Dear Polly,

I want to know how I can make my boyfriend a better listener.

It has happened several times that when I want to talk about something serious (the future, exes, fears, hopes, etc.) my boyfriend often gets distracted. It's not like he means to hurt me—I think it's just his nature, and possibly mild ADD—but it does hurt me.

I'm 24 and he will be 30 next year. We both see each other as potential life partners. But how can I be with someone who gets distracted by a squirrel when I'm telling him about my father's funeral?

That's the other thing: I have some serious things to tell him. My father was murdered when I was 14. It's a story I haven't shared with many people, but if this is the right guy (and by all other accounts, he is) then I want him to know.

My fear is that he will hurt me by not listening correctly. Basically, that he won't listen well, or that he will be scared off, or will avoid the subject or get distracted or whatever. It has happened many times before and even though I've told him this hurts me, not much has changed.

Sometimes I feel like the mom when a serious subject gets brought up: If he gets distracted, I admonish him. Usually I say: Look, right now I just don't care about buttering my bread roll/wiping crumbs out of my shirt/that castle that we're about to pass because I'm in the middle of telling you something very important. Or I just say, never mind, you're not listening. I'll tell you some other time. He instantly apologizes and promises to change but then the same thing happens again and again. Recently I've felt like he's trying so hard to listen that he's almost playing a role.

Sometimes I even feel like I'm dragging him down when I keep trying to tell him these dark stories from my past. He's a very positive, happy-go-lucky guy who comes from a balanced family. I'm a pretty strong, driven and balanced person as well (despise all the fucked up stories) but I need to talk and be heard, damn it. I think that a lot of the time he gets scared of these topics and makes distractions. But I can feel that he cares and wants to support me—just doesn't know how.

So Polly: am I crazy for trying to change my boyfriend? Are you going to tell me to get a therapist? I realize I will want to get one some day, but I also want to figure out a way to share myself fully with the person I love without getting mad at him every time.

Van Gogh's Girlfriend

Dear VGG,

I should warn you, this is one of those subjects that lights up every dark corner of my brain, causing me to spin out in a million directions. The hope of getting some small slice of concrete advice from whatever follows here is admittedly very dim, but I will try my best to bring it home. I WILL BRING THIS HOME.

Here we go. Most humans need a good listener in their lives. People want to be heard. Not distractedly half-heard and then interrupted, but heard. The desire to be heard is easily observed in small children, who magically turn into house-destructing demons the second you get on the phone, play Candy Crush, flip through a fucking magazine, etc. Kids who aren't heard are like dogs who don't get enough exercise. They will fucking shred the carpet to bits, if you let them.

In contrast, when you devote your full attention to a kid, and he or she suddenly realizes that you are really, truly paying attention, he/she will turn into a bouncy ball of entertaining brilliance. Which is amazing, unless it's not your kid and/or you dislike kids in general, in which case it's a fucking pain in the ass and you have to learn to ignore kids better.

Anyway. Same goes for human beings, right? But women, generally speaking (I KNOW YES I'M GENERALIZING I DO THAT), need a GREAT listener. We need to be heard, big time, or we droop and grow wilty.

And then there are smart women with lots to say who are also very sensitive and weird and analytical and incredibly talkative, who ALSO listen very closely. These women are often labeled "a little too intense." We think way too much, and slice and dice everything under the sun like a Ginsu knife that's been sharpened one too many times and is now capable of cutting a watermelon in half like it's made of crepe paper.

And while it's true that no one REALLY needs a knife that sharp, there we are, the sharpest fucking knives in the motherfucking drawer. I'm not saying we're geniuses, ok? We're just sharp sharp sharp and we want to cut and cut and cut until there's nothing left to cut. We do shut up sometimes. Sometimes we're downright quiet, and you can't get us to talk even if you try. But every now and then, we want to bring up tough, tangled, difficult situations and memories and experiences, and we want to slice and dice that shit up and shine a light on this or that and dig deeper and wonder and ponder and maybe even cry some tears over some dusty old loss or some injury or even something bad that happened to someone else.

If this is a suitable description of you, VGG, and of you, reader, then you need to know something (in case you don't already know it): YOU NEED A CHAMPION LISTENER IN YOUR LIFE.

Women (and ok, men, too) who have big digressive minds and lots of stories, who know how to entertain but also do need to be heard and understood very badly? We need champion listeners. We just do. And listen, a lot of us really do deserve champion listeners, too. Because we ourselves are champion listeners. We're the ones who people call when they're going through a tough breakup or divorce. We're the ones who people lean on when they're depressed or sick or injured or bereft. This makes the phone our enemies, honestly, because once we're on the phone we could be on there for fucking EVER. We also have to be careful around email.

But when the shit truly hits the fan for someone? WE ARE THERE. We are there, and you can also depend on us to avoid making it ALL ABOUT US. We're sensitive, so we try to behave appropriately. It took some work to learn this skill, but we learned it.

And if the people we count on, who are very close to us, don't listen to us? We get weird. Sometimes half-assed listening makes us talk even more. Sometimes we start blaming people for OTHER, totally unrelated shit, because not being heard freaks us out. Sometimes we mope. Sometimes we start weeping over nothing, day after day. When we're not heard, the world is off-kilter. A window is ajar and cold wind is pouring in. Our balance is off. We feel sick. We feel wronged. We feel and feel and feel and we have a lot to fucking say about it.

And if the people around us DO listen to us? If we get really lucky and we find a champion fucking listener out there in the world? Flowers bloom. The sun shines in, bright and strong. Birds sing happy little birdy songs. And—THIS IS IMPORTANT—we really don't ask for much more than that. That's the paradox of the digressive talky needy woman (or man). Give us a champion listener, here and there, and we're good. Warm, dry, comfortable, happy. We will shut up and get 'er done and take care of people and cook big meals and bring joy to the world.

Now, some big talky talkers in the world don't look for a champion listener. They just write constantly. They write giant award-winning novels. Donna Tartt, are you listening? Probably not. Genius writer ladies with perfect, shiny bob haircuts and dark turns of mind don't have time to listen, do they? They take care of fucking business and stay aloof and fabulous. God, how we love and envy the motherfuckers.

But for people like you and me? We have to write things down, non-genius things mostly, AND we have to go out into the world and find good listeners to lean on.

Here's what happens when we find ok listeners and so-so listeners and pretty good listeners and even good listeners, who maybe don't want to have really in-depth conversations very often: Trouble. Here's what happens when we talk to people who SAY they like talking about their feelings but in practice, actually fucking hate it and will turn on us like a pit bull if we try to make them do it: Things get ugly. Here's what happens when we start sleeping with someone who really doesn't want to talk to us all that much, and sure as FUCK doesn't want to hear us go on and on and on about something, even when we think we're actually sort of uncovering important, smart shit along the way: We feel like shit. Things don't work out. They might work out for a while, but eventually, things fall apart.

I had a boyfriend once who became distracted any time we were about to have a conversation. The music wasn't quite right. It was time to make a second drink. The lighting was wrong. It was time to check something online. It was time to make a phone call. I spent LOTS of time sitting with a drink in my hand, watching him do anything in the world but talk to me. We'd even go out to a nice restaurant, and he'd get distracted by the waiter or the conversation at the next table. He always had a very clear reason for not listening, and when I pushed him to try harder, I was being massively insensitive. And when I did manage to get his attention OR I just pushed onward and delivered a monologue about something big and sweeping, that I thought was actually kind of heartfelt and inspired? He would get angry at me.

He may have been a champion listener for anyone else. I don't know. But he did NOT WANT TO LISTEN TO ME TALK. He wanted me to shut up. It's incredible how long it took me to wise up and figure that out.

The moral here is that even when you're in love with someone and you feel reasonably good around them, if there are little signs that they don't really want you to talk, and you know that you really NEED TO TALK? Then you're pretty fucked.

I'm not saying that you, specifically, VGG, are fucked OR that your relationship needs to end right this minute. But you and all of the other sharp knives out there who want to fucking cut and slice and dice need to know something: You aren't just being compulsive and nuts, with all that fucking analysis and talk. People will make you think that you are a lunatic, thanks to the fact that they don't have a taste for such heaviness and they are, in fact, AFRAID OF IT.

SHARP KNIVES NEED TO KNOW THAT WANTING TO BE HEARD ISN'T A CRIME. If you want to truly be heard—and you're not that relaxed about spending time with people who don't like intensity or depth or long conversations about big important things—that doesn't make you a pain in the fucking ass. That makes you a sharp fucking knife.

So my advice to most sharp knives is hold out for a champion listener. Like fairies or unicorns or dogs with great personalities, you have to BELIEVE in their existence for them to appear to you. If you slog through life dating one crappy listener after another, and you just assume that this is just one of the many ways women (and some men) are punished, brutally and repeatedly, for being made of sugar and spice and piss and vinegar, then you'll have to simply endure being half-ignored and feeling like a weirdo with way too many ideas and feelings to ever express a small fraction of them. But I would strongly recommend taking a different path. I would strongly recommend BELIEVING that champion listeners exist, BELIEVING that you, as a champion listener, deserve to find one of them. One that looks nice.

You, VGG, don't want to break up with your boyfriend. You want me to tell you how to train him to be a better listener. This isn't a skill I seem to possess. You could try to get him into couples' therapy with you, sure. I have occasionally said to past boyfriends, "I need an hour of your time. Then we can do whatever—watch a basketball game, go to a party, I don't care. But right now I need to feel like I have your full attention. And I need to do this every now and then, or I start to feel really fucking shitty."

BUT HONESTLY? Then we'd sit and talk and he'd focus really hard (just like you described, like an actor on a stage who's pretending to be a sensitive listener) and then after exactly one hour he'd be all "FUCK LET ME OUT OF THIS PRISON!" But I'd STILL feel a little off and we'd go have dinner and he'd talk about light stuff and never return to the subject we discussed earlier and really, I'd still feel hungry for talk, for heavy lifting, for getting to the heart of things. I would ALWAYS HOPE that we could get right down to the fucking nitty gritty, but I'd always feel dissatisfied. Because when your dude doesn't WANT to get down to brass tacks, when he'll do anything to avoid doing just that, you're basically never going to feel like your thirst is quenched.

Eventually, you become someone who talks too much. Because, when you never, ever have someone's full attention, that's what ends up happening.

A therapist who's paid to listen closely to you will help, but he/she won't solve this problem entirely for you. Nope. People will say "Why are you trying to make your boyfriend your therapist, VGG?" and "Why don't you turn to your female friends for a good talking session?" But no. Sharp knives can have therapists and lots of amazing friends who listen, but if their partner refuses to listen, and they know they want a partner who understands them (or at least tries to) and listens closely (at least some of the time)? Then therapy and friends don't magically make it all great. The partner who's a bad listener can fuck things up.

As a partner, a champion listener is irreplaceable. My husband doesn't have to work that hard, either. I just need to know that he wants to show up when I have important stuff to hash out. If I weren't married to a great listener, I know I would be vaguely dissatisfied and pissy and I'd be hell to live with.

Not everyone is a sharp knife, which is probably a good thing. I have destroyed many a relationship over this issue. But now? I bask in gratitude. A huge piece of my happiness comes from aligning myself with someone who loves talking and likes heavy subjects but also has an edge and doesn't talk about chakras, ever.

In my experience, it is excruciatingly difficult to try to get someone who doesn't like heaviness to try to grapple with heavy shit. And look, I've known THERAPISTS who didn't like heavy shit and didn't REALLY like to listen. What people say about what they want and what they actually SHOW YOU that they want are often at odds. You don't have to feel crazy just because you're noticing a gap there.

Sharp knives need a lot. It's OK to need a lot. When you need a lot and you ask for a lot, knowing that you can give it back? You get a lot.

You want a life that is full, VGG. You don't want to feel lonely. You don't want to feel ignored. You should try to speak from the heart, to tell him how much you need. Don't be ashamed. You want to tell someone what you have inside, and you want to know that they're paying attention. You don't JUST want them to hear you. YOU WANT THEM TO FEEL YOU.

And to all the other sharp knives out there: If someone tells you that you make it ALL ABOUT YOU all the time, that you're into drama, and really, you're just trying to connect, to get to the truth, to share yourself, to hear someone else, to feel them, to let them in? If you know that you listen and you're a good partner or a good friend, and you know when to shut up, and someone STILL says this to you, despite ample evidence that it's simply not true? Don't try harder with that person. When you're trying to make deep connections in a world that is flinchy and dismissive of deep connections, sometimes you open your heart, and instead of getting love in return, someone will say you're being a troublemaker.

They just don't get it. They aren't for you. Walk away. You have worlds inside you—swirling, colorful, mournful, generous, soaring, hopeful, searing, heartbreaking worlds. You cannot offer just a tiny slice of you. You cannot hold back the flood. You want to share those worlds. You are way too big, too complicated, too glorious and infinitely sad and unspeakably divine. You have to share all of it. Find someone worthy of all of it. Find someone who wants ALL OF IT.

Polly




Are you incapable of listening? Write to Polly today and wait forever for her to write back.

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Jesslee Cuizon.

The post Ask Polly: How Do I Make My Boyfriend Listen? appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

Love your column. Can I throw something at you? Apologies for being vague with certain details.

I'm a 43-year-old woman who has spent my whole life in one industry, got pretty far, and then descended back down the ladder to the place I started from. One day my whole outlook on my career changed and I wanted out. The problem was I didn't know how to do anything else. I was unconsciously sabotaging job after job but without an exit strategy, so it was a rough few years. 

Finally I ended up at the entry level of my industry, hiding my experience and qualifications so I could be a worker bee. In exchange for giving up a great salary and high pressure 24/7 job, I got over a hundred hours of my week back, and for the first time, started to have a life. Materially, it's spartan compared to what I had, but I'm at peace and happy way more often than I was before.

Now that my job is so undemanding and I have a lot more time than I've had, I've gotten back in touch with my childhood dreams and have started to do what I really wanted to do. It's in arts/entertainment. 

This is where my problem comes in: Having any actual success was far from my mind when I started my new work. I was just happy to finally have the time to be doing what I always wanted to do. 

Things rather rapidly became serious with rather serious people and organizations as soon as I focused and treated my new "work" like real work. I got opportunities other people struggle and train for years to get, and sometimes never do. I am COMPLETELY aware of how incredibly fortunate I am. Friends and peers in the same world can't believe my rate of progress. I feel like I'm finally on the right track.

But then I just stopped. Hearing about other people's dreams are the worst, but this dream is my story in a nutshell: I was driving a champagne colored convertible down a gorgeous open highway of gold on my way to Beverly Hills. The road was clear, the sky was blue, I was on my way. Then I just pulled over the car and got out, walked away, and suddenly I was in the bowels of the 42nd Street Subway station. I woke up terrified.

The days are ticking past, and the serious people waiting for me to get on the bus will eventually stop waiting—or else find a replacement.

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why I'm so resistant to finishing what I started. Imposter syndrome, fear of success, all of these things hit really close to home, but I can't pinpoint why I'm finding it so difficult to reach out and grab the brass ring in front of my face. 

I don't think it's stage fright necessarily, because though I won't say I don't care what people think, I have an uncanny ability to shut out the world and compartmentalize feelings and memories to the point of amnesia.

Possibly relevant: I grew up in a home where I was invisible when I wasn't being abused, and none of my accomplishments of any kind garnered the slightest notice. I left home as a teenager and haven't had contact with anyone in my family since. Over the years I collected family figure substitutes, but I don't really keep or maintain relationships for very long. The truth is I lack trust in people for anything beyond the superficial. I just think it's easier to limit my exposure to myself, basically.

This is my shot at my new life, exactly as I always wanted it, but I'm not pulling the trigger. I know all kinds of freedoms are waiting for me at the end of this road, but I can't take another step toward it.

My procrastination feels sickening. Yet I'm already letting myself play with the idea of mourning my missed opportunities in the future. The reasonable part of me is horrified. When I try to create new synapses and imagine a happy ending for myself, I can't bear it. 

Got anything for me?

Avoiding The Future

Dear ATF,

Well, you did it. You went and hit me in my own blind spot.

That means I'm not going to give very good advice, probably. But there's so much to unearth here, and maybe even more to AVOID unearthing—to sidestep, circumnavigate, ignore. This may be one of the big moments in your life when you have to do two different, contradictory things at once: 1) dig for more information about what's making you so afraid, and 2) set that shit aside most of the time so you can GET 'ER DONE.

It's easy enough to draw a line from feeling invisible and never being recognized for anything, to now being afraid that if you ARE recognized for something, it will STILL feel like nothing. You will still be invisible. Or somehow it will kill you. Does being recognized mean dying? Maybe your survival as a kid felt linked to invisibility, and this is why you don't want relationships and don't want anyone being close to you or needing you or criticizing you or giving their honest opinion about what's right or wrong with you. Somehow, whenever other people get involved, the stakes always get too high. You want to stay safe instead. Safe and invisible.

A happy ending—or a happy turn in your path, toward success—would make you visible, and maybe it would also make you responsible for whatever unhappiness might remain. As long as you're unsuccessful and invisible, you have an excuse for feeling mildly depressed and mildly dissatisfied. So you tell yourself stories about what would be BAD about doing something you really love. You tell yourself that recognition and coexisting with other talented people would be harrowing. You are a fraud, after all. You don't really deserve to share a room with other smart people. You deserve to remain invisible. IT'S WHO YOU ARE.

I think many of us feel like we should remain partially hidden, and to do otherwise will magically transform us into major league assholes. We've seen recognition and wealth ruin other people, or we've IMAGINED that it was ruining them. Or we simply didn't like the choices someone made after he or she became wildly popular or rich—even though, 9 times out of 10, that choice boiled down to bad taste and nothing else. We treated it as a moral, a lesson about success, when there were plenty of tasteless moves and shitty choices in the mix before and after.

BUT—and this is a little freaky, so pay attention—maybe at some level we consider success itself, or wealth, or even happiness, as reflective of bad taste. Maybe we loved the words someone wrote down on a page somewhere, and we weren't prepared to see the annoying face associated with the brain that produced those words. Maybe we're just dicks who don't like that many TYPES of people, and we can only admire someone if we don't really know what TYPE OF PERSON he or she is. Once we can associate a person with a TYPE, it ruins everything.

But this is all about prejudice. And you know who thinks this way about "types"? People who hate themselves.

So ok, fine, we hate ourselves at some level. What else is new? The new part is that we don't believe that ANYONE really deserves success or happiness, except for maybe children and puppies and Choire Sicha. We don't realize that we believe this, of course, because that would be absurd. Instead, we walk around, blindly hating the successful and the happy and favoriting every fucking thing Choire Sicha tweets, without understanding why.

To us, having a little money might be fine, but having lots and lots of money, so much that you can not only gaze at cool stuff but actually PURCHASE IT AND OWN IT? And then other people come over and they go, "Oh shit, your stuff is fucking AWESOME?"

That's just embarrassing. If I not only craved money, but also had the bad taste to go out and get some? My mother would be appalled. It's actually a big fear of hers that I might someday stumble on a giant pile of money, because that would instantly render me a big asshole, plus I'd be really unhappy. I think I've internalized this warped view to some extent. So instead, I earn just enough to keep my head slightly under water. Perfect.

Why is this starting to sound like a graphic novel?

The point is: Many of us in the world are afraid of doing exactly what we love for money. We might have lots of reasons to do what we love, but we're also afraid to do it. At first we're afraid to do it because it seems like a big, stupid risk. How will I pay the rent? Later, we're afraid to do it because it's not important enough, or because we're too old, or because we're unlikely to succeed and even if we DO succeed, succeeding will turn us into dickheads overnight.

All of the potential pitfalls of success cloud our vision. We get scared and weird and want to hide again.

But THEN: Oops! Someone real in the real world wants to talk to you about your secret shamefully awesome project that reflects just how talented you are? And now you have to have real conversations like it's a real thing? Oh god, that's a little tacky. And maybe you have to eat… lunch? At a restaurant that's nice? And someone might say something about how big this thing you do might be, at which point you're like FUCK YEAH WHY NOT? But you're also OH JESUS I CAN'T DELIVER THIS I WILL FAIL and also I DON'T BELONG HERE and also I'M A STRUGGLER, HOW CAN I MAKE THIS A STRUGGLE? And THIS IS GROSS, THIS IS ABOUT SELLING SHIT, AND SELLING SHIT IS EMBARRASSING AND SHAMEFUL.

And then you go home and you think, "That real person just mistook me for another real person, but I'm not a real person. I'm an imposter. I'm invisible."

And ALL YOU HAVE TO DO to stop feeling conflicted and afraid is shut it all down and return to the status quo of hiding and hesitating. And then, when the idea of following through comes up? You feel a little sick. You can't possible work on anything. You should, but you can't. You're too conflicted. You're too unsure that this is really for you. Maybe tomorrow. Not today though.

Each day it gets worse. And eventually, you're already saying, "Well, that was sad, wasn't it? When I tried to do that thing and then I just STOPPED doing it because it was too real? Or I stopped because I'm a failure, an avoider, a crazy person who can't really do anything, who deserves to remain invisible?"

