person you can trust with your life.
It might not be someone you admire. Your admiration may be a dangerous, seductive trap. In place of admiration, put trust. It might be someone rough around the edges, seemingly unintelligent and uncompromising. Would you trust this person to watch over you while you sleep, to mind the tiller of a sloop as you sleep below during a storm? Would you trust this person to deliver your baby? That is the kind of trust I mean. Because of these past betrayals, in order to re-encounter your wounds and find trust in the universe, you will have to find a special person. I hope it is possible for you to find this -- trust in someone or something. Trust. Trust, in some form, is the key.
So that's it for today. I'm going to try to enjoy what life offers, I'm going to trust, and meet my commitments, and see what I can do to go through life just for this day like a pretty decent person.
I'll let you know how that goes.
What? You want more advice?
Dear Reader,
Something has come up that I must share with you. I have been diagnosed with a rare cancer. The recommended treatment involves surgery and radiation. The surgery is complex but we are in excellent hands. It is slow-growing and treatable. My prognosis is good. In the days ahead, I will tell you more about it.
The last two weeks have been spent acquiring the diagnosis, choosing a surgeon and undergoing various tests and procedures. As a result, I have been a little rattled. Though physically feeling OK, I took a few days off from the column. I am sorry I did not let you know ahead of time, but it overtook me; I found myself unable to write in my accustomed way.
Yesterday I determined to write a column with a short introduction telling you of this situation. But after drafting it, at the last minute, I found I was still not ready to tell you what is going on. I retreated. This sudden and powerful reluctance informed me of something. I must shed yet another layer between me and you.
What was this sudden reluctance, this witholding? Was it a symptom of my outsize desire to control? Was it simple modesty? Was it wise management of scarce emotional resources, a symptom of exhaustion?
The difficulty I have disclosing this fact may come as a surprise to you. Compared with other writers, I do disclose a great deal. But writing is still a shield as much as a window. One of the shields I have to lay down now is the shield of bravado. I cannot summon much bravado. I retain a sense of humor but it is freighted with tears. Last week on a sunny morning I wrote a song about the tumor. I sang it through tears. I would like to share it with you soon. It's just a little song. But I will try to share it. It captures how I feel.
Walking up to the cafe this morning, looking for a way to reclaim the serenity that has attended so many of my days, I thought of the term "groundlessness," as the Buddhist Pema Chodron uses it. I feel groundless and I also feel weighted. This groundlessness is the "platform" on which my serenity rests. I am aware of the irony.
With this weightedness and groundlessness comes also a gentleness as I sit in the cafe, a feeling that everything in the world, everything I touch is impossibly fragile. The fake leather of the couch I am sitting next to in this cafe feels cool and fragile; everything I see has an air of translucence and impermanence; I am reminded that if not for certain atomic attractive properties, all this would easily fly apart, as though the electricity had been turned off on a magnet.
I am not afraid, exactly, so much as weighed down, profoundly slowed, ballasted as if with grief or pure gravity itself. I must take this on its own terms, not mine. I have surrendered to this situation.
This morning I woke up eager to begin treatment. I am eager to get to the other side. I am ready. But I am not cavalier. I suppose you could say that yes, I am appropriately afraid.
Oh, damn. My mind just drifted again. That is how things are going. I enter into a feeling, and then just as quickly I began scheming how I am going to get this done and get that done.
Before me, indeed, are many practical matters. The writing workshops and retreats we started two years ago have become a source of joy, community and creativity, which must continue. So the Tuesday evening groups will go on as scheduled, starting Tuesday Nov. 24. The January getaway at Marconi Conference Center will happen as planned. On the other hand, for the time being, the weekly Saturday group will be suspended, so that we can have one day off to recuperate and handle the workload of recovery. We may begin a monthly all-day Saturday workshop, but have not firmed up plans yet.
I will let you know of any further changes, both in this column and also via my e-mail list of participants.
Let me be clear: This is a fully treatable cancer. If all goes well, the tumor can be completely removed and all traces of the cancer can be eliminated. In two or three months, I may be back to my old cheerful and energetic self. But we know, too, that cancer cells are strong, determined, clever and patient. So there are no guarantees.
There is much more to be said. As I go through this experience, on some days I will respond to a letter in the usual way. On other days, such as today, I think it likely that this column will consist of reports and meditations on the situation at hand. I do plan to write every day, whenever possible, to keep our connection and conversation going. Sometimes what I have to write may not be very carefully crafted; there may be times when the experience is overwhelming and what I have to say is commonplace. I do not have much defense against that.
So I invite you to help me.
Join me. Take my hand. Help me through this.
What? You want more advice?
Dear Cary,
I've recently realized that I am atheist. Now being that atheists are 1 percent of the population, this could produce a lone sense in anyone. However, I feel especially alone. My husband's family -- I have no family of my own to speak of -- is intensely Roman Catholic and close-knit. I love them very much and have for many years, but their Catholicism is their identity. The holiday and social gatherings all revolve around a conservative Catholic faith and a conservative political base. I have always been the token liberal, politely placing counterpoints to their own. Or simply staying silent with the more reactionary members of the family. It is a somewhat lonely existence as a result of the only other liberal being a poorly read and largely ignorant knee-jerk friend of my husband's.
I just had a baby and do need the support of my husband's family but the constant silence and playing along is causing me depression. I have no real issue with religious people, I'm certainly not one of the in-your-face New Atheist types. But to be unable to share this with even my husband forces me to live an endless lie of church services and religious gatherings. I do not believe in the miracles they constantly trumpet or find comfort in the theological books they offer! I do not feel any kind of supernatural presence in my life or feel that birth control is inherently evil. Yet if I shared these beliefs I would be shunned faster and with more passion than a leprous Nazi with a rotting cheese on her head. I hear the passionate gossip they speak of other wayward family members all the time!
I look down at my son and realize I even must lie to him. I must parrot the tired myths to him or else risk the natural talkative nature of children to spill my words to everyone. While there is no real evil in living out religion, any more than there is deciding to dance in a circle in your yard with a flowerpot every day, it is not some truth. Nor is it a surefire cure for what ails you. To me it represents wasted time and effort. I do not know what to do because I love these goodhearted people. They are the only family I have. My constant silence and lies depress me greatly because I love them so much.
Thank you for your consideration of my issue.
Surrounded by Saints
Dear Surrounded,
Is faith a matter of choice? Is it an act of will? Are we therefore to be held accountable for the presence or absence of faith in our lives?
I don't see how that can be.
Is it not possible to be a person of goodwill who honestly has no faith? If people who profess to have faith cannot accept that, then it seems to me they lack some essential element of understanding.
How could people of faith accept as a miracle an event in which faith came unbidden to someone, and yet condemn the opposite but equally plausible event in which faith did not come unbidden, or departed unbidden never to return? Why should one occurrence be treated with reverence and the other with scorn, if they are both equally mysterious in this putatively mysterious, god-infused universe?
I would think that people of both good faith and goodwill would accept your atheism as simply another miracle.
But I am obviously not living in the real world.
If the people around you lack deep understanding and intellectual capacity, what is to be done? I do not know. Can they be educated? Not by you.
If they cannot accept your difference then that is their own personal hell; that is their tragic incapacity of perception.
If you would like something to read, let me suggest the estimable Terry Eagleton's small book, "Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate."
Let's hope that there is a God, and that she shows her hand in such a way that these people are struck with sudden holy forgiveness, and that they see, in this moment of wholly improbable struckness, how you, too, and your atheism, are part of their perfect godly world.
And let us hope that this merciful God tells them, in a few simple words, to leave you the fuck alone and not try to convert you.
Wouldn't that be a nice kind of God to have?
What? You want more advice?
Dear Cary,
I have two friends who have asked me on multiple occasions why I think they're not in a relationship. The questions seem to go beyond rhetorical. I try to shift the conversation to something else or use vague clichés, like, "It always happens when you least expect it." The thing is, I have a pretty good idea why they have trouble finding someone. For one, it is that her idea of being "smart" about relationships is to open up to men in a relationship very, very slowly (not out of fear but because she thinks this is a better strategy) and she sometimes makes remarks that, while intended as funny, come off as acerbic and obscure her kind, thoughtful and generous personality. She basically gives men that she is interested in the impression that she has already moved on.
The other friend has two distinct issues. First, she is very focused on becoming married and then being a housewife with a comfortable lifestyle. No, not "getting" married but she believes her life will "become" exactly what she has dreamed of for years. We're in our mid-20s so there's growing social and religious (Jewish) pressure to pair off, but this focus shows and sometimes comes off as desperation. Second, she has a long list of very specific, non-negotiable requirements for a potential husband that cause her to reject quite a few great guys. Some of these requirements are random or seem a bit ridiculous. For example, she's 5 feet and doesn't put much effort toward her nutrition or exercise but will accept no one less than 5-foot-11 and muscular. Even in heavily Jewish New York, 5-foot-11+ and muscular Jewish men are few and far between. Again, she's a wonderful person but she seems to be ignoring or scaring off guys who might be great for her.