BUT LISTEN UP: This is why there are so many simple-minded shitty products in the world, ok? Because simple-minded shitty people, who don't mind how dumb and lame they are and don't mind making stupid-ass things and don't mind earning giant piles of money for them, are the ones who make all the fucking STUFF out there. They make shitty stuff, and then they get to buy the really awesome stuff (which is expensive, because so few people make non-shitty stuff out there). So that's why you associated awesome stuff with shitty people. And that's why, when you walk into a place and you say, "Fuck, your stuff is fucking awesome?” You're actually thinking, "Oh, maybe you're simple minded and shitty, actually." EVEN WHEN YOU'RE THE ONE BEING SIMPLE MINDED AND SHITTY AT THAT MOMENT. Striving starts to look like bad taste. Succeeding starts to look unsavory. Envy warps your vision, and you can't take people at face value anymore. And there's always a reason not to try.

So basically you're a neurotic in a cave for the rest of your life, while all the dumb people run around drinking champagne and fucking each other on yachts.

I like this as a graphic novel, a lot. But I don't like it as the plot of your life. So listen to me, ATF and listen, all of you other weirdos with shitty attitudes about success and money: Let's stop stigmatizing ambition and start imagining ways of being ambitious and speaking to and collaborating with ambitious people without hating ourselves and everyone else. OK? Because I want to read our stuff and buy our stuff. Yes, we're already tremendously privileged. Can't we acknowledge that and become even more privileged and buy a few awesome things and then give most of our money away to people who really need it?

Here's where I always land: I don't want anything that much. I like cool t-shirts and really good aged cheese, yes. But money doesn't seem like a good enough reason to do anything, even when I'm underwater. If money is the real aim, fuck it. So I get confused. Because money is NOT the real aim, ever. The real aim is writing great stuff, that I feel proud of. Money might become involved down the line, but that doesn't make the whole thing POISONOUS.

The point is, for some reason, your mind is basically looking for any excuse NOT to do the thing you love the most and want to do the most. When your thoughts demand drawings by Chris Ware, you know you're in trouble.

So at some point, you have to STOP. JUST STOP. You have to stop and say, “I am going to do this thing. That is all. I am going to do it. At long last. No more avoidance. I am going to act. One foot in front of the other. THAT IS ALL.”

Yes, you have permission to enlist a therapist. Yes, you have permission to call a friend or acquaintance or whoever and complain about the lameness of the REAL LIFE HUMANS who do lucrative creative things for a living, those unsavory people who take your talents and harness them and hammer out practical ways to squeeze money out of your work. People will say things to you about your brand, and you might just vomit straight into your hands. Or you'll be asked to have a social media strategy, of all horse shit things, and it'll feel like you've been asked to pull your pants down in the middle of the high school cafeteria.

You might even picture being way too busy, and having to fly places and talk to people about what you're doing. Ick. I always picture that. My husband is about to fly to China to give a talk and all I can think is, "Thank god I'm a common hermit and not an accomplished academic, so I don't have to do shit like that, ever." He can go out into the world, and I'll stay here and eat Cadbury creme eggs instead.

But you can't let fear and avoidance win, ATF. You have to forge ahead. You SIMPLY MUST. This story is not over.

SO: Make a list of concrete tasks that need to be completed. Here, I'll help. Number one on the list should be "Make a fucking list." Number two on the list might be, "Call X and tell him everything is moving forward as planned." Number three on the list might involve sitting your ass down and producing something concrete. List every single thing you need to do in order to forge ahead. Put a date on each task. Tape it on the wall next to your bed. Vow to do two of those things TODAY. TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!

Day one is crucial. If something else has to slip through the cracks to make Day One a reality, so be it. You're reading this today, so this is the day you have to do the first two things on the list. OK?

Make the list. Tape it to the wall. Are you done? Is the list on the wall, next to your bed? Good. Now cross "Make a fucking list" off the list.

Now do the second thing. Then cross it off.

Don't wonder why you feel weird when you actually try to pick up the phone, or try to sit down and get 'er done. No. DON'T THINK. JUST DO. Don't call someone to talk about how strange it is that you feel so avoidant about this thing, and maybe it's because you don't really feel that good about these sorts of pursuits in general. Most of these types of products are so shitty! Why would YOU want to make something shitty, like all of the other shitty things?!! Or maybe most of them are amazing, way better than anything YOU will ever do.

Shut up and work. If you work hard enough, your thing won't be shitty. I promise.

But don't talk about that now. No phone calls. No anything. DO WHAT YOU NEED TO DO RIGHT NOW, TODAY. OK? You don't have to do everything. Just do something. And tomorrow? Two more pieces of the puzzle. Two more small accomplishable items on the list.

Will you need a therapist once you succeed? Yes. Do you need one now? Clearly. Will you have more avoidant episodes? Yes. Will you give in to those feelings? No. You will get up early in the morning, and go to bed early, and stick to your list.

Here's another important piece of advice: Don't run around telling a big story about how you're doing this thing now and it's great. You're really doing it! Yeah! But then when someone wants to hear more about it, you'll admit that it's making you super confused and stressed out, because you're ambivalent about this or that aspect of it. You will want to talk that way—victorious at first, then slowly more and more self-doubting. Instead, try to make your free moments organic, low stress, regular, devoid of analysis. You go on a walk, you take a nap, whatever. Don't change everything just because you're moving forward with your thing. Keep working on having the same balanced life you had before. It's not one or the other. You can exercise and eat well and not be an ambitious ball of nerves.

I'm 43, too, by the way. You and I are old enough to do shit just because it's interesting now. There's no reason we have to feel like the world splits into two paths, and one involves hiding in poverty and the other involves driving a champagne-colored convertible down a gorgeous open highway of gold. You don't have to be invisible OR glamorous. You can just be productive and normal and happy. You can do things simply because you haven't done them before. You can get on a plane and see what China is like without feeling afraid, or feeling like a fraud. You are not either a rock star or a fucking loser who writes stupid songs for no good reason. You are not either a funny person or a failed comedy writer or a megastar of the hit television series SPRAYPAINT HUFFERS. You're not a hot young woman or a gross old lady. You are a human being who wants to do stuff.

So go do some stuff. Also, ATF? Learn to be vulnerable and lean on people. Learn to let people into your life. Dare to forge intimate friendships. Open your heart. You can do all of this at once. In fact, write STAY VULNERABLE at the top of your list, above everything else. Vulnerability doesn't have to derail you or hurt you. You can be vulnerable and also forge ahead. You can make things and insist that they not be shitty. (And sometimes you can't insist on that at first, but you'll be able to insist on it as you're more successful.) You can take this one step at a time without freaking out every few seconds, or convincing yourself that you'd rather have nothing.

You can do something without signing on to EVERYTHING. You can do something. Doing something is better than doing nothing. Loving your craft and getting better and better at it? That's a big part of what makes most people happy. This isn't just a means to an end; you have to remember that. This is the same thing you've always loved doing. This is the same low-key thing that you love. No matter what anyone else says it means, no matter what noise might build up around your craft, it's still just a craft. It's just what you love to do. It's simple. You are better, and happier, when you get to work at something you love. If you need to write that down and tape it to the wall, too, then do it.

And if this thing you're doing fails? You can try it again. You can try something new after that. There are always things to do, things you will love doing.

Stay vulnerable, ok? But do something. Don't think. DO.

Now go make that list.

Polly




Do you hate making lists? Write a haiku or limerick to Polly today.

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

Photo by Mike Baird

The post Ask Polly: Why Am I Deathly Afraid of Success? appeared first on The Awl.

Hi Polly,

Last year my father, who was 56, died suddenly of a heart aneurysm. He took me out for my 24th birthday dinner, and then two days later he was dead. I feel like the past months have been a mess of every emotion possible. I'm a great big ball of pain, and it seems as though grief is the one thing no one will talk about with me. My dad was the parent who showed up for me, who supported me as a writer. We shared so many similarities: a tendency to overthink and undersleep, a need for long intellectual conversations, a deep and sometimes painful sensitivity, and a love of words. My mother has said she can't understand why I'm so sad and depressed over my dad's death. It's a message I've gotten before, as though I'm overreacting in my grief. That I need to toughen up and get over it. I'm in therapy, but I worry about how I will ever deal with this. Can you give me any advice?

Signed,

The Daughter Left Behind

Hi TDLB.

Your mother can't tolerate seeing you unhappy. That's all. She's unsettled by it, and worries that you'll never snap out of it. As a mother I can relate to that very well, and I'm sympathetic to her. She only wants you to be happy.

But—BUT!—there’s a certain kind of childhood to be had, in the company of someone who only wants you to be happy. Think about what that means, the flatness, the scentlessness, sterility of that: I. Only. Want. You. To. Be. Happy.

Here's what I DON'T want you to be:

Devastated
Confused
Remorseful
Harried
Unnerved
Haunted
Inspired
Embarrassed
Tempted
Nervous
Seduced
Melancholy
Nostalgic
Grateful

Your mother doesn't want you to struggle, or overthink things. She doesn't want you to be sensitive, or complicated. She doesn't want you to honor exactly who you are. She wants you to GET OVER IT so she can feel at peace again. She's probably a little bit controlling. Just a guess. She's probably a little bit anxious.

And again, I understand that, and I have empathy for it, as a sometimes-anxious woman with kids. But you have to find a way to set all of her expectations and desires for you aside. You can love her and still do that. You have to find a way to get a little space for yourself, to get a little distance, so you can look back over that distance and say, "This person, my mother, is conflicted and sad in ways that she won't admit. She wants us to lie together. She will react negatively to ANYTHING that I do that doesn't feel absolutely safe and controlled and happy and that's not a direct reflection of what she wants for me."

Your mother doesn't want you to be an artist, a writer, an intellect. But that's what you are, right? That's what you want and what you believe in. You want the truth—you want to feel what you feel. You want to feel completely, painfully alive, and you know, instinctively, that this includes diving straight into your grief and not coming up to the surface until you feel like you're ready.

My father also died when he was 56 years old, completely out of the blue, from his first heart attack. He was in great shape, and extremely youthful. He ran or swam every day. He was a professor of economics, prone to bizarre digressions about human nature and spirituality and also prone to aggressive, off-color jokes. He was ruled by his emotions. I don't want to imply that he and I had the same sort of relationship that you had with your father; my dad could be very difficult, and I was treated more like a sidekick than an equal. But he loved me and he showed it, and when he died, I felt like the center of my life would never return. He and I were both very needy, very raw, and the rest of my family was much more controlled, more skeptical, more reserved, far less prone to starting a fight or leaping into the fray or showing their asses. When he died, I mourned for about four months straight, and then something shifted. I turned something off. I didn't want to play my role as joker. I was the last remaining emotional wild card in my family, and I felt ashamed of that suddenly, and for the first time, I withdrew. I was 25 years old, and after several years of drifting and drinking too much I got a boyfriend, got a great job, got in shape, and shut all the emotional neediness and messiness out for a while.

Maybe I made a decision to BE HAPPY. I wrote cartoons and that was part of it, too—I stopped drawing attention to myself as much and drew attention to my work instead. I pushed that clown onto the page, and became much more flat and controlled in real life. I dated a child-like artist, somebody who lived like an Unfrozen Caveman, who needed my help. I was strong. But I wasn't happy, not exactly.

Then I went into therapy and I realized that, two years later, I hadn't grieved my father's death nearly enough. Two years of grieving, even if you're not trying to turn it off most of the time, is NOTHING, when it comes to a parent or a spouse or anyone you've lived with for a big part of your life. When it's someone like your dad, who formed your identity? Of course you feel lost without him. You want him back. That's a gigantic loss. And it feels like you're losing part of your childhood, too, when someone important from your childhood disappears. It doesn't help that your mother doesn't understand or doesn't accept what a huge sea change you're still grappling with.

So: You need to get some distance from your mother and just handle her a little more, probably. Forgive her, talk about her in therapy, try to lean on her, but accept that she'll probably never get it, or she'll be too invested in your "getting over" this to get it. (Was she married to your dad when he died? It doesn't sound like it, but if she was: WHOA.) She isn't the right person to relate the full force of your emotion to. You know, mothers often can't fill this role, sadly. Many of us are just too invested in our kids' survival, and anything we perceive as threatening to that gets the heave-ho, even at the cost of their TRUEST, FULLEST HAPPINESS.

No one else will talk about grief with you? See, this is the bullshit thing about suffering a big loss when you're so young. I went through this, too. Very few of my friends—and I had lots of friends—were capable of even discussing my dad's death with me. It made them uncomfortable. That's how young we were. They were sure they'd say the wrong thing. We were all so self-conscious and inflexible and unaccepting of the immense gulf between different peoples' experiences. Some people stay that way, too. They try to downplay death, or act like the death of a third cousin and the death of a parent should be tackled with the same blasé toughness. It happens, you get over it. And if you talk about someone else's death, about how it affected or affects you? That's self-involved and pathetic.

Not only is this attitude bizarre, insensitive, and pathologically self-protective, but it shuts out the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you don't know that much about death yet because you've never had a close friend or family member die. When you lose someone very close to you, someone who makes up this essential part of your history and your future, your worldview shifts dramatically. You have a palpable feeling that everything and anything good can disappear at any time. I missed my dad a lot. I also felt like everyone I knew was going to start dying. I also hated that my dad wasn't able to go on living. I wanted him to be alive; I wanted him to feel rain on his face, to eat a great meal, to read something funny, for HIS sake.

After my dad's death, I felt more anguished AND I felt more alive than I'd ever felt in my life. I felt more grateful than ever. I only wanted honest people in my life, people who could talk about heaviness and melancholy and really savor it instead of feeling uncomfortable. I don't think I stuck to that. I think I couldn't handle staying in that space for very long, because it made me feel too raw. So I retreated.

Don't retreat. You need to find people who will talk about this. Figure out who they are. You're in therapy now. If your therapist isn't helping you deal with this that well, then get a new therapist. Or find a grief counselor, too. Or find a therapy group for people mourning a big loss. Look hard at your friends and figure out which ones you can lean on a little more. Someone out there can handle it, I'm sure of that. You just have to figure out who it is.

And you need to write things down. Every day. It'll help you to understand what shape your pain takes, so it doesn't take you by surprise, so you can talk yourself out of feeling paralyzed by it.

You also need to exercise every day. Mourning and exercise go very well together. You're already in a lot of pain. What's a little more? Fatigue can feel pretty redemptive when you're sad.

Because mourning is about being alive. That's something you have to remind yourself of, and maybe you should even take a shot at trying to explain this to your mother. Leaning into your sadness is not REFUSING TO BE HAPPY. Leaning into your sadness, every day, inviting it into your life, getting up and putting on some running shoes and running and walking and running for an hour or two, and crying while you run or walk—that’s reaffirming that you want to keep living. That's celebrating how much your father meant to you and how he will never disappear from your life, ever. That's knowing that you will survive this and you'll carry it with you and it'll be a big piece of who you are.

Because you don't ONLY want to be happy. You are not a two-dimensional cartoon cut-out who keeps all pain at bay, at the expense of your very soul. You are not someone who will tell other people to take their own complex, difficult, colorful experiences, experiences that you don't know anything about, and push them down, store them away, bury them, because it MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE. You are going to feel this crushing loss for as long as you need to feel it, you're going to feel the full force of it, so that you can also feel:

Devastated
Confused
Remorseful
Harried
Unnerved
Haunted
Inspired
Embarrassed
Tempted
Nervous
Seduced
Melancholy
Nostalgic
Grateful

You ARE going to feel grateful. This is the paradox of mourning. Incredible sadness carries with it an ability to touch the purest strain of joy, to experience an almost ecstatic release, to see an almost blinding, undiluted beauty in everything. Your dad will always be a part of your life. I hated it when people said that kind of thing before my dad died; I thought it was a sad lie told by needy liars. But it's true.

Two days after my dad died, I called his insurance agent, to cancel his car insurance. The guy had a thick Southern accent. He didn't get all stiff and weird on the phone, like most people did. He said, "My god. He was just in here the other day. He looked so healthy and young." It was a very honest response. Then he said, "My dad died when I was 25 years old. That was 25 years ago. I still remember him perfectly, like I just saw him yesterday. I still have dreams about him." At the time, I thought that sounded incredibly heartbreaking and depressing.

But here it is, almost 20 years later, and I get it. I remember my dad perfectly–his big laugh, his voice singing "Danny Boy" with showy bravado, his teasing tones, his little Muhammad Ali dance. If I turn my back on how important he is, I block my path to joy. I block my ability to bring joy to other people. He is a vital part of my life. And even the sadness I feel about losing him is vital. It makes every color brighter, it makes every single moment of happiness–or longing, or satisfaction, or grace, or melancholy–more real, more palpable, more complete.

Don't wonder how you will deal with this. You ARE dealing with it. Don’t wonder how you will get over it. You will NEVER get over it. I know that seems heartbreaking and depressing and wrong. Trust me that it's also gratifying and miraculous and astonishing and endlessly inspiring and important and helpful. Letting this pain in and growing from it will give you strength and resilience that you can pass on to other people in ways you can't possibly understand now. It's NOT all about you, not remotely. You are not stuck. You are not wallowing. This is a beautiful, terrible time in your life that you'll always remember. Don’t turn away from it. Don't shut it down. Don't get over it.

Polly

Are stoical motherfuckers always tell you that you're overreacting? Write to Polly and overreact away!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Brian Smithson.

The post Ask Polly: My Dad Died Unexpectedly And I Can't Get Over It appeared first on The Awl.

I teach a Popular Criticism class to MFA students. I don't actually have an MFA, but I am a professional, full-time writer who has been in this business for almost two decades, and I've written for a wide range of impressive print and online publications, the names of which you will hear and think, "Oh fuck, she's the real deal." Because I am the real deal. I tell my students that a lot, like when they interrupt me or roll their eyes at something I say because they're young and only listen when old hippies are digressing about Gilles Deleuze's notions of high capitalism's infantilizing commodifications or some such horse shit.

Anyway, since Friday is our last class, and since I'm one of the only writers my students know who earns actual legal tender from her writing—instead of say, free copies of Ploughshares—they’re all dying to know how I do it. In fact, one of my students just sent me an email to that effect: "For the last class, I was wondering if you could give us a breakdown of your day-to-day schedule. How do you juggle all of your contracted assignments with your freelance stuff and everything else you do?"

Now, I'm not going to lie. It's annoying, to have to take time out of my incredibly busy writing schedule in order to spell it all out for young people, just because they spend most of their daylight hours being urged by hoary old theorists in threadbare sweaters to write experimental fiction that will never sell. But I care deeply about the young—all of them, the world's young—so of course I am humbled and honored to share the trade secrets embedded in my rigorous daily work schedule. Here we go:

Today, I woke up at 4 a.m. because one of my dogs was making a strange gulping sound. I sat for several minutes listening closely, wide awake, wondering if she wasn't developing esophageal cancer or some other gruesome ailment that the pricey animal specialty hospital might guilt me into actually treating. I imagined sitting in the posh chill of their giant waiting room, the pricey coffee and tea machine humming away next to me, filling out forms instructing them to never crack my 10-year-old dog's chest  and do emergency open heart surgery if she starts coding. "Option 1: LET MY DOG DIE." That's one I had to check off and sign, over and over again, when my other, eight-year-old dog had an unexplained fever and it cost me $6000 to save her. The vet's eyes would dart over my forms and the corners of her mouth would pinch slightly, and then she'd treat me like someone who might just yank the IV out of her dog's leg and twist her neck at any minute, the Jack Bauer of budget-minded dog owners.


Anyway, right about now you're starting to understand why the morning hours are so potent for a working writer: The mind spills over with expansive concepts and sweeping images that just cry out to be tapped in another scintillating essay or think piece.

Rather than get up and spoil my inspired revelry, though, I know to let these thoughts swirl and churn until they take a more coherent shape. My mind soon shifts to tallying up the costs of college for my stepson, who for some nutty reason applied to a wide range of insanely expensive private colleges on the East Coast. After I marvel over that sum for a while, I try adding together his costs with the costs of sending my two young daughters to college in ten years. Then I think about how we should probably try  to pay off our credit cards and our home equity loan first, and THEN focus on coming up with this mammoth amount for college, and then of course we'll be retiring right after that but we'll still have 15 years left on our massive mortgage. "We're never going to retire," I think. "We're going to have to keep working forever and ever and ever. And we can't turn on the AC this summer. And we have to stop going out to our favorite Mexican restaurant every other week and drinking margaritas, which are an inexcusably expensive indulgence.” Old people problems, LOL.

Then I think about margaritas for a while. I think about how there should really be a breakfast margarita. Breakfast 'Rita. Breakarita. Sunrise 'Rita. Maybe with Chia seeds. I think about how I worked at Applebee's when I was my stepson's age. And he's never even had a job. Ever! I think about how weird that is, that he's never had a job, but he's applying to colleges that cost $250k, all told. YOLO, I guess.

Then I think about how my black Applebee's polo shirt always smelled like nachos because I didn't wash it often enough. See how I was thinking about a smell? That's how you know I'm a real artist and not some fucking hack who writes light verse for The New Yorker. Artists can conjure a stinky odor using only their raw powers of imagination and long-term memory. That's also how you know it's time to write.