To make things more complicated, I am in a serious relationship that could be heading to marriage in the relatively near future and do not want to come off as condescending. There are already plenty of newly married couples in our community to gloat at the singles about how "incomplete" our lives are. I have no desire to become one as well. On the other hand, I like to know when I have spinach between my teeth and this seems to be more on the level of an entire bowl of salad stuck in there. So, do I keep smiling and handing out the platitudes or sit down for some uncomfortable truths the next time they ask [in private]?
Damned If I Do, Damned If I Don't
Dear Damned If I Do,
My heart says just tell them. But my head says that if you do, you take risks. So you'd better know what the risks are.
One risk is that it won't do any good, and you'll just feel stupid for saying anything. Another is that the person will be hurt and will stop being your friend. A third is that the person may tell others that you were tactless and unkind, and then you may be ostracized or at least gossiped about. Then you will not sleep well, and will dread seeing certain people.
These are all risks. When you offer your thoughts, you become vulnerable to judgment. You also encounter tangible limits. You can tell someone, Well, you need to be more open, but unless that person knows how to do that, it might not help.
I would boil it down to this:
Basically, your friends are trying to protect themselves from some kind of pain or hurt. What kind of hurt are they protecting themselves from? And why? Are they protecting themselves from the intimate hurt of being rejected? Are they protecting themselves from the shame of family and social disapproval? Probably both.
It's natural to protect ourselves from pain, but some kinds of pain arise out of bad social and family structures that deny the individual the opportunity to be who she is. So when we are in a bad social or family environment, we learn to avoid the pain of being who we are. We become somebody we're not. It's temporarily easier. It works for a while. But eventually it just messes you up.
So it's necessary to take some risks and feel some pain in order to become who we are and find where we fit in or do not fit in.
I don't know you or your social setting but I know what it feels like not to fit in. So if you have grown up in a culture where people are mean to each other, and say things behind your back, and where you cannot trust your friends to be there for you no matter what, and where your family is putting constant pressure on you to become something they can parade around their social set like an object, and if you feel that they don't see you for who you really are, and they don't respect your thoughts unless your thoughts conform with theirs, and if you sometimes feel like they don't even like you, the real you, like the real you is just some inconvenient outgrowth they wish would disappear so the you they prefer would be all they have to deal with, if throughout high school and college all you've heard is that it's important to secure a good, solid, high-status place in society and that this need should dictate your choice of profession, your clothes, your car, your house and your mate, and if you really cannot imagine just saying what you actually think because of this, then the pain of doing something that people disapprove of is a good pain.
The pain of saying, "I do not think I even belong in this group," is a good kind of pain. The pain of being alone is a good pain. Once you start feeling this pain, you start realizing who you are.
So while there are risks, and while you may inflict some pain, I think it's likely that the pain you will inflict by telling the truth is a good kind of pain, and it may even be a kind of pain that your friends will be grateful to you for inflicting.
Don't count on it. Don't count on getting rewarded for telling the truth. But if you think deeply about the risks, and about the ultimate necessity of finding out who we really truly are, I think it's likely you will conclude that it's worth taking a few risks, and perhaps causing a little pain, in order to tell the truth.
What? You want more advice?
Dear Cary,
A stupid speeding ticket has thrown me for a complete loop.
I am a slow and careful driver. I have to commute for an hour to my job. I have done this for 10 years now, and I learned a long time ago that speeding stressed me out but really didn't get me there much quicker. So I put my cellphone in the trunk to avoid temptation, I drive in the slow lane, I let anyone in who wants in, I try to stay the heck out of the way and assume that people who are speeding have some real reason to get there faster. I actually used to savor my downtime in the car alone as "transition time" between home and work. I leave 10 minutes earlier, I drive the slower, prettier route, and I enjoy a peaceful commute. Until very recently, I never had a ticket for anything.
As part of my commute, I have three miles on a four-lane twisting road through a beautiful park where the speed limit is 25 miles an hour. It is an appropriate place to drive slowly, but very difficult to drive 25 miles an hour, and most people who use this stretch of road ignore that rule. I am consistently the slowest driver on this stretch and a few weeks ago, a fellow was driving behind me very closely flashing his lights and beeping at me. This happens to me every once in a while, but this guy was more aggressive and more angry than I am used to. I was in the right lane and tried to just ignore him, but he was really making me nervous. Finally, I gathered that he was not going to go around me on the left and he really wanted my lane so I moved to the left lane. He gunned it, flipped me off and yelled at me as he passed me on the right, swerved into the left lane in front of me, slammed on his brakes to scare me, then took off at a high rate of speed. My heart was pounding, but I moved back into the right lane and looked up and a police car was behind me with its lights on. I pulled over, and the police officer said he had clocked me at 43 mph. I started to talk, he told me he didn't want to hear it, took my records and wrote up a ticket.