By now, it's 5:30 a.m. I get up and tiptoe past the kids' rooms, put water on for tea, and swiftly unload the dishwasher. Ahead of the curve, motherfuckers! I high-five myself in my mind. (It's important, as an artist, to reward yourself whenever you do something right. Your life can't be all "You suck, work faster, you're falling behind!")

By 5:45 a.m., I am sitting down to write. First, though, I need to fire off an email to the editor of my weekly advice column about maybe getting a check soon since it's May and I haven't been paid yet this year. "HEY IS THERE A CHECK ON THE WAY FINALLY? LOL! THIS BIG GUY WITH A BASEBALL BAT AT MY FRONT DOOR WANTS TO KNOW! OMG MY KNEES! XXXOOO" Always be super-polite and light-hearted with your editors, and never give them any indication that you've been waiting for a check for so long and your credit card balances are getting so high that your pulse starts racing every time you think about it, so much so that you've started to soothe yourself by imagining choking the life out of their ineffectual shit faces with your bare hands. Lol.

At 6 a.m., I quit email because that's what writers do if they want to get some motherfucking writing done. But I have to go on Twitter for a second to favorite a few of my editor's tweets so he'll know that I'm not mad or anything. It's so easy for people to think that you're full of rage when you're a woman and a writer and oldish and you never, ever get paid! Ignorant dummies. Then I reply to a youngish writer who just moved to LA and hates her job and hates LA and is panicking. "Remember you're having an adventure!" I tell her, because she's young and she probably doesn't have dogs with health problems yet. So then I end up scrolling through my Twitter feed, probably just to remind myself that all of these other writers don't have 8,204 followers like I do, because I'm so fucking esteemed and accomplished after having done this for almost two decades. I'm a professional, is the thing. I know my fucking shit. I just keep producing high-quality work. That's why I have 8,202 followers.

Hold on. Where did those two followers go? Was it the thing I wrote about having an adventure? That probably made me sound really old. I probably shouldn't be so upbeat or urge people to have adventures. You're not old yet, guys, but you should remember this for when you get older: DON'T EVER WRITE THINGS THAT IMPLY THAT YOU'RE OLD.

At 6:15 a.m., my five-year-old wakes up. "Can I play on your iPad?" she asks. "That's not how we start the day," I reply. "We don't do dumb things like that to start the day, ever."

At 6:25 a.m. I am checking out the Twitter page of some teenager who makes YouTube videos about fashion. Someone tell me, how is that a thing? Her profile page bio line says "My viewers are my besties and I love them 5ever." She has 1.43 million
followers.  I would write something here about how making YouTube videos and assuring 1.43 million strangers that they're your besties 5ever is probably much more lucrative than, I don't know, teaching teenagers how to write and recapping "Mad Men" at midnight. But I'm a professional fucking writer and a true artist, not a teenager in leopard print rollerskates. LoL.

At 6:55 a.m., I have to start my 5-year-old's breathing treatment for her cold and make both kids a kale smoothie so they don't die of scurvy or rickets. The rest of the morning passes in a blur. 

7:01 a.m. OK, it's not really a blur at all. But you should never, ever detail your domestic chores or rail off the cute things your kids say unless you're Louis fucking CK. If you're a woman, forget it. People will think you're a mommy blogger, which is bad, because it's a woman thing. Suffice it to say, there's lots of screwing little rubbery straws into little cup lids and struggling to keep the dirty laundry piles from mixing with the clean laundry piles. In the end, the kids looked fresh and beautiful and ready for the day and I looked like a bedraggled, angry old whore. Or sex worker. YAAASS! (Is that how you spell it?)

8:45 a.m. Back from dropping off the kids, and ready to write! Except I definitely have to exercise first.  It's going to be 90 degrees out there today and the dogs need to run and I don't want to kill them—or worse, maim them and then decline chest-cracking at the billion-dollar emergency dog cancer spa.

I know you think I should skip the exercise, and get straight to work already. That shows how much you know. OK, listen the fuck up for once: If there's one thing you must do as a highly esteemed professional freelance beggar, it's exercise. Otherwise you will sit and stew in your schlubby juices all day. You'll pull up Grantland and read a TV review that's pure brilliance, delightful and peppy, and you'll think about the fact that you should've been a teenage fashion guru making videos on YouTube but you were born at the wrong fucking time so now you have… 8,201 Twitter followers instead of 1.43 million. And you never actually get paid like that high-fashion fuck does.

9:20 a.m. Leaving house for run with dogs. High-five!

10:20 a.m. Hydration. Crucial. As Al Swearengen from Deadwood once said, "Those that doubt me suck cock by choice." Actually, not sure if it was Swearengen or that grisly looking dude, what was his name?

10:40 a.m. I go to look up that quote, because: fact-checking, hellooo! Every good freelance person fact-checks everything religiously. Clean, error-free copy is how you get the high-end writer gigs, and it's also how every editor contacts you all the time and asks you to read a 500-page book and write 2000 words for a $300 check you'll receive four months later. Boo-ya! See, when you're an acclaimed critic and a fucking pro, you get paid $40k a year to do complicated theme-paper type assignments, instead of paying $40k a year. So there! See ya, wouldn't wannna be ya!

11:15 a.m. This is lunch time, because I woke up at 4 a.m., remember? And I can't just eat a few slices of cheese and bread, because that's not brain fuel. Brain fuel is kale, and you have to chop kale up and then massage it with lemon juice and honey for a long time, so it's not prickly and bitter, and then you add shallots (also chopped) and pine nuts (toasted). Those that doubt me suck cock by choice. (See how I used that Swearengen line again, as a callback? If you work really hard and write every day for two decades, this kind of stuff will just spring into your mind.)

12:00 p.m. I read an article about South Korea ferry accident. Feel depressed. This is my humanity I'm getting in touch with, so it's important.

12:30 p.m. I clean up the mess from lunch, still feeling depressed. Feeling feelings is a crucial part of the professional writer's day. You'll never write anything worthwhile if you don't feel your feelings. Also, you always have to clean up your messes, because as the day progresses it gets harder to write, and when you see a big mess in the kitchen that can be super disheartening if you're already struggling to put words onto the fucking page.

1:05 p.m. Finally time to write! This is when I pull up the piece I'm working on about BuzzFeed and John Updike and the enforced cheer of American pop culture. This piece is the fucking shit, is what I'm thinking as I'm reading it. When it's ready, it is going to blow some high-falutin' editor socks clean off.

1:25 p.m  I decide I should really read this Updike biography from cover to cover right now if I want this essay to be worth reading. 

1:55 p.m. I stop myself! Because I'm not writing, and this is my time to write. Remember this one thing, even if you forget everything else: WRITERS WRITE. If you're not writing, you're not a fucking writer. I am a writer, so I write every fucking day. So I open the piece and…

1:56 p.m. I realize I have to finish that review of "American Idol" because it's due this afternoon. And honestly, at first it's hard to write the review, because that other essay is going to be way better. But then, when I start to write about how J. Lo always says she's "getting goosies" when she likes someone's singing? Well, that's the kind of little detail you just know to include when you're a former full-time professional TV critic like I am. I'm in the zone, too. THIS IS WHY I WRITE, I tell myself. FOR THIS FEELING RIGHT HERE. I AM FEELING IT TODAY! HIGH-FIVE!

2:23 p.m. Time to go get the kids from school. 

3:30 p.m. The kids are doing their homework now, so you probably think this is a good time to write. WRONG. I'm too tired, and if I try to write AND answer their incessant fucking questions, I'll start to say things like "Please don't talk to me," and "Please shut up," and "Don't look at me right now."  And sure, there are people out there who are thinking, "Christ, Heather, YOU ARE THE REAL DEAL. The world needs more of your fine prose and insights, not less. If you need to tell the kids to fuck off, then do it. If not for them, then for HUMANITY."

And I do care about humanity. The people of the world matter to me at a deeper level than most, because I'm a true artist and I'm sensitive. But here's the truth: It bums ME out to tell my kids to fuck off. Weird, right? But I need to be available to them. So I'm playing Candy Crush instead.

3:45 p.m. My 7-year-old asks me a question and I tell her, "I'M ON A TIMED LEVEL, HERE! GIVE ME ONE MINUTE!" and then "NO, STOP TALKING! TIMED LEVEL! A TIMER IS TICKING DOWN! ONE MINUTE ONE MINUTE!"

4:04 p.m. A confession? I fucking hate Candy Crush once you get past the Minty Meadow. It's too hard, but there's no skill involved. It's at once incredibly tedious and taxing, and yet there's very little reward for it. You try and try and try and try and you work and work and work and you tell the whole goddamn world to go fuck itself, and you know what you have to show for it in the end? A fucking headache. You have the illusion of accomplishment, but really? You aren't doing shit. You're pretending that you're accomplishing something, that's all.

What do you mean, is that a metaphor?

4:35 p.m. I'm making myself a margarita but it's not what you think. I'm doing this so I'm not a total jerk when my husband walks in the door. My husband has a real job, FYI. He's an awesome guy and he also keeps the lights on around here, just in case you were saying to yourself, 'WTF? How do the fucking lights stay on, because even with her being the real deal and all, she never seems to get paid or anything?" Have to be cheery, for the breadwinner! Booze.

4:55 p.m. I should add that tequila is a very important part of surviving life as a big-deal professional writer. You don't believe that now, but you will later. I am having some great ideas right now that I would never have without the tequila, and I'm tweeting them all so I don't forget a thing.

5:19 p.m. OK. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "This person is kind of an asshole. If I become a professional writer, I won't be so discombobulated and distracted and self-hating." That's what I used to think about my creative writing teacher in college, who always said depressing things about her life and had uncombed hair and a tote bag filled with crumpled papers. I thought she was old and weird and wishy-washy about the whole world, her kids, everything. But I had coffee with her last year, and I realized that she wasn't even old back then, and besides, we have so much in common! Anyway, time for another margarita.

6:35 p.m. Husband got home. Hi babe. Mmm so fucking tired. I know, I DO work too hard.

7:15 p.m. Use the washcloth. Stop. Good job. Don't hit her. You're right I said "Dummeldore." OK nighty night. No, don't even. President? Of a professional organzination? That's what blowhards do. You'll have to fly to Dubai or whatever and I'll have to deal with all the shit. Well, bring home more bacon, then. We need much, much more bacon. Much more. I'm just saying, I'll be the one dealing with the shit, as always. I only had two of them, that's not the thing. Margaritas, not kids. What does that mean. You don't get it. Whatever. Fuck. 

Zzzz. 

4:00 a.m. I'm awake because my husband is snoring in a weird way and I think it must be sleep apnea. What the fuck is sleep apnea? I hope it's not something that could kill him, or worse, maim him. So now I'm thinking about how fucked we'll all be if anything happens to any one of us, given how much debt we have to pay off and how many huge piles of cash we'll need to save our kids from also having giant debts and how we'll never, ever be able to retire, ever. I think about us working forever and ever and then I think about earthquakes and that ferry disaster again and, right about now you're probably starting to understand why the morning hours are so promising for a working writer! The mind spills over with vibrant imaginings that just beg to be formed into another scintillating trend piece or capsule review or "Real Housewives of Atlanta" recap!

But this is just how writing professionals do it. We wake up super duper fucking early and we start thinking our big thoughts and then we write. It's that simple. This is how you get 'er done, motherfuckers! Those that doubt me suck cock by choice. 

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Ed Yourdon.

The post How to Write appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

I was with my husband for six years before I found out that he cheated on me with a co-worker—as well as classmates and women at bars. After I divorced him, we didn't talk for almost six months. Then we were off and on for probably two more years. At a certain point, we were both tired of not working through fights like adults, and he got down on one knee and said he didn't deserve for me to marry him again, but that he'd do anything to prove it to me if we could spend our lives with each other and not like two people who just spent a lot of time together.

I was still living in our house with his dog and all four cats he'd brought home. (He was/is a very talented veterinarian technician.) After our divorce, I'd gone back to college and gotten a degree in Digital Media & Photography. He wouldn't come to my grad show because he "didn't feel comfortable around those people.” So we went to therapy, and she told us that to be together we'd have to support each other the best we could in everything. The next day, he texted me while I was at the gallery and said that he'd packed his things (except his dog—a 100-pound pit bull) and was moving out. If it hadn't been for the fact I was attached to a safety rope 15 feet in the air removing art from the ceiling, I'd have probably fallen to the concrete. Luckily, I only hit the wall w my back. I left immediately and drove home where my neighbors said he'd been packing since I'd left that morning. I was stunned. Two days later, after no contact, I drive up to our house and he's sitting on the porch crying. This man does not cry. But I wasn't having it, so I walked right passed him and he followed me inside. He begged me to take him back, that he felt like I'd leave him when I got my degree. The photos in my show were of him, but he begged, and I said "I love you, you know that, but you can't live here. I can't come home to an abandoned house because you feel scared about something you didn't even ask me about. I'm yours, but until you prove to me that you won't run, then you can't stay." He said he could live with that as long as he knew I loved him. A year goes by and we're fine, he says he wants to go to the art institute for a degree in audio engineering. He got enrolled, paid his first semester's tuition and barely passed. He's not ignorant when it comes to textbook stuff, so I encouraged him to keep trying. Another year goes by, and he had to quit the vet because they couldn't accommodate his class schedule. But he'd saved money and was finally free to work harder at his classes. Then they raised tuition; he asked if I could help him with it. “Of course,” I said, and I did. He got another job at a vet and everything was going great for him.

I'd started showing in galleries and even got a studio of my own to have shows in. He never came to a single one. But after the shows, he'd be back to adoring me and doing special things together like camping and going on hikes and things we'd only talked about doing. But my studio was struggling—artists trying to show for free and leaving me with everything to clean up after their show. So I closed the studio as far as shows went, but I still did my own work there. He said he had to study and it wasn't easy getting my own degree so I understood & didn't hold it against him. I helped him pay for a little over $7,000 towards his tuition and much more, like buying take out and any date we could find time for. We were constantly together.

Then one day—at this point we'd been together for 11 years—my brother said he needed photos taken at a ranch he was trying to promote about five hours away. I said I'd be back in two days unless he wanted to come with me and make a getaway out of it. He had a project to finish so I went to do the photos. In an absolute freak accident, I fell off a bike, dislocated my jaw, shattered a vertebra in my neck and they wanted to put me in a hospital miles from where I wanted to be which was with him. I drove all five hours back and collapsed on my couch unable to move my head or open my mouth. Along the way he was texting me, "I can't wait to see you, I hope your pretty face isn't hurt too bad."

So I'm lying there texting him how much pain I'm in but that I'm back and to please take me to the doctor tomorrow if he could. I even said, "If you have to turn your stuff in I can get my neighbor to take me but I really need you right now. Soup since I can't chew and a neck rub would be divine."

I didn't hear back and since I couldn't drive or turn my head, I called and asked what was going on. He said he'd call me right back. I opened my email and he'd sent me an email saying that he knew the timing was bad but he didn't have it in him to "get too involved" in my life right then and that he thinks the guy who lives two doors down from me would be a better person for me than him. He said I'd get over it because I was "very resilient.” He then said that if I objected to this or acted out in any way that he'd ignore it because he wasn't going to put up with any "childish" behavior. I am still stunned because childish has never been a word I've been described as even by my parents.

So I lied in a hospital bed with my jaw wired shut with a titanium disk replacement staring at the ceiling for three months trying to get him out of my mind and crying when friends who came to visit asked where he was.

I got well enough to chew hard food after four more months; got to where I could turn my head to an acceptable degree for driving and could raise my arm past my shoulder. I got a job and moved my studio down the street to a better location. I exercise everyday, pray, meditate, eat right—and not for a second in the two years since then has he answered a phone call or a text or an email. He's 38 now and I'm 34. We live one exit down the road from each other, go to the same bars, grocery store, parks, everything. Except now he's dating a 23-year-old vet tech.

Even after all this time, not a single night has gone by that I don't cry myself to sleep wondering what happened in those hours between "I can't wait to see you" to "I don't want to see you ever again."

I'm in therapy and I just feel pathetic. I've tried to go out on dates and it just makes me feel worse. Everyone is saying to go to his place (that I have to pass by twice a day) and face him but I feel like he'd only be mean and make me feel worse. Time is healing nothing and everyone is over it and I still cry everyday.

Please tell me what to do. I've traveled to see if I can just move somewhere else where our 11 years aren't staring me in the face 24 hours a day and I just ended up feeling even worse.

Please help me. My therapist says he's gone for good and to accept it and let it go, like it’s a piece of paper I can just toss out the window because it's nothing. But we weren't nothing.

Please please help me.

Crushed

Dear Crushed,

It's going to be really hard for me to answer your letter, for a bunch of reasons. And I get a lot of letters, I'm not going to lie. I get 10, sometimes 20 letters a week. There's a lot of guilt that goes along with not answering a huge percentage of them. Once this guy wrote to me and asked me how to deal with debilitating chronic back pain that made him want to die every single day. Every. Single. Fucking. Day. I could not for the life of me figure out a good way to respond to that guy without sounding like a complete ignorant asshole, but it still haunts me and I haven't forgotten him. I feel so terrible for him, but every time I try to look into chronic pain treatment, everything I read is just "Wellll, sometimes, we find that acupuncture and visualization and cutting out gluten work, as long as you're taking enough morphine." Plus the guy said he'd tried all that stuff, and he was clearly becoming addicted to an absurd amount of pain medication. So I thought about addressing that, but that's, phew, a tough thing to try to sift through without presuming a lot. Normally I enjoy being presumptuous, but not in this case.

Now stay with me, because we're going to get to you, I promise. At the time when I got that letter from the chronic debilitating pain guy, I was in the middle of a two-week headache, and I didn't understand the cause of it. Since then I haven't had another one, and that one was diagnosed as a tension headache related to bad posture and TMJ and just being a toxic, slouchy, underpaid, overworked 43-year-old gas planet of slow-burn neuroticism. And maybe high credit card balances now manifest themselves as unidentified bright objects on the new super-detailed brain scans. Either that or they might mean something much worse, haw haw haw. Brains, they're so nutty. The point is, I was in the middle of experiencing a tiny slice of the pain that he felt every day. I knew how it felt to worry that it might never go away. I knew how worrying that it might never go away sometimes felt like KNOWING IT WOULD NEVER GO AWAY.

And knowing it would never go away felt like causing it, the headache, the pain. It felt like being the cause of the pain. It made me feel guilty, that I could take some pain and turn in into permanent pain like that, because that's how fucked I was, deep down inside.

So I never answered that guy. Do you see what happened there? I believed that I was a poisonous enough gas planet, at some level, that I deserved to be blamed for my own pain. This is where we start with you. You're living this "Series of Unfortunate Events" kind of Lemony Snicket existence where all of these terrible fucking things happen to you, and they're all sick and unfair and also probably all your fault.

You being you, you think I'm just being an asshole by saying that they're all your fault. But no. I'm saying that you BELIEVE that you are fucked enough, deep down inside, that you somehow caused these events to occur to you. When your husband cheated on you repeatedly with whomever, when he didn't show up for your fucking art shows, when he stayed away from all the stuff that was about YOU, all of that was tolerable because, after all, you partially caused it right? You deserved it. Then, when you had the freak accident, when you were in pain, alone, in hell and he decided THAT was when he needed to resolve to NEVER SEE YOUR FACE AGAIN, all of that must stem from you being the rotten kind of woman who gets her just desserts. Something in you made that stuff happen. Something in you sealed your fate.

You believe that you caused all of those things to occur, somehow, magically. You practically gave birth to this foul man who has no fucking heart, who wouldn't even bother to come to your aid when you were in the depths of hell. No matter what he JUST HAPPENED TO FIGURE OUT in that exact moment, to not immediately go to you, take you to the hospital, visit you there, and talk you through the fucking break-up after 11 years together? Forget everything else. That's really outperforming in the world of atrocious assholes.

And THAT guy doesn't exist, without your poison. Right? That's the key, base-level, fundamental thing that you believe right now. You CREATED that motherfucker. It's ALL your fault. ALL OF IT.

So that's where the inability to move on comes from. You don't want to face him and have him be mean to you and set you back even more, because looking him in the eyes means facing the fact that you loved this sick person, and married him and accepted him and he's still out there, this fucking destroyer of everything. You made him and he's still out there.

There's this gigantic thing in your life and you can't turn the page. You think it's your fault. You're crying, yes, but you're also all shut down and defensive. You're angry and you're blaming yourself for him, and you're angry at yourself for crying, and you're also trying hard to get over it. You are in conflict. You want to be tough, but you cry every day. You want to forget him, but you feel like you created him. You want to place all of the blame and damage on his side of the court, but you also feel like there he is, with his brand new 23-year-old, who is exactly like you 11 years ago. He gets to rewind and start fresh. Maybe you were the problem after all.

These are your doubts. The therapist needs to hear more about them. If your therapist doesn't get it and you don't feel really understood, patiently and truly, by someone who is definitely very very smart? Find another therapist. Because your particular situation is very complicated. It seems simple, but it's not simple at all.

Remember how I had a headache and I couldn't answer the letter about chronic pain? Well in your case, I knew I HAD to answer your letter, first of all because it's a great cautionary tale for anyone—man or woman—who is tempted to accept wishy-washy horse-shit behavior from someone who SHOULD be all in. Your situation beautifully encapsulates just how ugly and uglier and ugliest things get when someone who's afraid to be alone stays and leaves and returns and leaves again and is allowed to continue, on and on. Sure, as long as you're strong and you're doing great, that wishy-washy human is going to cling to the hem of your kickass coat. But the second you falter? Sayonara. He wasn't sure, and then YOUR NEEDING HIM OPENLY SEALED THE DEAL!

I mean, motherFUCK WHAT IS THAT?

So this is the other reason I had to answer your letter. I'm currently feeling a tiny sliver of the kind of pain you feel, because I had an old, tattered friendship fall apart, and another, more important one feels like it's in crisis, and I'm feeling sad about it. I'm in some kind of an open, honest state lately. I don't know how to describe it, other than my snappy song and dance with people has dissolved into something a little less…manufactured. Instead of neatly packaging things, retreating, protecting myself with a joke, waving things off, I'm feeling my feelings, maybe more than ever.

I know, I know. That sounds really slow and weak and squishy of me. BRING BACK THE TOXIC GAS PLANET, you're thinking. Bring back the evil lady ruler in the black zip-up leather jumpsuit, the one William Shatner can't decide whether to engage in showy stage combat with, or kiss for a long, long time, without tongue. But listen, I can feel things right now. I feel connected to my life in a great way. I'm writing funny shit because I'm enraged and happy and also, often, a teary-eyed pile of squash.

I feel like I'm on new ground, and I feel very vulnerable. And you know what? This makes some people back away slowly, because: YUCK. Feelings. It's not like I'm calling everyone and crying into the phone. I just have feelings rising off me like steam off asphalt, I think. And some people will only tolerate you if there's a guarantee that you'll never, ever openly question anything or say, "Hey, that hurt my feelings." And now the ambient temperature and pressure have shifted and it's clear that I might say something weird.

I have lots of old friendships that have ALWAYS been pretty healthy and open and intimate and stable. Those friendships haven't changed a bit. Those friends, I can talk to and they can talk to me and they already accept that I am who I am.

So that's reassuring. But you know what my brain does when I can see that someone doesn't really want ME as a friend, not enough to show up and fucking say what's up? It says YOU ARE POISONOUS. YOU ARE THE CAUSE. YOU MADE THIS HAPPEN. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

So your letter is a challenge for me, because something in the mix with you goes to the heart of where I am. It would be easy enough to just shut this whole process down, too. I've done that a million times before. I could close up and tough it out and sally the fuck forth and shrug and say, “WHATEVER MAN” and maybe answer the letter from the girl who wants to fuck her boyfriend's brother but knows she really shouldn't. (OK, NEXT WEEK MAYBE.) But I'm not going to do that. I'm making an active choice to stay open. It's harder to stay open, but it's also helping me be a better human being.

Here's what I want to say to you, Crushed: It's heartbreaking, how little people really show up for each other. It's heartbreaking, how skin-deep most people want their relationships to be. It's incredible, how little some people have to give sometimes.

But this isn't really about blame. Even this heartless ass who's formed so much of your life isn't the real point here. I don't really think you should go talk to him. Write down your feelings. I'm sure you already have. But what will he do if you show up and make a scene? Who wants that? Because even without the wishy washy on and off bullshit, he was going to leave you one day. That was predestined and it has nothing to do with you. He's terminally desperate and lost, a narcissist who never cared who you were, not really, or he would've gone to your shows and enjoyed it when people were excited about YOU. Instead, he was incapable of behaving like a regular human being. Good fucking riddance.

But paradoxically, I want you to think about how much you imagine that you created him, that his poison is your poison, that his shitty story is your story. Because in order to let him go, strangely, you have to look at how much you blame yourself. I blame myself when someone backs away from me. Some piece of me is sure that, in the end, it will just be me, telling everyone FUCK OFF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING.

When you feel that way? You have to try very hard to stay vulnerable and let people in. Even though you feel so unprotected, so defensive, so angry. "Fuck you, I'm crying every night," you're thinking. But you're also pissed and prideful and you won't let go of your story. Whenever anyone tells you a specific, very detailed timeline – he did this, so I did this, then he did this – that almost always means that they want you to know JUST HOW MANY TIMES they were innocent and the other person was guilty and bad, and that means that they suspect that THEY CAUSED EVERY FUCKING THING on that timeline.

I know because I do it, too, whenever, deep down, I suspect that something is about me and my rottenness. I can't tell the story often enough. "See? See what happened? Can you believe it? Is that nuts? How did I get here? I'm good, right? I'm kind and nice, right? So why am I here?"

YOU KNOW WHAT? SHIT HAPPENS TO PEOPLE WHO ARE GOOD.

It’s not your fault. You are not some toxic cloud that he gets to step out of. It's hard to feel that way from a hospital bed, when you can barely turn your head one way or the other. It's hard to feel that way when you look back and ask yourself why you accepted so little, and yet HE'S THE ONE who paints you as some festering crazy volcano, he's the one who's the child, telling you not to be childish.

And even your parents wouldn't describe you as childish? You need to be childish now. That's why you keep crying. Your soul wants you to finally be a child.

You were so hurt and in need, and he told you to fuck off, even though he KNEW that you were in terrible pain. Let's be still in this moment, together, and feel how sad that is, without self-protection, without fear, without cynicism and anger. Let's not feel self-conscious. Let's just choose not to feel embarrassed and cheesy for a fucking second. Let's sit still and just feel how unbearably sad it still is—that you got hurt and then you were all alone and it was so embarrassing, so fucking shameful to be all alone with your jaw wired shut, that you were smashed down like a fucking bug. It was too much. And from then on, it was like you created the whole picture. It was like you woke up one day, and you couldn't tell the story from your soul.

But I am there with you. I'm right there with you, and so is everyone else who's reading this and understands what the fuck it means to stay open even though it hurts and it's embarrassing. At this moment, we are on your side. And the spirits of the dead are with you, too, and the leaves on the trees and the clouds and the cool breeze is with you. Listen to me: Your story is not your soul. You cry every fucking day because you want to live. Your tears mean you're surviving. You want to feel things. You are not giving up on yourself. Giving up would be shutting down, turning everything off, moving on, and sleepwalking into a sad future. This is what sleepwalking looks like: a brand new 23-year-old and an inability to take half a fucking minute to say goodbye to your exwife. God bless and god forgive that sleepwalking man. He's not worthy of a big-hearted creative soul. You always knew that. And that's the last time we're going to refer to him here, because he's too small. We have bigger and brighter and better horizons. We have the leaves on the trees and the clouds and the cool breeze to consider here.

Let's pry this shitty story away from your soul, like a sludgy mess of blood and grime and tears and loss. Let's kick it to pieces. Now all that's left is your soul, ok? Your soul is bright and sweet and sad. Listen to me. You are going to feel so grateful. Because someone out there is big like you, honest and sensitive and full of life, and good at giving, and good at feeling expansive and good at living. I'm not trying to sell you on a fairy tale. But when you've been through something this terrible? Magic happens. Sometimes, someone like you, IF YOU CAN STAY OPEN, ends up attracting the whole world to her doorstep. Because she stayed vulnerable. Because she refused to sleepwalk into a dim, sad future. Because she wanted to take responsibility, even though she wasn't responsible. Because she was bewildered and alone for a long time, and it changed her.

Your life will be beautiful. You have already come a long way. I want you to be open to people—men and women—who are can be still with you, and listen. You need more REAL friends. You need more listeners. I want you to make sure you don't hide away with the next dude. You said you were with the sleepwalker "constantly." Don't do that next time. You said artists tried to show their work for free and left you to clean up afterwards. Don't give too much and resent it afterwards. Get a used copy of "Codependent No More.” Read the whole thing. You want to take care of people. Don't fucking do it, unless it's an actual child. You like half-interested, wishy-washy types who seem tough. Fuck them. Find someone sweet who really sees you and needs you. To find that person, you have to be sweet and child-like yourself. You have to love yourself, damaged and sad, exactly how you are right now. If someone says go to the hospital, don't think about being closer to your guy instead. Go to the fucking hospital. You put yourself last. From now on, you are first.

Stand up, walk outside, and feel the air, watch the trees move in the wind. This moment is yours. You matter. You are a bright light and everything you've ever wanted will come to you, if you stay open. Build a community and embrace it. Show up for other people. Tell them your sad story and let them learn from your mistakes. Embarrass yourself as much as possible. Be honest with everyone. You already changed a few people by telling your story here, trust me. There is no shame to your story anymore.

The world is waiting for you to step out and finally see ALL THAT YOU OWN. You own the sky and the leaves in the trees. We are all waiting for you to stand up and feel how much love is here for you. Someday soon, you'll have more love than you know what to do with. Keep crying. All the love in the world will be yours. Your new life is beginning.

Polly

Do you want things, or not want things? Write to Polly and get that settled today.

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

Photo by CambridgeCanine.com

The post Ask Polly: I Was Dumped After a Freak Accident and I Can't Move On appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

How can I put away the fact that when I got married ~1.5 years ago, my now-estranged mother-in-law's unchecked borderline personality disorder detracted from the whole event?  

I'm not a wedding person. I never was. My partner, The Boy, and I got married for health insurance after I successfully defended my thesis in 2011. Sounds cold, but we'd been living together for several years at that point and were completely happy continuing our relationship that way. We were both fried from my grad school experience, during which everything up to but not including actual physical assault occurred. I had to play an absolutely horrifying game of being the bait, allowing bad things to happen to me so I could report them. (I've been working with a kickass therapist for a few months, and we've made massive leaps in slaying those grad school dragons.) After that, I was incapable of planning anything, let alone a wedding, and I was jobless—hence the importance of health insurance. 

Eventually, my rather traditional father was all, "Your grandmother won't be around forever." They wanted a Wedding, and ain't no guilt like Jewish guilt. Also, my grandma is the most amazing person ever, and my family has its weirdness, but at the end of the day, they party hard, and everyone wants everyone else to be happy. So The Boy and I got weddinged.  ~1.5 years later, people are still raving (in a positive way!) about the party.  

The Boy's therapist suggested a book on growing up in a family with a borderline mother, and it is one long checklist of his whole family's behavior. The Boy is the fucking champion of the world for handling them all, with whom we maintained a relationship for the sake of interfamilial peace during the wedding prep. It took a very long time for my family to truly believe what The Boy's family did; I suspect some still don't entirely grasp how destructive they are. I won't share the full compilation of The Boy's family's horror stories, but they range from simply not showing up at the rehearsal dinner they demanded to trying turn my mom against me, emailing The Boy that I was a manipulative bitch and a horrible person, being ridiculously late for pictures, walking out of our ceremony, and the list goes on. I got good at turning the other cheek, but there's a part of me that deeply regrets never just starting a brawl and beating the shit out of them. (No, I will never ever actually do that.)

This is a good place to note that I am not by nature a passive person. As a fencer, coaches described me as a consummate fighter (I wasn't technically pretty to watch, but even when I lost, I would always give my opponent, no matter good they were, a very hard run for their money). After I got out of grad school and epically failed at finding a normal job, I started a company. I'm good at the kind of shit that makes running a tiny tech startup feel perfect: improvising, solving problems, and turning bad stuff into good productive things are my jam.

So, I wasn't prepared to feel regretful about our wedding. I worked like hell to stay focused on the good bits. We were good at compromise while not giving up on the very meaningful things. For instance, we found an officiant with a joyously pro-love liberal philosophy that gave us warm fuzzies who also happened to be a rabbi, which gave my mom warm fuzzies. They were just problems to solve. The thing that keeps popping up is that throughout, I was afraid that The Boy's mom was going to take his father's gun (yes, the man carries a piece on him at all times everywhere they go even if it's illegal) and shoot me at some point during the ceremony or reception in the name of rescuing her son and being a good mother. I didn't say anything to anyone at the time. The Boy was managing his own feelings about interacting with them, and I felt like a needy wretched asshole complaining about what I was feeling. My parents would've brushed it off, told me I was being silly, and that I needed to get a hold of myself. My friends—well, I just felt like a lunatic, like The Boy's mom's crazy was somehow rubbing off on me, so I didn't talk about it. My solution was to have my dress be something that would be easy for paramedics to cut off and to do my hair in such a way that if I had to run or fight, it would stay out of my face.

The most I can figure out is that I had to compromise on how I presented myself out of fear, and I can't square that away. Finding a dress was not fun. I just went quietly, by myself, had a dress made (it was lovely and professional and fit perfectly), and I think the incredibly nice talented ladies who made it thought I was a total fucking weirdo because I wasn't super into it. Now, though, I find myself looking at wedding dresses, and for the first time thinking, "that would look amazing on me," sans fear, then I feel sad because I already got weddinged (which I didn't even really want), then I hate that I'm being a soppy moron, since I never looked at wedding dresses with anything other than complete ambivalence (because fuck the patriarchy, yet at the same time, feminism means choice). So why do I suddenly care, and WHY THE FUCK didn't I say anything at the time? Because my friends who I tell now are all, "Oh, wow… yeah.  Yeah, I could totally see her shooting you," and according to that book The Boy is reading, borderlines do have complete lapses of morality and kill people, including their own children. I've been bargaining with myself, like, "Hey, I get to wear whatever I want for the rest of my life, so fuck that bullshit. Also, I'm alive!" And when The Boy and I have talked about it, he says he thinks about it in terms of having to go through all that wedding-related horror so he could get to a place where he could cut them off, and we get to have a peaceful balanced life together. He's right, it's completely true, and so I feel like a selfish whiner because while I'm sitting there thinking, "What about my experience?" he had to actually grow up with these intensely toxic parents.  

So, yeah. Is there a good way to think about all of this so I feel less bad? Do I just need a slap in the face?  

I Might Just Need A Slap In The Face

Dear IMJNASITF,

Weddings are made to be ruined. If your borderline mother-in-law doesn't ruin your wedding then someone or something else will. Why do brides even wear white, when none of them are actually virgins? Because that way something red or purple or green can get spilled all over their fucking $5000 dresses and ruin the whole day.

I was determined to be low-maintenance about my own wedding. I was 35 years old, not some blushing baby. I got engaged in December, went off the pill immediately (because I figured it would take months for me to get pregnant), and got pregnant immediately. I was glad to be pregnant, but I felt like a severely queasy, perpetually exhausted wreck while I was planning the wedding. I couldn't plan the menu because everything sounded disgusting. Fish and sauces and meats, and all of it so pointlessly expensive! My brother and I, who live in LA, decided to have our weddings a week apart so our family could fly out once instead of twice in the same year. This meant everyone was a little strung out by my wedding, and many aunts and uncles left town after my brother's, and missed mine.

But there were countless little missteps and mishaps along the way. I decided at the last minute that I looked like a fat kid in a nightgown in my formerly-elegant-looking empire-waisted gown, so I ran out and bought a pretty terrible gigantic white wedding dress the day before the wedding. It was like some kind of viral infection: out of nowhere, I wanted to look LIKE A BRIDE. A cliché, rotund, queasy bride. My husband's family gasped when they saw me at the hotel. My husband had somehow forgotten to mention to any of them that I was pregnant, so I had all of these "My god, it's a shotgun wedding!" looks to navigate for hours. (Yes, my husband is not all rainbows and moonbeams, trust me. He is one spaced out motherfucker with absolutely no sense a lot of the time.)

It was 105 degrees in Palm Desert the day of the wedding. I was wearing a dress the shape and weight of a comforter. The lower half of my body was swimming in a hot tub of sweat. I was in the dysentery phase of my pregnancy. My hairstyle was fucking atrocious, and the three friends I'd enlisted to guard me against atrocious hairstyles left to eat lunch because the stylist was taking too long. So I started crying big, salty tears all over my shitty, caked-on, professional make-up, and my friend's photographer husband, the one person who'd stuck around, started shooting photos of me crying, probably because he sees himself as a true artist, god bless him and also, fuck him.

The last thing I told my husband before the wedding was, "Make sure the microphone is set up. Don't try to do this thing without a microphone." But it was 115 degrees in the sunshine, so they moved the chairs to the shade and the mic cord wouldn't stretch. About 15 people could hear the ceremony. I looked out at the crowd when I was saying my vows, and the first two rows were crying. The next 7 rows were looking at me like, "Huh?"

At dinner, my mom stood up and said, "Well, my son's wedding was last week, so we're all a little tired of weddings." I laughed out loud, among nervous titters. My husband's family looked stricken. It was like a scene from The Office. I appreciated the honest dread my mom was feeling, which just goes to show how deeply warped I am or how warped my family is or maybe how warped weddings are in general.

On your wedding day, everything is amazing and also completely fucked. Everyone is incredibly generous and good to you and except for that one person who is so fucking selfish and bad. You are so in love and also so full of fear and dread over the years and years you'll spend with that dude right there, who is so handsome and special and also one spaced out motherfucker with absolutely no sense.

It's strange that I'm writing about this right now, because it's my eighth anniversary TODAY. I seriously just remembered that a few minutes ago for the first time all week. I had to stop and call my husband and remind him, because my brother agreed to babysit the kids last week, and we're supposed to go out to dinner in about two hours. I have to say, I'm not really in the mood to go out, either. See how it is?

SO: Your wedding sucked in many ways, possibly because you suspected that your mother-in-law might kill you. I would imagine that having even the faintest sensation that someone might kill you could really wreck any old day, let alone a wedding day, and give you severe PTSD to boot. You sound like a very tough sort of a person, so maybe this is what PTSD sounds like, coming from you. Maybe what you're trying to tell me is, "I am suffering now because I went into survival mode and brushed this off then." I totally understand that.

I don't think you need a slap in the face. I think you are someone who needs to be careful not to put things in black and white terms. You need to be careful to be gentle with yourself. I'm even going to tell you that you should try to present yourself in a softer way, so that people realize that you're pretty sensitive, actually, and not the rough and tumble soldier of fortune that you present to the world, with your swashbuckling and your jousting and your threats of beating people up. Some part of you wants to be treated with more care.

The details of the wedding, through the lens of PTSD or some kind of lesser traumatic reverberation, make perfect sense to me. But when you say stuff like "I wasn't super into my dress" and "I would've done this differently" and "Why didn't I handle that differently?" and "I wish I could have that day back, and do it all over a different way!"? Well, those things are the things that every single human alive says about their wedding. I think we have to try to separate the trauma from your standard wedding ambivalence, which is universal.

OK, fine. Some people have magical, perfect weddings. They say things like "OH MY GOD, THE WHOLE DAY WAS AMAZING FROM START TO FINISH, I WOULDN'T CHANGE A SINGLE THING!" But those people also say shit like "It's all good" and "No worries" and "Life's a beach" and "They grow up so fast, don't they?" and "I love the Dave Matthews Band soooo much I get chills whenever I hear one of their songs playing." The rest of us, though, have mixed feelings when we think of our weddings. By my wedding night, I was so relieved and so thankful and so in love with everyone, my husband, the whole world. But as I was getting ready to walk down the aisle? I was thinking, "I cannot fucking believe I had the bad taste to engage in THIS FUCKING HETERONORMATIVE THREE-RING CIRCUS. WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING? WHY? WHY DID I DO THIS TO MYSELF?" When friends wandered in to help me fix my terrible fucking hair and say "Ooo so exciting!" I just grimaced. I was sweating and cramping and I looked like Tracy Turnblad in "Hairspray," except with panic and queasiness where the bubbly vivacious personality should go. I was hating everything and it was such an EXPENSIVE and PUBLIC way to feel shitty.

And of course we all think we should've worn something else! Oh god, anything else. ANYTHING. Of course we should've handled every single thing differently. I'll bet I was awful and embarrassing. I usually am when the stakes get very high.

So let's try very hard to take that part of things, the built-in ambivalence and the built-in dread and fear and horror, and the catastrophic nature of weddings in general, and let's separate that from the truly dreadful particulars. Can we do that? Let's admit that everyone has a semi-disastrous wedding, it's just a matter of where on the Richter Scale yours happens to fall. OK? There's something inherently fucked about a wedding, that's all. Big white dress, write your own stupid vows, be overly jokey or overly earnest or overly typical or overly eclectic or all of the above, serve lukewarm chicken breast stuffed with some shit that is way worse than a bad restaurant would serve but costs $30 a plate? Uch. Terrible mix CDs, terrible DJs, terrible bands, bad weather, accidents, wine stains, shitty hairstyles, ugly bridesmaid dresses that everyone's really fucking pissed about wearing, selfish friends who do crazy acting-out shit because they're not the center of everything for one fucking minute of their narcissistic lives? These things are de rigueur. They define the modern nuptial experience.

Murderous mother-in-laws are different. Whether that threat is real or imagined, you felt it. And clearly that experience was influenced strongly by your grad school experience, in which you had to be the bait and basically invite physical assault to prove that it had occurred already. The way you sped over that, glossed right past it, made it tough to understand. I'm sure you have your practical reasons not to want to go into it. But clearly there's trauma there, and confusion and a desperate need to get some distance, to put it in the past, to make it blurry, to appear tough and beyond the pull of those events. Your experience in grad school and your experience on your wedding day are clearly linked and each one is exacerbating the other.