I got a ticket for excessive speed -- 43 mph in a 25 mile zone -- that has 4 points associated with it. I am stunned. I really don't know how fast I was going and I don't have any reason to think that the policeman was wrong, but I am surprised I could have been that far over the speed limit. On the other hand, I think that the police are generally fairly accurate, and I really don't know. I am angry that I got the ticket and the harassing driver did not, but just because he deserved it doesn't mean I am innocent of speeding.
So, since that happened I have been paying more attention and driving the speed limit on my commute. I even use my cruise control to maintain the proper speed where it is difficult, and I still cheat a little -- I add 5 mph where it seems ridiculously slow. For example, on one stretch of my commute it is 40 mph for two miles on a perfectly straight four-lane highway. The slow speed limit seems senseless, but I have been doing it anyway at 40 to 45 mph. I have been especially aware where there are road crews working, even on the interstate. This new attention to strictly following the speed limit really hasn't seemed to add any time to my commute so I think I must have been poking along like this all along to some degree. It is a more stressful and less enjoyable drive to pay such close attention for the entire drive.
Even more stressful, however, is the rage that I inspire in my fellow commuters. And I mean rage. People are outraged at me for trying to make sure I drive at the speed limit on many stretches where it seems I am the only driver who is aware that there is a speed limit. The incident that happened just before my ticket is now happening to me every day, sometimes more than once a day. This morning a fellow who had been tailgating me through my narrow neighborhood street was so infuriated that I slowed down for a yellow light that he passed me on the left and raced into the intersection after the light turned red -- he narrowly missed creating a multi-car disaster, and it took time to untangle the traffic mess this caused because he was blocking traffic and couldn't go anywhere. Although it was bad judgment on his part to pass me on the wrong side when I had stopped for a light, I feel in some ways responsible for the ensuing confusion. Other drivers who perceive that I am driving too slowly or cautiously seem to hate me, and they hate me with a sharp-edged, profanity-laced passion. They cut me off just to intimidate me, they yell at me, they flip me off. They want me out of their way. It feels like they want me to die.
I used to use my commute as a time of private isolation to listen to music or just drive in silent thought, but for the past few weeks I have been terrorized whenever I am behind the wheel. I am having nightmares about these angry people and I have started to have old nightmares about something bad that happened to me long ago -- the nightmares are of being randomly selected and harmed, and of having no way to help myself. I dread driving to work. I dread driving home. I feel very helpless.
I am trying to get along in this world where I have to drive, and I am trying to be respectful of the rules and my fellow man, and I am trying to even be a little flexible in spots (5 mph over the limit seems reasonable). But this has been a total nightmare for me, and I am seeing my fellow human beings in a very different, frightening light. I really don't know what to do. It should have been a minor event -- I can handle a speeding ticket, right? When you get a speeding ticket it is tangible and expensive proof that you should slow down, isn't it? Why am I feeling so shattered? Why can't I safely drive the speed limit without being terrorized?
I am angry that there do not seem to be any other speeding tickets being handed out by the many police I see on the side of the road, but I really don't think that would make me feel better. I want to know what to do, and I don't know what to do. Is it possible to obey traffic laws and not disrupt the lives of my fellow drivers? Why does this feel so much bigger than it is?
I hope you can find words to calm my thoughts.
Terrorized Commuter
Dear Terrorized Commuter,
The words I would use to calm your thoughts are these: You don't have to keep doing this. You can stop. In fact, I think you need to stop driving this route now. My advice to you is to decide, today, to change what you are doing. It is important that you do this before things get worse. Your very life is at stake.
You need to break the cycle. Each time you get stressed by an angry driver you are flooded with stress hormones that are damaging to your health and well-being and may lead to a catastrophic accident, high blood pressure, stroke and a host of other stress-related illnesses. It's like you are being poisoned.
And for what? All in order to participate in a system of transportation that is insane and should have been changed long ago? All to keep working at a job that perhaps does not give you what you need in life anyway, except for a paycheck?