You need to talk to your therapist about that. This wedding day thing isn't just coming up JUST because it's a good story (although you do love a good story). It's coming up because you sincerely, genuinely want to cry a river over the fear of physical injury there. You don't think that YOU, a tough woman, a bad ass, should feel so fragile about these things. But you do. Some part of you wants permission to feel fragile and afraid. You want to cry, and be weak. It's ok to do that, in general AND with a therapist AND with your husband.

So do that. But when it comes to fixating on the WEDDING part of this, the fact that it wasn't quite right, it wasn't comfortable, it wasn't a celebration, it was just nerve racking and terrible? Well, you CAN have another wedding if you want to. But Christ, who wants that? I would encourage you to dig deep into the threat of physical violence and its ill effects on your worldview and your nerves, but leave the wedding-specific regrets aside. The wedding regrets maybe break your heart in retrospect. But you CAN get over our collective heteronormative viral infection, can't you? Because weddings are totally great and awesome and also totally terrible and horrid at the same time. Anyone with a working brain and the capacity to have mixed feelings agrees.

You're very good at compartmentalizing, which is usually not a great, healthy thing. Use it to your advantage now, though. Put the wedding stuff, the dress and the not-quite-rightness of it all, and stuff it in a suitcase and throw it off a tall cliff. Weddings, whatever. What can you do? Life's a fucking beach. They grow up so fast, don't they? I love the Dave Matthews Band so much I want to staple live crickets to my face right now.

You love The Boy. You married him. Your life is good. Go to your therapist and talk about fear and pain and vulnerability. Learn to cry about this without feeling shame over it. Talk about toughness and bluster and sometimes putting that anger away and just admitting that some things are sad. Some things are just disappointing. Sometimes you don't want to give your opponents a run for their money. Sometimes you just want to lay down on the ground and look up at the sky and feel sorry for all of it. Some things are just very, very sad.

And some things are fucking exquisite. Some things are miraculous and crazy and meant to be. Eight years ago today, on my wedding day, I married the greatest, most lovable, most patient, most resilient, most spaced out motherfucker with absolutely no sense I've ever met. Here's to imperfect weddings and imperfect spouses and imperfect lives. Here's to all of our glorious misfirings and messes. What luck, to be here! What incredible, improbable luck.

Polly

Do you want to know precisely whom to marry? Write to Polly and get that settled today.

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

Photo by Ben Husmann

The post Ask Polly: I Thought My Mother-in-Law Was Going to Kill Me at My Wedding appeared first on The Awl.

Hello Polly!

I'm 23 and I feel like I've come a pretty long way already. I grew up in an abusive and poor-as-hell home; went to live on my own when I was fifteen; struggled with depression and a terrible relationship; and made (and paid off) a huge amount of debt. All the terrible things happened. ALL OF THEM.

However, I think I did a lot of cool things as well: I raised my sister to be a happy, normal person, and I finished school with really good grades even though I did not know at the time where food would come from and I had to sleep on the smelly couch of the local pot dealer. When the schizophrenic father from hell returned (he had been missing for years) I told him to fuck off. I made peace with my tired, overworked, shy mum and we glued the family back together and we're all pretty damn happy about it. Since I was kind of a stoner, I pretty much got along with everybody and I made some cool friends who made my hard life way easier and who I loved very much. So, that was my teens, basically.

After I finished school, I moved to a new city to be with my cynical asshole boyfriend who somehow had realized that I was smart and funny and routinely used lines I said in his shitty standup comedy act. I started training to be a nurse. All of my coworkers were boring, or way older then me—plus, asshole boyfriend pretty much scared away anyone I tried to make a connection with—so I went friendless in a big city with a really hard job that I hated. My old friends all moved to new cities and started university, moved in with friends, threw giant insane parties—I couldn't relate at all. I felt boring, grey, poor. Every time one of them asked me, "So, what's happening?" I could only say "hard work, stupid boyfriend,” so I stopped saying much and eventually the calls stopped. This part of my life lasted almost three years.

I decided to blow up the whole damn thing because I was super unhappy and found myself staring at the wall in my bedroom smoking cigarettes and crying one too many times.

During all of this, I had been drawing things whenever I could. I drew and I painted and I glued things together, and even though asshole boyfriend told me all the things that could be improved, I mostly loved the things I made. I got pretty good at it. One day in spring, I told the boyfriend he had to go; he told me that he had wanted to break up anyway, since I was just a sad shadow of a person and also I never did the dishes.

I got a tiny, cheap apartment, stopped going to the hospital to wash sick people and instead started working behind the bar at a cool club. I drew all the time, every day. I got so good I finally decided to do the thing I never thought I could do: I packed together my best work and applied to Very Prestigious Art School for its Very Famous and Good Costume Design Program, which has been my dream since I was 15 years old. They get bazillions of applicants and you have to go there and do two days of creative tests and studio time and intense talks and stuff and I never thought I could do it but I did and they chose me.

I talked to a lot of cool people who are all starting with me this September. I live in Germany, so it's not unusual to start university at 23 or 24; I clicked with a lot of the other applicants. Now I'm not a poor dirty stoner or an overworked sad nurse's assistant anymore, but a cool bartender who can draw better than most people, with good taste in movies and music and style and a nice apartment where the dishes are always done and I look fine and—well I don't know how to be a friend anymore?

It seems since everything has always been on fire, now that things are good I don't know how to be normal? I have a lot of people I talk to casually once a week or something, but how do I get from that to developing a friendship? I've been so busy with saving myself over and over again that I never learned how to be there for friends. I want to be the kind of person that, you know, throws parties and is just a friend, but I feel so different from everybody else. I feel like the dirt of everything is still on me. And people seem to notice that? I sometimes say things that weirds people out and I notice it too late, so most of the time I'm still really quiet. I know I have a lot to give, but I'm so very lonely and I just want someone I can call once in a while just to chat about stuff. But it feels like there is a giant chasm between me and "normal people." How can I bridge that? How can I feel not dirty and unworthy when talking with people?

I'm sorry if this sounds like the ramblings of a crazy person and I apologize if my English sounds weird or something, English is not my first language. I just feel so lost, which is weird because I'm also the most happy I've ever been. It would be the coolest if you had some sort of advice for me. I know you must get a ton of letters. Your writing has really helped me through a lot, so thank you a million times for that.

I wish you the very best.

Friendless Dirty Artist

Dear Friendless Dirty Artist,

If you take just one thing away from my letter and believe it, let it be this: No giant chasm exists between you and other people. The "dirt of everything" is not on you. You are not unworthy. It is very common—more common than you can possibly imagine—for a youngish human being to feel this way, no matter what strange, tumultuous sea of freakjuice that particular human arose from, like a bedraggled Venus on a half-assed halfshell.

Maybe, just maybe, you "weird people out" right now. But that's only because 1) you're out of practice in talking lightly with people you don't know (almost every smart person alive has been there, and will revisit that state repeatedly over the course of a lifetime, thanks to various isolating circumstances) and 2) you are a million times more independent and interesting and tough than most of the people you're going to run into casually.

I mean, if I were still 23 years old and I found myself talking to a woman who lived independently at age 15 and raised her younger sister? I would be the one who felt unworthy. What could I say? "Yeah, I totally know what you mean about hardship, my hostess shift at Applebee's was SUPER FUCKING TAXING sometimes, like when the Megaritas were on sale for $4 and I had to remember to mention that AND the Chicken Mexicali special? Whew, that was tough."

At that age, I might've avoided you. But guess what? You would've really benefitted from me avoiding you. Because I would've been a TERRIBLE fucking friend to someone as tough and talented and interesting as you are. I would've half-listened to your troubles (while scanning the room for hot dudes) and waved off your worries (while chugging my sixth pint of beer) and then vomited all over your shoes (without apparent remorse, unnervingly enough).

So thank your lucky stars that some people are going to self-select themselves out of your life right now. DO NOT view these "weirded out" people as people who see clearly that you're dirty and unworthy and are rejecting you because of it. View them as people who can't handle real life or real people yet. They have a long, long road to travel. And also? Try to be patient and forgiving of them, if you can. Allow them a light, easygoing place in your life if you have room for casual acquaintances. But don't tell them everything. Don't blurt out big truths or dark passages from the past or heavy asides or self-doubting confessions to these people, who don't want that stuff clogging up their distraction-focused lives, because they can barely grapple with their own twisted, confused, vague "it's all good" shit yet.

I can personally guarantee you that at ART SCHOOL (cue Hallelujah Chorus!) you will find plenty of people who don't think you're TOO WEIRD AND DIRTY AND UNWORTHY for them. I just taught at an art school, and fuck, art school is awesome! It's filled with weirdos who feel dirty and unworthy in the best possible way. If anything, feeling weird and dirty and unworthy is a wonderful ticket to a fun and exciting social life! I met some of the nicest, smartest, most interesting people at that job. Those were the grad students. I bet the undergrads are a little less tamed and polite, and some of them are probably vicious, freaky, awful, one-uppy hell, just like they were to Claire on "Six Feet Under." (Best show ever, BTW. Watch it. First season not the greatest, sort of awkward, but then? It is good good good.) I bet some of those student artists walk around and wear that "I'm more punk or more EVS or more YOLO or more whatever the BRAND NEW (but really old) way of being stylishly indifferent is" on their tattoo sleeves.

All you need to do is be nice and keep your eyes wide open and listen and believe in yourself and your talent, no matter what. You will prevail. You will have friends. All of these people are also about to make their first lifelong friends, trust me. They will want to see if you match them. Some of them will be shy and awkward. Some of them will be outgoing and arrogant. Try to give the pretentious children some time to show their true selves to you. Try not to worry about how they're judging you. We all feel like unworthy dirt, deep down inside.

In fact, it's very common—BELIEVE IT!—for full-grown, adult-ass human beings who should know better to feel this way. I have felt like a mutant every other day for most of my life. I have often felt that the dirt of everything was crusted onto me, a layer of crazy that would never come clean. Even when I am winning and win-winning and never, ever failing, some grime lingers. Even at the exact moment when it seems I'm finally in step with the other Earthlings (at last!), I fall out of step again. The terrible, beautiful irony of my writing an advice column at all is that I do NOT FEEL all that evolved on most days, or at least some days. Who can tell, really, how many days are RIGHT ON and how many days we enter the self-hating oven and broil in our own juices? Sometimes I think that's exactly what makes this advice column THE FUCKING BOMB, MOTHERFUCKER! And other times I feel a little ashamed at how I tell innocent humans what to do, and then I can't even do those things myself, because I fucking suck.

But look, I'm smart and I have good intentions, just like you. I write this stuff because I really love to do it. It makes me feel good, it helps me to revisit what I believe, it reminds me that hope and optimism and connection do make sense, if you can manage to get there organically—if you can open up to what's around you and accept it and embrace it for what it is, instead of shoving it away and hiding hiding hiding. Writing is part of my practice, if you want to put it in pretentious terms—and who doesn't? You have a craft, too. You love to draw and make things and you just keep getting better and better. It connects you with something good and real and it reacquaints you with the fact that hard work really does build on itself, and there is a way out of hell, if you work hard enough. I mean GODDAMN YOU'RE IMPRESSIVE, WOMAN!

That's what people are going to be saying to you a lot, once they really get to know you. But that won't happen immediately. One of the big mistakes of being young is that you want to get that pat on the head right after you say "Hello, my name is Wingle Wangle." You have to be patient and not blurt out dark things. You have to listen and focus on others and TRUST that they don't think you're unworthy. You have to take a leap of faith and just be in the moment with others. That is all.

So look. You and I, like most other people, work hard at what we do, and try hard not to slip into darkness, and we feel like mutants a lot, despite our best intentions and our angriest self-recriminations. The only real difference between you and me (uh, aside from the tiny fact that you've overcome much, much more hardship than I have and didn't spend your formative years vomiting on other people's shoes like I did) is that I CHOOSE to believe my own self-generated hype about sixty-five per cent of the time, just because it makes my life much easier and it makes my writing better and it makes me nicer to be around and that way, I get to pour a vat of margaritas into my throat occasionally. I take my little flaws and I say "YES BUT THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT MAKES ME THE BOMB, MOTHERFUCKER!" And some people dislike this, and some people tolerate it, and a few people sort of like it. I take the dirt and the unworthiness and show that shit off like it's diamonds and lace and silk and all that trash they coveted on "Dynasty." My wrongness is my swagger. My baggage is my LUXURY LUGGAGE.

Except when it's not. Some days, my baggage is just heavy and misshapen and sad and dusty, like actual ugly, cheap baggage that you can't tell apart from everyone else's ugly, cheap baggage on the conveyor belt at the airport. It's important to know this. You can resolve to embrace your flaws, and decide that your awkwardness is also your charm, but you'll still have days when you feel dirty and unworthy.

Everyone will. So this is what I want you to do: Pay attention. Put your focus on yourself into YOUR CRAFT. Take the big truths and the dark passages from the past and the heavy asides and the self-doubting confessions, and pour those into your art, your costumes, your creations, your drawings. You are an artist, after all! (Cue Hallelujah Chorus, again!) Investigate your bleak history (in therapy if possible, and on your own). Look closely at your fears and your darkness, and use them to fuel your passions. You are so lucky, in some ways, to have a past so rich at such a young age. I know, I know. That sounds totally insensitive and ignorant. So the fuck what? There's luck in damage, for an artist. Some of those artists you meet are going to be seriously fucking jealous, when they dig for something profound and all they can find is Applebee's Twice-Baked Cheesy Tater Boats. (But don't discount those envious privileged boobs, either, because shit happened to them, too, they just don't realize what they've got onboard yet.)

Once you pour the darkness into your work to some extent, and study other great artists who've done this, and write down your feelings regularly, and mingle with youngish artists of all stripes, THEN you will have a less Sensitive Alien way of moving through the world. Learning NOT to tell everyone everything immediately is a big step. I think I learned that lesson, hmm, about four years ago? It took FOREVER. I have entire friendships now that are fueled by shared good times and shared interests instead of shared troubles and shared confessions. Sounds shallow, sure, but—little known fact!—some shallowness gives a life balance. Light friendships remind you that you CAN simply engage in small talk and go with the flow, if the rest of your life fills your needs, if you have deep connections and you have ways of expressing the dark emotions that come bubbling out of you without warning. I've only recently discovered, for example, that if I'm in a spectacularly shitty mood, I can usually write something pretty funny. SHITTY MOOD ENERGY CREATES COMEDY. Who knew?

Use the rough road behind you for inspiration, and you won't need to stick it into the middle of every conversation. Use the rough road under your feet on any given day for inspiration, and you'll grow to appreciate your sensitivity and depth of feeling as a gift rather than a curse. Honor yourself and believe in yourself and listen to other people first, and believe me, you will have more friends than you can handle.

There is no chasm. You are not alone. We are all right there with you, feeling wobbly and uncertain. We muddle through and weird each other out, every single day of our lives. It's ok. We are dragging our luxury luggage all over the planet, scowling at each other like strangers when, in fact, we all match inside. You're not alone. You don't have to feel lonely. You're with us.

Polly

Are you a lonely, tangled vine among flowering perennials? Write to Polly and discuss!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

Photo by troy mckaskle

The post Ask Polly: I Survived a Hard Life, But I Never Learned How to Be Normal appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,
 
I have sort of a backwards problem, in that the better things are going in my life, the worse I feel. I know a good bit, or think I do, about why this happens. My mother committed suicide; my brother who tried to; and my father taught me that my sole purpose and value in life was to make them feel better and stop them from killing themselves. When I tried to care about myself and my needs as much as theirs, I was told this made me a terrible person, and no one would ever love me.

So I grew up to be extremely empathetic and supportive and really good at making my life about everyone other than myself. At some point, I realized that living that way was actually not doing me any favors, was pretty self-destructive, and a way I would never want people I care about to live. I tried to change, to put myself first; I went to therapy, and a lot of Al-Anon meetings, and vented a lot of grief and rage at my family, who were damaged beings doing the best they could but were incapable of being truthful about what happened or acknowledging how badly it hurt me. 
 
I have been successful: I have a job I love, am married to a man I love, and am living a life I love in a place I love with a cat I love. And yet, the better things are, the worse I feel: terrified I will lose everything, because I don’t deserve to be happy, because secretly, fundamentally, I am still a terrible person who must be punished for not following the rules, or because that’s what happens when you relax and feel safe—the shit comes down and people die.
 
The net result is that now, despite a lucky, blessed and happy life, I am overcome with crippling anxiety, guilt, and self-doubt. I’m extremely ashamed about this, because it seems ridiculous; I’m scared, because I don’t understand. I have been in so much therapy. I was better. But magically now I’m the age my mother was when she and my brother started really falling apart, and even though life is better than it’s ever been, I’m worse than I’ve been for a long time, maybe ever. I’m losing friends; my work is suffering; I’m pushing my husband away, who sees that I’m falling apart. I want to believe that this is because I’m getting closer to the core of the doubt and guilt and feelings of wrongness and worthlessness that is at the heart of all of this. But when I reach that core, I still don’t seem to know what to do about it. I know I’m not worthless. I even thought I genuinely felt and believed that. But it still seems to be there, and it’s starting to poison my job and my marriage and my friendships… to try to make everything as black as it believes it should be.
 
I know I need to go back into therapy, but I don’t believe it will truly help me, since it had helped me before, and yet here I am again. I don’t need to believe I’m flawless; I’m fine with being flawed. I’m not fine with hating myself, giving myself palpitations from constant fear and anxiety, and worrying I’m going to sabotage everything that matters to me so that I won’t have to deal with the guilt of having what I’m not supposed to / allowed to have, or the agony of being obsessed that I’m going to lose it all at any moment. I have lived with the specter of being a depressed, suicidal failure hanging over me my whole life, and I’d like it to go away. It turns out it’s so fucking hard to kill ghosts. Any ideas?
 
Don’t Deserve Goodness

Dear Don't Deserve Goodness,

Christ Almighty, do I feel you on this one. The crazy thing about everything being great is that it makes it really easy to PROVE that the problem is you. "Look, everybody. I have everything I ever wanted, and I'm still freaking out. You were right about me, world! Watch how I push people away! Even though I have love now, eventually the truth will out and I'll show that I'm a terrible person who no one could ever love for very long!"

The challenging thing for you is that you're talking about this awful legacy, but because you have it pretty good on the surface, you feel like you don't have a right to be struggling (which exactly matches your experience as a kid, when you didn't have a right to feel ANYTHING). Fear and anxiety are these really crazy forces that are incredibly difficult to own up to, because our society tends to paint them as pointless worrying and neuroticism and stress, implied to be the fault of the person who's doing the worrying. Instead of being treated with compassion and understanding, anxious people are more often than not labeled as neurotics or control freaks—particularly when their lives look pretty good from the outside. "Look at what you have. Things SHOULD BE coming up roses for you, so why do you act like you're fucking dying?"

Basically, it's tough to put this kind of trouble into words without sounding like a fucking first-world-problems wildebeest that should be shot down where it stands and then butchered and hung up in the smokehouse to make wildebeest jerky that could sustain a far more deserving family of four through a long, cold winter.

People grow up and they get anxious, whether they admit it or not. It happens to the most laid back among us, and it's an incredibly common affliction. We'll get to your very daunting specifics in a second, trust me, I just want to start, though, by pointing out that anxiety is very common. And do you know how most people handle the escalating anxiety that comes with moving toward middle age? They drink more, watch more TV, turn off, power down. Others, who have plenty of money and are also determined to STAY OPEN AND STAY AWARE, tend to overachieve in the self-improvement department. They go to $250 therapy sessions three times a week, and then there's acupuncture and nutritionists and yoga retreats. And even the do-it-yourself websites exhort you to funnel all of that energy into monitoring every single dimension of your life. Make charts to keep track of your exercise, alcohol intake, triggers, bonding time in your significant relationships! To hear some of these type-A gurus tell it, happiness is a fucking sound board that requires a audio engineer to operate. Happiness is a complicated budget that only a certified CPA can understand. Happiness is a symphony orchestra and you have to read complicated time signatures and master 15 different instruments to even touch it.

Obviously I don't think that naturally anxious/depressed/deeply scarred people should either power everything down (via booze or living at the office or watching five hours of TV every night) or power everything up (via self-help books and charts and constant fucking monitoring). To know a lot of smart, complicated adults is to know a lot of escapists and a lot of social media/booze/TV addicts and a lot of moms who obsess about every dimension of their kids' development and a lot of hothouse flowers with insanely complicated, expensive needs.

I don't mean to lump you into any of these categories. I think you've got a very specific, very haunting family history that makes you feel particularly damned. If I had a similar story to pair with my volatile chemistry, I would struggle with that MIGHTILY. Instead, I have no clear excuse for my weirdness. I can look at other people with personalities like mine and say, "Well, people like me seem to take a lot of psychotropic drugs, and all I do is eat kale. Why should I feel guilty that I'm so moody?" But I still feel angry at myself when I get moody.