Why does this feel bigger than it is? Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it is really that big. Every morning and evening for 10 years you have been driving a lethal weapon at high speed among a horde of other drivers few of whom are highly skilled, many of whom are distracted, driving with inadequate sleep, their minds blurred by prescription medications, their nerves raw from murderous routine, their anger spiking at the slightest provocation, their vehicles poorly maintained, their reactions erratic, some of whom can barely see, others of whom do not know the rules of the road, all of whom are driving on poorly maintained American roads not designed or built especially well for high speed; you are vulnerable to the lack of skill and emotional reactions of a whole host of characters of varying skill levels and psychological stability and all this is completely beyond your control. It is insane. It is insanity multiplied by millions of miles. Things happen in an instant. Things go wrong. Things spin out of control and people lose their lives every day. It's a nightmare.
How much bigger does it have to get?
But every morning hopped up on caffeine we suppress our fear and strap ourselves into our death machines. In the evening, weary, distracted and impatient to get home, we strap ourselves in again. We pretend it's normal. We pretend it's manageable. We have somewhere to get to, so we do not linger on the tragedy of loss that is our highway system; we do not mourn the wetlands squandered for highways, the meadows paved over, the mountains cut into, the trees sacrificed, the animals deprived of habitat; we do not shudder at the poisons released into the air by our vehicles as we cruise along at lethal speed. We just drive. We suppress what we know to be true -- that what we are doing is mass suicide of historic proportions.
We just drive.
Because you've got to keep up the commute, right?
Maybe not.
Maybe it's time to throw a monkey wrench in the works.
You may need to get help for the trauma you are experiencing. But I would think hard before adopting treatment aimed solely at getting you back into your automobile. What you are going through, I would suggest, is a recognition of the truth. The veil has been pulled away and you have glimpsed just how insane this whole enterprise is. Take your symptoms seriously. They are telling you that there is something fundamentally wrong and you have to stop doing it.
There must be an alternative. If not, that is one more indictment of our criminally mismanaged transportation infrastructure: The fact that driving to work is not simply an option but a necessity for so many millions of Americans is appalling. The fact that it is so commonplace makes it not less appalling but more so.
Consider yourself forced to explore alternatives. Are there other people in your neighborhood with whom you could share rides? Could you pay someone to drive you? If you examine the per-mile costs of commuting, including maintenance, gas, oil, insurance and the value of the car itself, you might find that, rather than being an added expense, it would be a net savings to find someone to pay for a ride. And there must be some transit hub somewhere, no? That you could drive to and park? No?
Then let's get radical: Why do you absolutely have to go to this particular location every day? What would happen if you stopped going? What would happen if you refused to participate in this murderous and insane ritual? What if you take the leap, become a resister, just up and stop the madness?
You could stop commuting just on principle. You could tell the people where you work that they will have to make it possible for you to work at home.
I am serious about the urgency and immediacy of the situation. I say do something before it's too late. Stop the madness! Do this not only for yourself but for the millions like you who have been driving in appalling conditions.
You know, we sometimes live with chronic situations that we know are intolerable but we keep going. We can do lasting damage to ourselves in this way. So I urge you to act on what you know to be true. This is an intolerable situation.
Stop tolerating it. Let the chips fall where they may. You don't need to do this.
What? You want more advice?
Dear Cary,
I love your column, and I need some advice about maintaining one's personal space. At least, I think this is what I need. I apologize if this is rambling, but that's how I'm feeling at the moment. My co-habiting girlfriend is usually a warm, generous, person, but over the last month or so she has been under a lot of stress at her job, as her boss rides her constantly and unnecessarily. She and I have been friends for a few years and then fell in love and we have been living together for about three months now.
She comes home in a foul mood, and when I reach out to her, she ignores me and walks around the house in a huff. As I don't want to get into the habit of trying to "make" someone happy, her behavior usually causes me to retreat a bit. Not ignore her, but quietly go about my business cooking dinner or chores or whatever. I always say, "Well, I'm here if you want to talk about it." In my mind, I am giving her some space to wind down and relax, and I try not to act like the eager Labrador who has been waiting for its owner to come home. In other words, I don't expect her to fall all over me and entertain me at the end of the day. (By the way, because of my work schedule, I get home hours before she does.) However, she responds by being irritated at me for my silence, asking me angrily and over-sensitively "What's wrong?" when all I am doing is trying to help. I feel that in these situations, anything I do is wrong! (Also, we are both IN types on Myers-Briggs, if that matters. More specifically, I am INFP, and she is INTJ.)