I think that's close to the heart of this for you, too. You say you're ok with being flawed, it's just that you're not ok with freaking out and pushing people away. The only reason you're pushing people away is because you're pretty sure that these FEELINGS YOU'RE FEELING signal that you're deeply fucked and unlovable and damned for all time. As long as every negative, fearful, anxious, upsetting feeling means that you're cut from the same cloth as your mother, of course you're going to battle your feelings, battle yourself, and present those feelings and yourself to others as either FINE GREAT TOTALLY FINE or as inherently fucked and bad and deserving of scorn and alienation and rejection. Some deep, dark piece of you believes that you are not allowed to experience unforeseen bumps in the emotional road and acknowledge them and let them show. You are STILL not allowed to be a full person in the room. You are STILL supposed to be a supporting player. You THINK you're getting closer to the core, but you're not letting yourself really go there, because you're too ashamed of yourself. You're not giving yourself room to feel things without shame, and your soul is fucking pissed at you for this, and it's raising hell. It's saying "YOU NEED SPACE, YOU WILL HAVE SPACE EVEN IF I HAVE TO SET THIS WHOLE LIFE OF YOURS ON FIRE.”

You need therapy. The fact that you say "I had therapy and I thought it worked so why should I go back?" points to the stubbornness and oversimplified nature of your thinking about this whole thing. You're very impatient with yourself, and THAT is what leads you to push people away. You are unkind to yourself, as if you can snap yourself out of this. And yet, your fears and anxieties grow. You're regressing. You're taking on the voice of your father. You're saying, "FUCK YOU WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS AGAIN? HOW DARE YOU TAKE UP SPACE HERE WHEN EVERYONE ELSE'S NEEDS ARE SUPPOSED TO COME FIRST!” That doesn't mean you're going to destroy everything. Mostly, you need to admit that you're going through something right now. If you don't acknowledge it and say it out loud and make room for it, you're going to keep feeling all clenched and confused and angry.

So get a therapist, and say to that therapist: "I'm going through something right now and I need your help." You may need to take something for anxiety for a while. I'll bet a lot of people who DO take something for anxiety are probably reading this and thinking "DUDE TAKE SOMETHING FOR ANXIETY ALREADY!" Maybe they're right, and maybe they're wrong. You need to see a therapist either way. Don't put it off.

You also need to sit down with your husband and say to him, "I'm going through something right now. I don't know what it is, exactly. But it's big, and I need your help. I really, really need your help.” You have to tell your husband how you feel. He needs to listen and hear you out without telling you to stop feeling the way you feel. Sometimes you really do have to say bleak, bleak shit. Personally, I think it helps to have your partner understand exactly how dark it can get. This is not you "falling apart." This does not make you weak or bad. This is you connecting with another human being when things are tough. The more you both engage and look at the darkness, and accept that it's there, the easier it is to see that it doesn't rule everything or blot out the sun, not really. My husband and I both have our dark times, and the more we talk about them and put them in perspective in each other's presence, the better we feel. That's the way it should be.

Again, getting everything you've ever wanted is sometimes the fertile soil that allows your worst anxieties to bloom like never before. (Go watch Safe with Julianne Moore if you want to see what happens to damaged people when they have plenty of time and space to go insane.) For someone with a rough past, being in survival mode is sometimes easier than enjoying the luxury of support and care and time and space. If you're not ENJOYING these things, if you're just waiting for the shit to come down instead? That must be your fault. You must be sick inside.

And yet? So many people with so much less damage than you feel this way. So: Please forgive yourself straight out of the gate for the fact that you are human. You're going through something right now. Going back into therapy will support you in your ability to claim this vulnerable space for yourself.

And when you're pretty sure you're terrible at some core level, you really need to pat yourself on the back often. For example: My mom was just visiting for a while and I was around my family A LOT this past week. I did not act like a giant asshole during that time. The one day I felt really angry, I went on a four-mile run and came back feeling ok again. But the first part of my run was just like this cartoon with me saying "MOTHERFUCKER! MOTHERFUCKER! MOTHERFUCKER!" with every step. And in between steps, I was thinking, "Why am I so angry over such small shit? Why do I have to be such a fucking first-world-problems wildebeest? The years roll by, and look, I'm still just a big baby!"

But why should I beat myself up for my feelings, when I handled myself perfectly well all week? We feel what we feel. What the fuck are you gonna do? It's so easy to believe that there's a moral to this story. "THIS PROVES THAT YOU'RE TERRIBLE! YOU SUCK! YOU'RE UNLOVABLE!" But that's bullshit.

Maybe you're in the habit of telling one story—“I went through the fire and emerged, triumphant!”—that doesn't feel quite right anymore. Maybe you want to adjust your story, in order to make more room for reality, for mood swings, for challenging days, for challenging years. Maybe the new story is "I am so happy with what I have, but I'm still struggling with how to be happy." Maybe the new story is, "I love my life, but I don't know how to feel all of this sadness I have inside." Sadness and happiness do not exist on different planets. They go hand in hand. Learning to feel sadness without shame is a pretty crucial prerequisite for happiness. The story doesn't have to be, "I should be happy but I'm miserable." You don't deserve to be wildebeest jerky. You just need a few adjustments, to your habits, your life, your support systems, and your story. But in order to make those adjustments, you have to take the fact that you're going through something RIGHT NOW—something BIG!—very very seriously.

Being alive is amazing. It's also a huge challenge. Having a quick mind that latches onto everything and anything and runs with it, when paired with unpredictable fucking chemistry, is not a smooth ride, ever. The more you can accept that a rocky ride does NOT mean that you're a mutant, the better. It doesn't mean you need to map out a detailed plan and make 15 Excel charts to address every dimension of HOW YOU FAIL YOURSELF EVERY FUCKING DAY OF YOUR SORRY LIFE. It also doesn't mean that simply saying "I'M FLAWED, OK?" is enough. This is about your feelings.

Your feelings do not make you some kind of deadly poison in human form that will send everyone running away from you. In fact, I'd like to know a little bit more about these friends that are backing away. Do they understand that you're working through something? Are you vulnerable with them? Are they allergic to heaviness? Be sure to separate the supportive friends who were a little curt with you from the scaredy cats. Don't lump them all together. And separate your weepy moments from your cussing-people-out moments. Not the same thing, at all. Do you have friends who can tolerate weeping? Can your husband tolerate it? Because if he can't, maybe you need to drag him into therapy, too. I’d also like to know HOW you push your husband and other people away. When you start to feel like lashing out, you need to try to switch gears and really push yourself to reach the crying phase, to get to the vulnerable part of the picture. You should explain to your husband that this is a challenge for you, and that TEARS ARE ACTUALLY A SUCCESS. If you're sitting there saying "Fuck off, you don't get it" and thinking, "No one fucking gets it!" but you're refusing to look at the fact that a layer of "OH FUCK I AM SO ROTTEN I HATE ME" is underneath it all? Then you have to dig deeper and let yourself feel some sadness, and you have to let people in. Don't assume they can't handle it. Let them in.

It's frightening to stay open and stay vulnerable instead of escaping. That's why so many people choose escape. Feelings are really fucking hard, particularly when you've always been told that they make you unlovable.

Keep feeling. Accept that it will get ugly. Stand up for your right to feel. Feel and feel and feel and you will get more and more beautiful. Those who don't see that clearly can't see clearly at all. You are going through something. That's all. You're dark now. This is how you're going to let in the light. Believe it, and so will everyone else. Love yourself for it, and so will everyone else. BE PROUD of this fear and sadness, because it will lead you to sustainable happiness and love. Be patient with yourself, and you'll come out on the other side of this stronger than ever. Your vulnerability is courageous.

Polly

Are you sugar coated on the outside and a pulsing ball of darkness on the inside? Write to Polly and discuss!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

Photo by flowcomm

The post Ask Polly: I Have a Perfect Life But My Insides Are Rotting appeared first on The Awl.

Hi Polly.

I don't even know where to start, because for some reason I'm HORRIBLE at articulating my emotions. I feel like as soon as I have an "epiphany," it only opens up the door to another warehouse of issues to sift through. I'm so exhausted and worn out from an entire lifetime of extreme neuroticism and self-consciousness, and I need some clarity.

You seem to always have some advice that I can apply to my own life, so I have been wanting to write to you for a while. But I can't decide what to ask advice for since I really could use help in all areas of my life, and I do mean ALL. Let's see if I can get close to an actual question.

I'm recently married to the love of my life. From the day we met, I knew he was different than everyone else. He is an artist like myself, extremely unique, kind, up for an adventure, and patient. I've learned a lot about enjoying life and having fun from him. Lately though, I feel like he is no longer trying to impress me the way he used to. Not too long ago, he was bearing an equal part of all the "to dos,” and doing small and thoughtful things for me. Now, he doesn't help me at all around the house (but does really well in helping to DESTROY the space like a drunk bear raiding a campsite before falling asleep early), and is often lost in his thoughts. We don't talk as much as we used to, and physically he's letting himself go as well. I think he is a little depressed and bored. I suspect he is down because 1) he hates his day job, which leaves him very little mind time to get inspired to make his art, and 2) he is going through an early thirties existential crisis, as am I. I am being as understanding as I can because I currently do not have a job so I have more time to do the stuff that needs to be done at home—but I hate the reality that I'm slowly becoming a traditional housewife.

Anyway, I was thinking that if I ask for some advice about my own issues, maybe in turn I can inspire him somehow. I don't want to resent him because I want to be sure that I'm not contributing to the problem by nagging or being a hypocrite. I suspect that I may be rubbing off on him a little bit, or even projecting.

I had to recently be brutally honest with myself and admit that I have a gigantic fear within me. I'm always doubting who I am and what I should be doing. I used to be—when I was a small child—very outgoing and charming. But I was brought up to be obedient and self-abnegating, and that's what I became, as well as shy and awkward. At the same time I was scolded for those things. My problems or emotions were often dismissed and ridiculed, everyone else's desires always came before mine, and all the family's problems were blamed on me anytime I attempted to speak up for myself. I'm talking about full-on, "Your dad is leaving me because of YOU and your shitty attitude.” I was gaslighted like a motherfucker, so I know why I am like I am, but how do I stop?? I could provide more detail, but I can sum it all up by saying that for as long as I can remember, I've been too serious, depressive, and really took it hard when I made any mistake or when someone didn't like or "get" me, which makes it hard to let go and develop my talents naturally, with a sense of fun. Also, I was always very angry and resentful deep inside for not fitting in anywhere, but always also felt the need to find my true self amid the noise. I did not enjoy being a child. At all. I didn't know what "child-like enthusiasm and wonder" was until I met my now husband.

I sort of hate myself for it because the number one character trait that I admire in anyone is the ability to be themselves, unapologetically, but it's very hard for me to change.

I feel like I'm constantly fighting myself and I don't know how to listen to my own heart. For example, I knew I didn't fit into the status seeking, "this company is my life," corporate-climbing world, but I tried anyway, and felt like an idiotic loser for not being interested enough to be able to play the game (especially since so many other uninteresting and not even particularly brilliant people were able to figure it out).

I have many interests and can't decide how to focus my energies, though I do believe I am intelligent and more than capable. I constantly sabotage myself and say, smoke a joint to calm the anxiety of knowing I will paint something and nine times out of ten, hate it. Then I get nothing done, and hate myself for being weak.

I also have a big problem with comparing myself to others, and jealousy. This was absolutely the hardest thing to admit to myself because it's just pathetic. I'm figuratively in a glass room, watching and being jealous of everyone living their lives, watching them grow and develop while I waste time, and feeling that I'll be trapped as a longing voyeur forever, too paralyzed by fear (or something) to figure out how to just walk out of the wide open doorway. I'm keeping myself prisoner, because it doesn't feel natural to believe in myself and go forth with enthusiasm and trust that I will figure it out. It makes me so mad at myself for holding myself back, but since I AM myself, I don't know how to smash the part of me keeping me trapped. I simply can't get a grasp on embracing my uniqueness and also recognizing which changes I truly should make to make my life more productive, happy, and successful.

When I met my husband, I was the happiest and free-est I have ever felt.  I had never been more excited about life. But I know that's also the serotonin and whatnot of the honeymoon period. I do believe though, that we can get back to that, but even if we don't, at least I can learn to be more whole and strong. That has to be better than the self-doubting scaredy puss I am today. He understands me and gives me a lot of love, but I don't think this is something he can help me with.

What can I do? I already go to therapy, but like many relationships in our lives, I feel this one has run its course, and I need someone to tell me what to DO, not to just listen to me whine all the time. Can you give me some insight? I feel like I will be this way forever! I want to know where to focus, what to pay attention to, what to block, and how to stop caring so fucking much about how I'm presenting myself. I want FREEDOM, goddamn it!

Sincerely,

Ugh Times Infinity

Dear Ugh,

When kids first learn to swim, they always think they're going to drown because they want to keep their faces and mouths out of the water. Their eyes are right there, an inch above the surface of the water, so the whole exercise feels like a battle to stay alive. It's very inefficient, trying to keep your head up while you swim. There's no dog-paddling in the fucking Olympics, because dog paddling is slow and torturous and no one who can swim well would ever use such a shitty stroke.

Once a kid learns to put his or her face down into the water, though, the whole swimming thing goes from a terrible, frightening battle to a relaxing process of discovery. Suddenly your body feels buoyant and graceful. Whereas the surface of the water feels violent and unnerving, under the water things are calm and quiet and gorgeous. You can look around, dive deeper, return to the surface. Suddenly, you have choices. Suddenly, you are free.

Right now you're dog paddling—you’re fighting off your feelings, mostly with your circular thoughts—and you're wondering why you're so exhausted and angry. Meanwhile, other people you know are disappearing under the water, and emerging looking more relaxed and happier, but you just stay pissed off and tired. You try to solve the problem, mostly by thinking about it until you feel terrible. You blame yourself. You wonder if your husband's suffering is also your fault. (You were to blame for everything when you were young, after all. Why not now?)

You write: "I'm always doubting who I am and what I should be doing. I used to be—when I was a small child—very outgoing and charming. But I was brought up to be obedient and self-abnegating, and that's what I became, as well as shy and awkward. At the same time I was scolded for those things."

You were taught to control everything that you felt, in other words. And then you were taught to second-guess those controlling behaviors, so even the act of self-discipline felt discouraging and disheartening to you. You weren't permitted to have your own joyful experiences, and then you were chastised for not being joyful enough. (This is the parenting style of people who fucking hate themselves, by the way.)

Lines from your letter sound just like Pink Floyd lyrics for a reason. It's sadly very common, this feeling that we were beaten back like weeds and we lost something important along the way. Roger Waters describes dog-paddling like this:

"When I was a child I had a fever
My hands swelled just like two balloons,
Now I have that feeling once again
I can't explain, you would not understand
This is not how I am."

The dog paddling of neuroticism feels like isolation, like longing, like struggling against something impossible. "I'm not like this! I'm really not!" Something is wrong, something was wrong, something will always be wrong. You were outgoing and charming. You were redirected towards obedience, and even that was not OK. You had something to say, you were hushed. You became grumpy, and your shitty attitude was to blame for your dad leaving. Now you've got that feeling once again, that you might be to blame for your husband leaving you, eventually.

"I can't explain. You would not understand. This is not how I am."

This is the heartbreak of "Comfortably Numb," when this moment of longing—which could be full and rich and gorgeous—instead gets bottle up, thrown away, disowned. I WAS HAPPY BEFORE, AND THEN I GOT SICK. That reflection itself is an opportunity, a door that opens – you've learned something real and true about yourself. But then, the door closes: I CAN'T EXPLAIN. YOU WOULDN'T FUCKING GET IT.

And what comes next? What ends the early thirties crisis, you ask? Settling, numbness, resolving not to try to explain, assuming that no one will understand. So tired of dog paddling, so tired of struggling against the surface of the water, all splashy exhausting violence with so little reward.

Many people stop trying to understand their feelings at around your age. It's wearing them out too much. Like you, every time they have "an epiphany,' it only opens up the door to another warehouse of issues to sift through." So they choose to feel LESS instead.

"There is no pain, you are receding,
A distant ship smoke on the horizon."

This is where you are. You can 1) keep dog-paddling and become a certified neurotic, always exhausted, always angry. Or you can 2) turn it all off, power down, and give up on trying, because it's too hard. Or, you can 3) dive down under the water and feel your way through this and see everything you have, everything you're made of, everything you're NOT made of, everything you love, everything you want to embrace and enjoy about being alive right now.

Dog-paddling is not serving you very well. You're trying to prove that this is not who you are. There's no flow, no grace, no gliding. You're monitoring your husband too closely, wondering when he'll notice that you're the cause of everything bad. Stop looking at him. He's working and he's trying to make art and he needs a little space to manage that balance. Manage your expectations and make yourself heard, but be very concise and back off. Allow him his own time and space to grow. Looming over him with your unhappiness and your scolding will never, ever help, not even a little bit. You are hyper-aware of him, and right now, as far as I can tell, he's not a problem in your life unless you make him one.

You're not going to arrive at that moment of truth underwater if you keep looking at him. Likewise, you can't sit and watch other apparently graceful swimmers and wonder why you're not them. I know you know this. But watching them glide will make you sink like a stone. Outward success means nothing unless you're at peace with yourself. Don't assume they're all doing great just because they look like they are.

The trouble here lies in both your bad habits and in your poorly formed identity. Your identity until now has depended on how other people see you. Starting today, you have to feel your way towards an identity that makes sense to you and you alone. Your moments of freedom, of possibility, of feeling in touch with yourself, have been blotted out by your anxiety and neediness and struggle to blame yourself and NOT blame yourself and blame yourself all over again.

You need to learn how to feel what you feel without anxious color commentary. If your therapy sessions are nothing but anxious color commentary with no feeling, that means your therapist isn't pushing you to go deeper into your feelings. That may mean you need a new therapist. Or it may mean that you need to talk to your therapist about your perception that the process is stalling out.

Outside of therapy, I think you need to find some way to welcome and accept your feelings instead of always retreating into circular thinking and solutions and self-doubt and self-blame. You can do this by yourself. Forget all interpretation. Put some headphones on, turn on some music, and give yourself a moment, as a gift. Not a moment to straighten up. Not a moment to fix something. Not a moment to wonder if your husband really cares. Not a moment to wonder what other people have that you don't have. A moment to put your face in the water and swim under the surface, alone.

Let yourself feel something without thinking. Picture an outgoing, charming child who was told to stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Until there was nothing left.

Crying is putting your face in the water.

Put your face in the water. This is not about your husband. This is not about what other people think of you. This is not about how you stack up. This is not about whining. This is not about smoking a joint in order to calm your anxiety in order to paint. This is not about becoming more productive. This is not about becoming someone stronger and better and more lovable. This is not about looking for an epiphany.

Dip under the surface. Water filters the light in the strangest ways. Pay attention. Sounds change under water. Yelling and splashing above the surface comes through in a warped arc to your ears. Your clumsy body feels like a smooth fish underwater.

Swim through the raw pain of mourning what you could've been, a different kind of a person, a charming, outgrowing child who grew into a charming, outgoing woman. But you were stopped in your tracks. Let that injustice surround you, thick as water.

Stay there, surrounded by feeling. Don't clean up. Don't fix anything. Don't rush to funnel the smallest bit of inspiration into SOMETHING SOME PAINTING SOME PROOF YOU'RE MAKING PROGRESS YOU'RE GETTING BETTER.

Make no progress. Analyze nothing. Stay with your feelings.

And even now you're thinking, "BUT WHAT DO I—I MEAN—WHAT SHOULD I—I DON'T GET—“ Don't think. There is no careful plan to follow. This is where your freedom will begin: Learning to feel what you feel without judgment.

It will take tremendous practice and effort to do this. You might consider getting a CD of Eckhart Tolle (I know, Christ Almighty, Pink Floyd and Eckhart Tolle, DID YOU WANDER INTO THE WRONG SULFUROUS POOL AT ESALEN?) I don't love most meditation CDs but I do love Tolle's philosophical German weirdo routine, which is all about allowing yourself space to feel without WAITING, without EXPECTATIONS, without WANTING MORE.

You have to learn to give value to your experience. You haven't valued your own experience since you were very small. You can't think your way to this. You have to feel your way there.

What will come out of you dedicating yourself to just this—feeling over thinking, experiencing the moment instead of worrying and planning and fixing all the time? I don't know. Maybe you'll discover that you want to work part-time and paint part-time, to make your painting time feel more like a luxury you give yourself instead of feeling like this huge gulf of failure that you dog-paddle through every day. Maybe you'll discover how YOU feel about your husband (not how he "really" feels about you or thinks about you), and you'll want to walk right up and kiss his face and be still with him for a minute.

You CAN explain. He WILL understand. That's what love is. Daring to explain. Daring to be understood. "To Do" lists and conflicts and bad habits tend to fix themselves when you open up to each other without fear.

Likewise, fear tends to recede when you look straight at your fears and feel those fears without interpretation. Sometimes just noticing fear—without trying to control it, without trying to analyze it—can make that fear just another rich dimension of your rich, rich, life.