When we talk about this bad dynamic, she gets angry and upset and says that she is "turning into her mother," who was a fairly angry and abusive person to her growing up. I love my partner, and I have supported her throughout this recent "crisis." She seems to want to change: she recently started taking an antidepressant and has begun counseling and exercising. She drinks very little and eats healthfully; she is never violent or "abusive." (But is she abusing our relationship? I feel pretty beat up every time this happens.) She is also looking for another job, as she believes that her anger issues stem from the way her boss treats her. I'm a little afraid that if it's not one thing, it might be another, if you know what I mean.
I must mention that on the weekends and vacations, she is a dream! She is smart and funny and kind and we have a blast. But during the week, her behavior when she gets off work is really getting to me. We live in a small apartment, so it's difficult to retreat to my own space when she's in a bad mood, which is two or three times a week. Once she's out of her ill mood, she expects everything to be hunky dory, and I sometimes end up pretty annoyed myself after being metaphorically slapped down for being nice and reaching out, and slapped down again when I retreat a little. We have gotten into a few heated discussions about this, and I need to learn how to take care of myself when this goes on. What can I do to show support to her while she figures this out, but also protect myself from feeling like it's my fault all the time? I tend to take it personally. We love each other and both want this relationship to work out. I'm starting to feel that "walking on eggshells feeling" that I've heard so much about. Should I make myself scarce around 5 every afternoon? Go to the gym or something, play tennis or whatever, to let her cool off after work? Is that overcompensating for her bad behavior?
Thanks for any advice you can throw my way.
Shacked Up and Slapped Down
Dear Shacked Up,
Given the marketing possibilities and the profit potential, I am a little surprised that real estate developers have not yet begun to build small urban apartments explicitly designed for healthy and happy cohabitation by two introverts.
In the ideal two-introvert urban apartment, alone time would be built into the space. One would not have to be greeted at the door. One could slip in and enter the alone chamber.
It's not that you don't love each other. The problem is that a small apartment does not meet the introvert's needs for solitude, recharging and personal space.
Call it The Cocoon, or perhaps The Nest. Such a space might have a branching entrance, so that as each person enters he or she branches off in her direction, toward a small, quiet, vibrant but serene space that is hers alone, where she stops to recollect herself and become oriented. It might be a space like a chambered nautilus.
There would be a common kitchen and common social space and if the apartment was for lovers there would be a common bed; but there would also be these tiny alcoves of personal space for spiritual renewal.
Some architecture student ought to do this as a project. Architect Christopher Alexander talks a little about this in his writing about how to situate houses to accommodate the needs of both introverts and extroverts. But more could be done, surely, with individual small-scale design.
Since it's only been three months, perhaps you can go back to the way it was before you moved in together. You needn't see this as a failure. Rather, you might see it as a recognition, a celebration, of who you are. You are two people who are fully capable of loving each other, but you must meet your own needs first. The fact that you did not realize how urgent were your needs for solitude and personal space is not such a bad thing. Now you've learned something. Put it to use!
I do wonder at the continuing dominance of the heterosexual marriage pattern as the assumed form for two lovers who wish to be closer emotionally and share more resources and material survival activities. I suppose the model goes quite deep -- and we do not really have any others competing for our attention in the media space. Would that we had more widely publicized models.
We fall in love and then we move in together. We do not say, well, we fall in love and then we think very hard before changing or discarding our painstakingly devised roles and systems; we think carefully before we make any change that might put undue strain on us, or prevent us from meeting some of the needs we were meeting very easily and quite intuitively on our own. We just plunk down a deposit and get keys made.
When we are on our own, before we move in together, we meet our needs for solitude and space in ways that are quite intuitive and natural. Ask yourself, what did I used to do to feel whole, complete, content? How did I ensure that I had what I need? How did I protect my much-needed space? Did I, for instance, occasionally not answer the phone or "hide out," or perhaps set up routines that kept me from having to interact with others more than is comfortable for me? Perhaps she used to walk around cursing, or she used to lie on her bed and be silent, and that was her way of getting over the hurts of the day so she could then come to you and be sweet and intelligent and charming.
You had some kind of balance; you had some kind of control. You were not emotionally naked in front of each other all the time. By moving in together you have stripped yourselves of the protections, the buffer zone that you had before.
One could go on. But my basic reaction is that you have moved into a situation that is nearly intolerable for both of you. There is no shame in realizing that this particular form of cohabitation does not meet your needs. You can still change this arrangement and remain lovers. I hope you do.
What? You want more advice?
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