So look: This terrible tidal wave of insecurity you're feeling is actually a pathway to a new kind of happiness for you. You've been beating back your insecurity. Other people are repelled by that. It's a defensive, self-protective, angry state. It's a state of conflict. It's an unaware state—violent, unhinged, sinking fast. If you stop and admit your insecurities to yourself and allow them to exist, you will draw people to you. That doesn't mean that attracting people is THE GOAL. That doesn't mean that you're walking around saying, "Oh look at face, I'm breaking out. Listen to my stutter. See how awkward I am?" You allow your feelings to be, even if you hear a soundtrack that tells you, "You are bad, you are to blame, you are weak." You listen to this soundtrack and feel how it weighs down your heart. You feel it, and these judgments, this noise, starts to seem more and more arbitrary.

In the past, you would paddle faster. Now, you will simply listen. You will become more and more accustomed to seizing your own moments of peace, of richness, of fear, of inspiration, of sadness, of longing. Owning your longing and sadness feels good. It feeds your soul, owning the whole kaleidoscope within you.

Maybe eventually you'll write down your thoughts and feelings. Maybe you'll talk about it. Maybe you'll go on an afternoon walk alone, every single day. Maybe you will stand up and stretch your arms above your head, and then smile to yourself and put on water for tea. Maybe you'll think about birds, how they dart around between trees and fly into windows. They're so small and fragile and busy.

There will be pain, and calm. Everything will be slow and sad and beautiful. You will marvel over how brave you are.

This is where you begin. Lean into what you feel, without shame, without worry. Being yourself without apology depends on accepting and embracing your feelings. Freedom and following your heart depend on promising yourself that you will be good to yourself, that you will care for and love yourself no matter what, that you will stop picking up where your parents left off and treating yourself like a bad child who's fucking up EVERYTHING. You'll have to do this every day, in order to make it a habit. You'll have to stop dog-paddling every single day and say, "No, I'm doing things a new way now. I'm giving myself some time to feel my way, to enjoy the moment." That means that every single time you notice that you're rushing, and you're angry at yourself, you slow down and ask yourself how to do the same thing with less thought and more feeling and more deep breaths. Happiness is not getting somewhere faster. Happiness is enjoying the process. If you don't enjoy the process, you might as well not be headed anywhere, because you won't enjoy getting there, either.

You say you want to decide where to devote your energies. Don't decide anything, just see where your energies lead you. You say you want to get some lost feeling back with your husband. Find your own feeling and then share a little of that with him. You say you want to be free. YOU ARE ALREADY FREE.

You're probably going to find my answer frustratingly vague. But if you invite your feelings in and allow yourself to be hurt and needy and elated and confused without judgment, a giant rush of gratitude and sensuality and happiness will surge in you and then, slowly, the pragmatic struggles of your life will feel far less thorny and impossible. Slowly. But you have to devote yourself to this practice, which is all about believing in your independent experience and your place in this world. It's all about replacing "Stop. Stop. Stop." with "Welcome!"

Turn off your mind and open your eyes. Stop repeating that same old story, and look around you. You are already free. This moment, in your messy apartment, in the heat, among your half-finished paintings, in the unnerving dusk, with the accumulated disappointments of years and years and years, puddling around you? This moment is yours, and it's pure and miraculous and sad and sweet. Swim, slowly, calmly, through this sad, sweet moment, through this sad, sweet infinity. You are already free.

Polly

Do you doggy paddle but want to learn how to do a butterfly stroke and eat fourteen thousand pancakes a day like Michael Phelps? Write to Polly and discuss!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

Photo by Jon Page

The post Ask Polly: I Have Absolutely No Idea What I Need to Be Happy appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

I've been dating a guy for about four months. We’re madly in love, despite being different in more ways than we are alike. Politics, education, socio-economic status, religion—you name it, we’re on almost opposite ends of the spectrum. However, we’re best friends through and through. A month or so into our relationship, he sat me down and shed a tear telling me how in love and how certain he was that he wanted to marry me. I am right there, too. Then shit started to get weird.

One night at a party, he got so angry about my friend and I laughing about this idiot we knew in high school who would whip out his dick and wave it around at us, that he ended up storming out of the party, walking five miles home, screaming at me about my sexual past (never happened with the dick-whipper-outer by the way), and then sleeping on the couch. In the morning I was like “WTF” and he was like, “I hate that you have a past.” Lots of tears (his), and lots of “processing," and we were fine.

A week later, it started hurting when he peed. Shit shit shit shit shit. A year and a half ago, I had a horrific genital herpes outbreak. Since then, I’ve been tested in all possible ways, four different times, and doctors continue to say that it’s HSV-1 (the cold sore kind) that sometimes “jumps” for a one-time genital outbreak, never again to resurface. I even went to the doctor for the whole battery of tests a week into this relationship and she was dismissive about it—saying it would probably never come back. I should have said something to him a long time before I did, but as soon as it became apparent what was going on downstairs with him, I came clean. Cue three weeks of (semi-righteous) chaos.

He said that a) I’m dishonest and he can’t trust me because I didn’t disclose my “status” earlier and b) it’s hard to get over my sketchy past when it’s “on his dick.” It’s pretty easy for me to go into periods of self-loathing (though I do work every single day to get better about this—and your column is a huge contributor, BTW). Regardless, I cried and apologized and told him I’ll do anything to gain his trust again.

In the past few weeks, he’s had random outbursts where he’ll assume that I’m cheating on him and that I’m a terrible person who just fucks guys and hands out herpes. What provokes him is either nothing at all, or my getting a random Facebook inbox from some idiot I slept with over a decade ago—which I never so much as acknowledge. But I waver between being understanding and accommodating because I DID hurt him profoundly, and being absolutely appalled. I’ve never cheated, nor will I ever cheat. Not my thing, and, as I told him, one of the awesome things I have to offer in a relationship. (It’s worth noting that in the midst of all of this tumult, we managed to get back on track and skip while holding hands through fields of rainbows and shit.)

So as all of this was going on, I’d sit down with the intention of asking you what the fuck to do. But then I’d hear you saying something like (and obviously in a much more clever and perceptive way) that there are red flags everywhere in this situation and I’d realize I already knew the answer.

The reason I wrote today is because he’s 1,100 miles away, yet we’re at it again. Did I mention that he plays independent professional baseball every summer in some random town (he swears this is his last year), and will be gone for the next 90 days? We’re doing this long-distance thing, and one week in, shit hits the fan. Things were great. I’m at home doing the “Polly Thing” and cultivating the best parts of my life and worshipping at the great temple of ME so that I can be even better on the other end of this separation.

But this morning, out of nowhere, he said, “I have to ask you: have you been talking to XX and XX (past idiot boyfriends) while I’ve been gone?” After assuring him that I’ve blocked them completely out of my life as he requested several times before, I straight up burst into tears. “I’m sitting here thinking about you, sending you little gifts and letters, and listening to your god damn baseball games on the radio EVERY NIGHT, and you’re accusing me of cheating on you?!”

Then it hit my psychology-major brain like a zap from the Milgram machine. Borderline Fucking Personality Disorder. Yes, I know that a psychology undergrad doesn’t mean even close to a shit, but check this out:

1. Borderlines tend to “split” between idealizing someone (“I’m 100% sure I want to marry you”) and thinking they’re a terrible person (“You lied and I got herpes; there’s nothing you wouldn’t lie about”).

2. Borderlines think in black and white. (“You’ve been with more people than me, you’re a ho-bag who can never be trusted.” and then “We’re perfect for each other and we’re going to be together forever.”)

3. Borderlines fly into rages over small things (can you say “dick-waving incident”?)

4. The Borderline credo is “I hate you, don’t leave me.” This morning, in the same breath he was telling me that he could never trust me, he told me how afraid he was that I was going to leave him.

And so on.

I know. Therapy, therapy, therapy (although at $250/month and a $5,000 deductible paired with non-covered mental health services, Obamacare is making that a hard pill to swallow). And I know, RED FLAGS WAVING IN MY FACE, no my face IS a red flag.

But I love him. So now what?

Sincerely,

Red Flag Face

Dear Red Flag Face,

Fuck. We really should've covered this material way back at the beginning of class. Right after our opening segment on "Kicking Tepid Men To The Curb, or How To Come On His Hampton Blouse And Move On," we should've studied "Dangerous Dudes Who Look Like The Cure To Tepid Guys But Who Secretly Want To Control You And Turn You Into An Obedient Dream Barbie."

Because, after years and years of fucking around with tepid dudes, guess what? Your immune system is susceptible to more than genital herpes; it’s susceptible to super-intense non-tepid guys who will look you right in the eyes and say, "YOU ARE EVERYTHING I'VE EVER DREAMED OF." Typically, they'll do this within minutes of meeting you. Typically, you won't notice that this is insane, because you've finally landed in the middle of the fairy tale of your little girl fantasies. Typically, it will take months if not years to extract yourself from this situation, because you want love and this looks just like love and you feel love inside and you don't want to go back to kicking around with lukewarm, flinchy deadbeats again.

And if you have a little self-hatred onboard (Hello, almost every smart person alive!) you are particularly susceptible to this kind of a guy. His abandonment issues seem adorable. You will heal everything! His black-and-white thinking feels like home. Wasn't your dad a little like that? Didn't your mom fly into rages over nothing? His love for you in spite of recognizing what a hateful slut you are feels just about right. Don't you feel the same way about yourself? Haven't you worked hard to love yourself in spite of the fact that, at your core, you're just a hateful slut?

When you fall for someone who needs needs needs you, and worries that you'll leave at any moment—but who also hates you for having existed before you met him, in a different town where you could (and will!) track down your scummy ex-boyfriends? That reflects your still very fragile, incomplete relationship with yourself. You haven't accepted yourself yet: you're still afraid, still at war, still unsure of what you're entitled to. Basically, you're in danger, because you're not ready for a mature relationship yet. You sort of long for a codependent "You Are The Everything" love, replete with unhealthy boundaries and spitty outbursts over shit that makes no sense.

But let's be fair: Even people who are pretty together will fall for this. It's not all that easy to resist someone who swears YOU ARE THE ONE, cries about it, tells you everything, shows you his soft, vulnerable center. But when he shifts into anger? That's not just unpleasant, it's dangerous. And does any of it really make sense? I'm not sure it does. When a boyfriend is angry at you all the time for reasons that don't make sense? That's not a relationship that's going to last.

I get that picking up herpes is not exactly ideal for him. You should've said something, clearly. But here you are. You're at the very start of a relationship with a guy who—I’m not going to diagnose him with a personality disorder from here, but let's just say he has abandonment issues, is very jealous, is very sensitive about your past (but somehow I doubt you're his first girlfriend), and is prone to angry outbursts to the point where you already feel like you're walking on eggshells, and you're starting to burst into tears after placating him for too long. This doesn't look good. Not only doesn't it look good, but it looks a little dangerous. This is the kind of guy who can do a lot of damage to your self esteem, even with the best of intentions. This is a guy who tells you, "It's hard to get over your sketchy past when it's on my dick."

That statement is just wrong. If you weren't angry at yourself for your so-called sketchy past, you wouldn't stand for that; it doesn't take sleeping around like crazy to pick something up, least of all some oral herpes that made the jump or whatever the fuck. And if you broke up with him right now, what would happen? Would you become that slut who gave him herpes? Would that be his story? Think about the kind of guy who says things like that. Is that him? And if that is him, is that really a guy you want to align yourself with? Because if you heard some random dude talking that way, you wouldn't in a million years dream of dating him.

Let's not even talk about the fact that men who freak out about slutty pasts usually have some pretty fucked up regressive patriarchal notions floating around in their heads about glorious, unsullied vaginas, untouched by humpy, filthy, foul competitor dogs like themselves. No. Saying, "Your slutty past has fouled up my dick"? That alone is more than a red flag. That's an invitation to suffering. That's an invitation that says, "You matter mostly in relation to how good you make me look and feel, and therefore you will be blamed for every single way you fuck with my life, even as I beg you to never, ever leave me." That's an invitation from an overgrown, confused, pissed off guy. God bless him. He will grow up at some point, I'm sure he will. Look with clear eyes on who he is now, though, because you're going to get deeper and deeper into this stuff as you stay, and commit, and move in together. You're going to get stuck and you already know there's a problem here.

Can you imagine someone who would be much better for him? A sweet little unsullied girl? Devoted, with no past? Doesn't that say something? Let him have HER instead. Bless him and let him go find his Dream Girl Without a Past.

Let me tell you a story that once felt like a fairy tale. I had just ended a relationship with a lovable man-child. Sweet, idealistic, all clumsy affection and big bear paws and an Unfrozen Caveman inability to deal with mundane realities of life. On our second night together, his stereo woke us up, blasting "Garbage Man" by G. Love (great song, by the way). "Shit, sorry, it keeps doing that," he said. Yes, his stereo was waking him up EVERY NIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, and gosh, what could he possibly do to fix it? Keep in mind the stereo was resting on a cardboard box, and we were sleeping on a futon covered in a sleeping bag.

So he was very young and a little immature. A work in progress, that's all. Not tepid, just not ready yet. But he really made me want A Mature Guy Who Knew Exactly What He Wanted.

So I broke up with him and went to a party one night and ended up talking to a very intense man who looked me right in the eyes and asked me heavy questions about my relationship with my mother. It was exhilarating! He was so sure, the first night we met, that we were destined to be together forever and ever! This was a change! This was romantic! This was How It's Supposed To Go!

I moved in with him three months later, and it was immediately clear that I'd made a big mistake. He didn't know how to relax. He acted fascinated by me but didn't really seem to be listening to anything I said, and his responses to important subjects were always strangely combative or evasive. Even in regular, benign conversations, I always felt like I was being subtly batted around and rerouted and cut off at the pass. He was a nice person, and I loved him. He was also the kind of guy who said things like "Whoa. Are you sure you want to eat that?" when I sliced a slab of cheese off the block. I was not a shrinking violet, either. "Yes, I will ALWAYS eat ALL of the fucking cheese, so simmer down about it," was my answer. But I was jittery and apologetic around him in other ways. He wanted to be soft and kind, but he had anger issues that he struggled with. He drove like a maniac. He was a magnet for other full-of-rage assholes, in their cars, on the street. One guy chased us through a neighborhood and then blocked our exit, and even then, my boyfriend—fearing for his life—was condescending and combative.

One day, furious that someone had parked in "his" spot—ON THE STREET!—he pulled his car up to the bumper of the other car, so that they were touching. As we walked up to our front porch, I pictured leading two little kids by the hand, across the street, while this guy lost his shit over something incredibly small and stupid. I thought about how that would feel, to always be calming the kids down, reassuring them that daddy just had a really bad temper, that daddy just got unaccountably mad over some stupid tiny things that don't matter.

It's nice to be in love. The stakes are really fucking high, though. You can't align yourself with an emotional terrorist. You can't. It's too hard. You might ALMOST be able to pull it off for a few months, from a distance. But once you're in deeper? You're living together, you're thinking about marriage, the wedding is being planned, you're pregnant, and he’s freaking out over something tiny, and you feel like you can't back out anymore?

The hothead boyfriend of mine punched me in the eye, hard, when I tried to wake him up to talk to him one night when we were arguing. Nothing like that happened before, and he was immediately apologetic, and nothing like that happened for the next two months it took to break up with him. We went to couples' therapy and he apologized, over and over and over. But look: His instinct, when I grabbed his shoulder to shake him awake, was to pound a fist into the side of my head, hard enough to give me a black eye. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? I felt sad for him, because I knew a lot of his anger wasn't a conscious choice, and I didn't want to abandon him. I thought he would be so lonely without me. Wrong! He got married less than a year later, and divorced a year after that. Then he found another girlfriend. Women will always like him. He works on himself pretty hard, and honestly, he has a big heart. I wish him nothing but happiness. But if I'd stayed with him, he would've made me miserable.

He's a good example for you to hear about, Red Flag Face. Because even though he's a really lovable person, he didn't make sense to me. His concerns, his emotions, his rage unsettled me. Nothing added up. I was not the right woman for him; I was only going to piss him off.

I don't think you're right for this guy. I think he knows that, too. You both want it to work very badly. Me and the intense guy REALLY wanted to be THE ANSWER for each other. But we weren't.

You have more growing to do, so you'll feel stronger and more independent and you'll naturally be the MOST attracted to men who support your strength and independence. I'm sorry! I know you're in love. But even if you decide to stay with him, I don't think this stuff is about to go away. You need to find someone who's more like you, that's all, someone who says things that make simple sense to you, who doesn't freak out about stuff that feels wrong to you, who makes many of the same choices you've made—good and bad—and who understands, quickly, when you explain them, because he can relate. A guy who's more like you would never blink an eye at your so-called slutty past, and he'd never guilt you repeatedly over something you were explicitly instructed by a doctor not to worry about. A guy who's more like you would still be upset about the STD, but he wouldn't keep throwing it in your face like it proved something about what an untrustworthy whore you are.

I hate to discourage two people in love. But the stakes are really high. You know something is wrong and you need to trust your feelings and be brave about this. Being in love is really nice. But being in love with someone who makes sense, who is calm and supportive and confident, who accepts exactly who you are right now, who doesn't want you to change a thing, who doesn't blame you for being a regular, flawed human being with a rich past and rich future? That feels amazing. It's a love that includes feeling GREAT about who you are, with all of your little dents and shortcomings, with all of your big thoughts and dreams and insecurities and secret fears.

It's smart to say no to something that doesn't feel right, that can't feel right, no matter how hard you try. You need to show yourself that you won't sell yourself short and settle for someone who can never accept you, flaws and all. Being strong will be tough, but it will feel good. You might be lonely, but you'll know from now on you won't settle for anyone who isn't good to you.

If you're apologizing like crazy and it's still not ok, that tells you a lot. Stop apologizing for yourself. True love doesn't demand an apology.

Polly

Do you want to swap your giant red flags out for beautiful handcrafted tapestries made from the finest horse hair? Write to Polly and discuss!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

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The post Ask Polly: My Boyfriend Won't Stop Raging About My Sexual History appeared first on The Awl.

Hi Polly,

One of the goals I have set for myself this year is to be a kinder person: more supportive and forgiving of my friends, more friendly and open to people I've just met, more approachable and compassionate with strangers. The problem is that this is a huge struggle because I am not naturally compassionate with people I don't already like.

I have two reasons for wanting to be kinder: to ~make the world a better place~ in an abstract karmic kind of way, and also (this one is selfish) to fight against my depression, defensiveness, and general negative attitude toward life by opening myself up to more experiences. The first one is all well and good, but it's not such an immediate motivating force, and the second one has its own built-in issues. When you're already sensitive to the thought that people won't like you, any small "no" and any negative aspect to a person makes you shrink away and turn your back preemptively.

Both my parents have very negative personalities and apparently deal with it in one of two ways: by sinking into a nasty, angry depression-pit or by maintaining iron control of everyone and denying that anything is wrong while things melt down around them. They had an acrimonious divorce about 10 years ago, when I was in middle school, and things are still raw. Being seven years older than my younger sister, I became her advocate and protector, and also tried to smooth things over between my parents wherever I could. I have definitely learned a lot of criticism from them, both of myself and of everyone else.

I've been working really hard to be less judgmental and the constant negative mental narration is much better, but I still catch myself evaluating new people that I meet for their quality as a friend, and if I don't feel that they meet up to all these expectations I have of intelligence, being interesting, being accepting, etc., I don't spend any time or effort getting to know them better. I find a lot of people tiresome, boring, annoying, etc., and then make no effort to disguise my annoyance with them. It's really asshole-y. Even with my friends, I'm not as gentle as I would like to be. I snap at them if I'm in a bad mood, I'm not as forgiving of their imperfections as they are of mine, and I'm told that I'm an intense conversationalist, I strongly defend my opinions, and that I have a lot of them.

Plus, I'm hungry for a relationship with emotional intimacy, but when I begin to get close to someone that I feel safe with and attracted to, they don't feel the same way. Either that or they are attracted to me "too much" or whatever, or want things to be too serious, and then I leap away myself. It's fucked up!!! (This is complicated by my bisexuality, because sometimes I will get intensely emotionally close with a girl, feel sparks flying, try to make a move, and she will tell me she loves me but only as a friend.)

The best and most beloved friends that I have are so generous with their emotional energy, their compassion, their interest in someone else's life, and it looks as natural to them as breathing. I try to open up to everything life has, and be kind and compassionate, and let things happen to me, and I'm burned out and even snappier and more defensive than ever after two measly weeks. Self-compassion is an important part of this (right?) and I've really been improving with negative self-talk, body image, blah blah, but I can't seem to shake the outward-directed nastiness.

I guess the dilemma here is: How do you continue opening yourself to the world when you've been burned (or thought you've been burned, or burned someone yourself) so many times? How do you take your shriveled up angry sad heart and rehydrate it?

Thanks P.

Nasty Girl

Dear Nasty Girl,

As a former/occasional Nasty Girl, I take great satisfaction in thinking that Ask Polly might serve as a beacon unto the nasty, a place of refuge for those sharp of tongue and intense of conversation, who are gently and not-so-gently corrected by others, over and over again, like naughty little dogs on choke chains who will never, ever learn. Some of the greatest and most talented writers and artists were nasty motherfuckers who could never, ever learn—but this world we live in has maybe the lowest tolerance for nastiness ever. We, perhaps unfairly or perhaps logically, associate nastiness with prejudice and hate crimes and running over poor children in your Hummer and kicking poor kittens with your $4000 Hobnailed Prada Platform Ankle Boots. Nastiness is treated as a byproduct of religious fervor or racism or ignorance or misogyny or extreme privilege.

But what about nastiness that's a byproduct of the soul's gentle bleatings, from deep within, over the supreme stupidity and obvious terribleness of what passes for pleasant conversation today? What about nastiness that rises in one's throat when one observes the popular dipshits of the world, raking in millions with their mediocre flailings, while thoughtful eccentrics wallow and languish in obscurity? What about the nastiness that bubbles up when one realizes that some of one's closest compadres are content to blather endlessly about the same old tired shit, repeating tropes they've heard on TV and in strident but gutless Op-Ed columns and in bland, repetitive nonfiction bestsellers in which one single stupid idea (Work Less! Be More French! Psychopaths Are Fascinating!) is belabored in sloppy sentences that tangle together in terrible stultifying piles?

Please understand I'm not arguing against bad taste so much as laziness. I'm certainly not taking a stand against, say, watching the Stanley Cup finals and high-fiving over fried cheese and watery beers, which sounds awesome. I'm not even talking about thoughtlessness, because a lack of neuroticism can be refreshing, as long as it's not accompanied by shitty judgment and the dull, humorless, rigid nothingness that today passes for an acceptable personality, as long as it's sugared over in today's appropriate flavors of Yes Man affability.

So let's just acknowledge that today's world may abhor grumpy assholes, but many grumpy assholes are thoughtful and open-hearted, and many open-hearted-seeming types are inwardly rigid and ignorant and blind in ways that fuck the semi-aware, fuck the planet and everything on it, and fuck the small and the oppressed who are struggling mightily to get a foothold in a cruel world.

Another tough thing is that, when you're young, you can really screw up your entire worldview if you lazily persist in hanging around people who don't make the least bit of sense to you. For example, I was once drawn to those who drank the most and smoked the most pot without getting sloppy or weirdly sentimental. I liked sharp teeth and snide remarks and also the occasional high five. Not total dicks, mind you—I do have deathly accurate dick-dar. But I have always had a weakness for a good rollicking gaggle of funny, emotionally withholding escapists and addicts and also just basic dudes who like deconstructing mindless blockbusters. Those who are allergic to talk of feelings. Condescenders. And also gushing enthusiasts. How do they find each other? They do, and when they do, they high-five over having found each other.

Even as I write this, I long for that swaggery douchebag scene a little, because there was a lot of bluster and self-confidence in the mix. But here's the thing: As a nasty intense woman without the proper disguises in place, it's very difficult to let your glorious freak flag fly among conformist high-fivers. They don't know they're conformists, of course, since they're all smart and weird in their own high-fiving way. They make observations, they have senses of humor. But when you throw out your own loose, nutty shit, they kick it away and snort and you are agreed to be Not Quite Right. Some conformists will only embrace ideas that come out of crappy repetitive nonfiction bestsellers and sportscasters' mouths.

Conformists need a strong leader to tell them who to like and who not to like, whether that leader is on the TV or in fully sanctioned and embraced books. If you're not a leader and you're young and not that strong, they are going to tell you everything original and flawed and brilliant about you is fucking queer and stupid. SO FUCK THEM. Sometimes you feel unkind around people like that because you know that they'll never make space for you. Noticing this is not nasty, it's adaptive.

At age 21, surrounding yourself with people who reflect your own self-hatred back at you is a fucking catastrophe. By the same token, if you're running around with tons of self-hatred on board, most social relations are going to get pretty catastrophic.

Case in point: Let's talk about truly open-hearted women who support exactly who you are. I had friends like that in high school, somewhat miraculously. Because I was angry and was so used to being rejected by my own undeniably loving but confused Little Brute Family, I didn't realize it. I assumed my high school lady friends were faking it, that they didn't really love me the way they pretended to. I felt this way because I didn't understand how to love them for who they were yet. And when one friend tried to hook up with MY hook up (not even a boyfriend), I was ENRAGED. That proved she didn't really love me – it proved that NONE OF THEM loved me. I thought I was the only one with Real Feelings and everyone else was cavalier – they simply knew how to ACT like they cared. I thought they were masters of illusion.

So that's when I chased after the swaggery douchebags described above, in college and maybe beyond.

It took so much time and distance to make sense of all this. I had to write a memoir about my confusion, just to make sense of it. My book is all about beating back your own nastiness and fear and confusion after growing up in a Little Brute Family.

There are obviously a million abstractions and conflicts to explore here, but let's get concrete. You want to be a kinder person. Quieting those self-hating sounds in your head, as you've been trying to do, is definitely the first step. When a voice in your head says, "You are such a fucking asshole. You are so impatient and fault-finding, just like your mother," you have to notice. Just noticing is sometimes enough, because over time you'll say, "Jesus, every single tiny thing I do is a major mistake, according to this voice." And the voice will get quieter and less relentless, slowly but surely.

Remember that everyone with a conscience and a tough past eats themselves alive if they don't work hard not to. You are who you are and you are trying hard to improve yourself. You're working at acceptance. And maybe you need to accept that life is not endless communing with smart, hilarious, like-minded geniuses. Everyone is flawed. Everyone can sound boring at some point. People often—OFTEN!—sound much more trivial and shallow than they actually are. That's how we're taught to sound, in our culture. Trivial and shallow win the day.

So accept your flawed, moody self and accept the flawed, moody, annoying world around you. Shallowness is sometimes a retreat from darkness. High-fiving is a way of celebrating small shit, as a means of not feeling contemptuous or sullen about bigger shit. When you're young, you don't know that almost everyone around you struggles with their own judgments and nastiness and moods. People are usually more complicated than they appear.

The better you get at allowing yourself space to be flawed, the better you'll be at not lashing out at other people's flaws. And the better you'll be at turning your back on people who basically don't like you. People who do love you are almost always worth keeping, even if they themselves are very different from you. If they support your weirdness, and allow you space, then you should work to support them, too. When you really lean into differences, explore them, take an interest in them instead of feeling threatened by them, then it's possible to celebrate them. It's possible to be that kind person you want to be without making a Herculean effort to do so. Taking a real interest, asking questions, shutting off your bad shriveled brain and exploring in a new land, is much more substantive and rewarding than simply TRYING TO BE NICER.

Writing down what you've learned and observed about your friends and other people can help. Sometimes you won't like what you observe. But other times you'll let your friends and acquaintances blossom and show their weird selves and you'll be able to appreciate them. Writing down what you're grateful for every night also helps to cultivate gratitude, and open-heartedness. Any writing you do that allows your feelings to flood in, even if it's all anger and sadness some days, is going to help you.

But you also have to know your own limits and respect them. If you start compulsively giving and giving and giving, that won't do shit for you. It will only make you dislike everyone, and dislike yourself for not being someone who can give endlessly. Give what you can, but don't overachieve. Let yourself be a fucking person. This is one of the big lessons of motherhood: when you give much more than you can naturally tolerate giving, it just makes you grumpy. Your kids don't need that. An hour of total focus and enthusiasm, offered after you exercise and get a little work done, feels much healthier and happier for everyone involved than several long hours of half-assed trying to "bond" while feeling pissy because you've been pulling ugly outfits onto Barbies for too long.

So that's what I'd say: Embrace who you are. Give yourself space. Shut down the "fuck you" voice in your head. Respect your own limits. Do what you can but don't do what you can't. Don't punish yourself for being you. And don't spend time with people who aren't equipped to embrace you or appreciate you, who will tell you you're rotten simply because they hate difference.

Nasty Girls can be open-hearted, if they embrace their own flaws, if they embrace their softness, if they embrace the inherent contradictions therein, if they embrace the inherent contradictions in everyone else and in everything else. People who righteously point out contradictions all the time are usually people who are too rigid and dumb to recognize that each and every one of us is in conflict constantly. The most serene Buddhist in the universe recognizes that contradiction lives at the center of everything. People who claim moral high ground or even total consistency are not to be trusted for a second.

Right now you're trying hard to be nicer and more open-hearted, but you're bludgeoning yourself for it. "BE KINDER, ASSHOLE! BE NICER, YOU SORRY OVERLY CRITICAL PIECE OF SHIT!" The soul rebels from that. It will make you even meaner if you don't respect its wishes. When I say to myself, "WRITE FASTER! BE MORE BRILLIANT, YOU SLUGGISH FUCK!" the fairy godmother in my soul says, "Bibbedy bobbity boo! You will now be devoid of original creative thoughts for days on end!"

You are becoming kinder, and sometimes you feel really angry and mean. That's OK. Give yourself credit for small efforts, and give yourself credit for WANTING to be kinder, which proves that you aren't the total dick you think you are. Give yourself credit for having a sharp mind that likes to slice and dice. Give yourself credit for having friends who do care, who love flinty, frustrating you, in spite of everything.

Give yourself credit for being a Nasty Girl. Dave Chappelle and Lorde and Joan Didion and Kanye West and Tori Amos and Jonathan Ames and Elaine Dundy and Adrienne Rich are all nasty girls. John Updike and Cynthia Heimel and Sofia Coppola and David Chase and Stevie Nicks and David Sedaris and Jennifer Egan and Kim Gordon and Iris Owens are nasty girls, too. It's ok to be bored and annoyed and sick inside. Put it somewhere. Write something freakishly mean and scathing and gloriously self-aware and self-abnegating and grandiose and sad. Create something soaring and melancholy and frustrating. You are full of so many charged, combustible thoughts and feelings. You are full and rich and alive and you deserve to feel what you feel and be who you are. Celebrate the nasty. Lean in, Nasty Girl. Lean the fuck in and be nasty. Not callous. Not withdrawn. Not punishing. Not escaping. Not self-destructing. Engaged and furious and generous and heartbroken and glorious and nasty, nasty, nasty.

Polly

Do you want to wash away all of your nastiness and replace it with a healthy golden glow without chemicals that have been tested on animals? Write to Polly and discuss!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

Photo by Alias

The post Ask Polly: How to Be Nice appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

I don't really know what my real problem is. I can name an array of problems that I have, but I don't know if they are symptomatic, causal, imaginary or just plain over-analyzing. I don't have childhood traumas from which I can say everything started. I only know that these issues manifested themselves when I started university. I've kept diaries on and off for long periods of time and am seeing a therapist regularly for the last 1.5 years. Self-help books gather dust because I don't know if they actually address a problem I have. Or I lose motivation. Ultimately, I feel like I am in stasis. 

On the surface, I've spent the last eight years in two different universities and I've yet to graduate. If that were the only issue, I wouldn't engage in a self-perpetuating cycle of self-pity, self-hate/destruction and apathy. I'm bad at relationships generally, and I don't just mean romantically. It wasn't as much of a problem when I lived a rather sheltered existence as an expat with my family. We had a wide circle of family friends, and my academic ability at the time gave me a confidence to secure good friendships, some of which have been able to last to this day. And all this despite due negligence on my part. It doesn't help that I'm introverted, self-conscious and have insecurities.

I managed to maintain a bit of this at my first university—joined societies and what with being agreeable and trying to please people. I had friends, very good ones too. But, I have a habit of associating my self esteem with academic ability. When I started withdrawing academically, I became even more of a social recluse than I already was. It became difficult to confront people and my family. On the outside, I mustered up a happy exterior to the world. Otherwise, I fled from reality into an online world of internet friendships, TV shows and movies. This removal doubtless compounded my academic failures and frayed my already strained relationships with my peers. 

I know that it is best to be honest about my situation, but I never felt like I was in the position where I could afford to lose the friendships, superficial or not, that I had. I just didn't have that luxury. It was in the anonymity of the web that I found I could better express myself, more as a listener than a speaker. Helping people made me feel better about myself. It relieved the guilt and shame that would gnaw inside me. And however moot some might think these online relationships are, among the few that flourished, I actually found love with a girl after years of contact. We actually met, but despite her being one of the most wonderful people I have met and being very much in love with me, I ruined it with my neglect. I hurt her a lot. 

I thought I'd be honest, in order to make the relationship built on honesty. I told her about how I'd failed year after year at my old university, and now in a different country and uni, was trying a new lease of life on the same degree. But, she then became part of the reality from which I kept running. I never mean to upset her, but I would continually renege on commitments. I went through the same cycles as before. The only difference was that awareness of my relative advancing age gave an added urgency and desperation that things work out. I wanted to make a clean break, and in a foreign country where I'm trying to carve a niche of friends anew, I mentioned my past to as few people as possible. And even then, tried to sanitize it to make myself palatable.

Nothing has really changed. I've only become more withdrawn and reclusive. I don't have any genuinely close friends here, unlike the uni before. And often enough, I sabotage many of my relationships through my self-destructive tendencies. There's never an outburst; I just become a shut in. It's not atypical for me to stay days on end within the confines of my dormitory trying to drown myself from reality. Poor dieting, lack of exercise and being trapped in a virtual world are the typical themes of the day. I know they perpetuate my misery, but it's got to such a stage that I'm slowly growing indifferent to it. 

It's not that I don't try to get out of this rut. Every semester, I usually begin anew. I force myself to engage with other people, keep up with academics, and go for social/ sport activities, some of which do stick even through the depression. But somewhere, I invariably fall short again. And it's not that I can't do the subject material. I know I can because there are times when I really have. But, with every failure and cyclical repetition, it becomes harder and harder to believe in myself, maintain motivation or to live life. I also don't get much inspiration when I imagine what might await me in the future after so much time in academic/social limbo. 
  
The worst part is, I don't even know if I have a real excuse for being what and where I am. Sometimes I wish there was a medical condition to which I could attribute everything. My parents always do their best, and have (esp. my father) never made an issue of the expense I am incurring. They've even tried to grow more understanding as time goes by. Besides, even if I have issues that stem from childhood, surely I should have been able to move past them in eight years.

I'm sorry if this sounds like a stiff life anthology. I wrote everything because I don't know where it comes from or what to do. 

Polly, do you have any suggestions or pointers?

Lost & Plaintive

Dear L & P,

You do have a medical condition. You're depressed, pure and simple. There's no real cause for it beyond your physical make-up and the fact that your parents are footing the bill for whatever you want to do without the slightest complaint—which, while totally generous and loving of them, isn't actually a hundred percent good for you. When you're depressed and you can hide in entertainments and games and online relationships and you have no real reason to strive for anything? Well, that adds up to a pretty dire self-perpetuating picture.

I know that you're reading all kinds of judgment into what I just wrote. You assume that what I mean is, "You're bad and lazy and your parents are wasting their money on you." That is NOT what I mean. What I actually mean is: Most people with your biochemical profile are going to struggle with a situation that's a) amorphous, b) fully-funded and c) offers plenty of escapist options.

When I was 28 years old, I had a dream job writing cartoons that took about two days a week to complete. I worked from home. I made much more money than I could possibly spend as a single person with non-extravagant tastes. I had recently moved to LA and I had a boyfriend but almost no friends in town. Now, for a while, like you, I savored my situation. I painted my entire apartment, trained for a marathon, read great books, wrote lots of songs, started and didn't finish a few screenplays, etc. I went into therapy. I dumped my boyfriend.

But then I was VERY isolated. I stopped wanting to work out. I had tons of time and money, and I was very isolated and my life had no structure. IT WAS VERY DIFFICULT. Every single day, I had to pull myself out of bed and force myself to make good choices. I often failed. I developed some magical thinking, and I had trouble understanding which relationships in my life deserved my focus. I tended to overvalue weird random friendships and looked at long-term, intimate friendships with suspicion, because they demanded more from me.

Today I was watering the plants in my back yard and thinking back to how terrible I felt back then. Every single day was a struggle to make the right choices. Half of the stuff I did socially was mildly disheartening, if not downright depressing. I didn't have close friends around me, so I was hanging out with people who didn't make sense to me. One night, an acquaintance insisted that we go to one of those "cool" clubs with a velvet rope, where the doorman assesses whether or not you're hot enough to go inside. I remember turning to this acquaintance and saying something along the lines of, "Are we seriously going to the front of this line to let this fucking slice of ass cheese tell us whether or not we're hot enough to hang out with a room full of spray-tanned fucks?" She just looked at me like I had a shitty attitude. Everyone thought I had a shitty attitude back then.

I did have a shitty attitude. I wanted to move away. I wanted new friends. I wanted my old friends back. I felt like I had to act and mouth the right lines just to keep people from running in the other direction. I couldn't tell anyone the truth about who I was, not even the dude at the corner store or the woman at the coffee place.

I drank too much and I was narcissistic and self-involved and I was probably horribly boring to be around.

But it's pretty hard not to be self-involved when you're incredibly lonely and you don't have anyone to lean on. It's also really hard to make good choices when you feel that way. When you're depressed and aimless, you really do have to pay close attention to what works and what doesn't work, because the more you hurt yourself and isolate yourself, the harder it becomes to connect with other people.

So you need to accept this basic fact about yourself right now: You're young and you're depressed and you have to commit to taking better care of yourself from now on. There needs to be some baseline of self-care that you commit to.

That's not a temporary thing, either. You'll have to make really good choices almost every goddamn day from now until the end of your life in order to feel happy. Trust me on that, because it's true for me, too. If you or I slack off, there's trouble. If we hide in Twitter or Candy Crush or random sex or even the wrong sort of codependent relationship, there's trouble. If we sleep badly, or skip our caffeine supplement, or eat four macaroons for breakfast, there's trouble. We have to remain ever-vigilant about escapist urges. We can watch Game of Thrones, but we can't play Assassin's Creed for 10 hours straight. We can have three beers, but not seven beers. We can engage in social media, but we have to set clear limits. We must disable Wi-Fi, early and often. We must sleep eight hours a night. We must eat green leafy shit. We can eat other stuff, but the green leafy stuff has to be the autopilot default.

If you don't feel like you're uncovering new ground or understanding a lot about yourself when you see your therapist, you should address that in therapy and consider finding a new therapist. You also need to get on the phone to your parents and tell them you're depressed. I think your parents need to understand where you are in your life right now. I think you have to come out of the closet and be the complicated person you are, out there in the world, where other people can see you. People like us are EVERYWHERE. It's not actually that big of a deal to admit that you're PHYSICALLY depressive. I get that it feels like it is, but trust me. At least half of the smart people you know are either mildly depressed or anxious right now, or they have been in the past. And for most people in the world—MOST PEOPLE—it takes a lot of work and good habits and structure to be happy. When you take work and good habits and structure away? Boom, you're unhappy.

Some people like us take psychotropic drugs. Many, many people will tell you that's the way to go. I have LOTS of smart friends who take something. Personally, I favor vigorous exercise five days a week. Anything less than that and I start to falter. Any kind of structure is your friend. Getting out of your cave is good.

Mostly, though, I think you have to accept that you have a certain kind of avoidant/depressive profile that requires care. Your struggle—like mine—stems from your being unforgiving and unkind to yourself. You're either SUCCEEDING (kicking ass academically, making friends and keeping them entertained and happy, doing all the stuff you're supposed to do) or you're FAILING (hiding out, haunting comments sections, watching three seasons of Battlestar Galactica in a row). You are way too hard on yourself, so you reward yourself excessively to make up for it. When someone says "Take care of yourself," you associate that with drinking a bottle of wine alone, in bed, while watching Mad Men, even though it should mean dragging yourself out of your room to get a little sunlight, to be around people WITHOUT TRYING TO PLEASE THEM ALL OF THE TIME.

People with reasonably ok social skills who avoid socializing often do so because they've fallen into a habit of people pleasing in an inauthentic way. They assume that friends and lovers want a certain version of them, that they can't be awkward and strange and still be loved. You need to experiment with showing people your true self. You feel like you need to put on a show with real people, but you like listening much more. You can bring that into the real world. You can offer real people your listening skills, and still present your thorny opinions and messiness.

But here's what you can't do—and this goes for so many people: You can't just dig a deeper and deeper hidey hole of DVDs and games and email and bad food and no sleep and darkness and nothingness. Most people suffer when they try this; you are going to suffer EXCESSIVELY under these conditions. Remember how I had a great apartment and loads of time and money, and I got all wan and lifeless and lonely? With total freedom, I not only suffered, but I felt horribly guilty for suffering. My world view got really warped; things seemed tragic all around me. Even so, every bit of suffering I felt was more proof (in my mind) that I was a bad mess of a person who didn't deserve to live a chipper, productive life like everyone else OUT THERE.

So things won't be good unless you're not exerting yourself, feeling some sun on your face, working hard at something that matters to you. THIS WILL ALWAYS BE TRUE FOR YOU. The financial support from your parents really should stop once you're out of school. I totally get that you don't know what you want to do, and don't see the point in doing anything. I GET IT, LORD OH LORD YES. But you must force yourself to look over a few different options and you must tolerate finding things out about career paths, things you don't want to know. You will feel sick when you find out more about careers you don’t care about. You will think, "Who wants to do anything, ever?" That's your bad physical state and your biochemistry and your lack of experience talking. That's your accumulated gray worldview. Right now you're screwing up because YOU DON'T ACTUALLY WANT TO FINISH SCHOOL. Graduating means having to do something. Having to do something feels terrible.

You have to face the future. Your therapist, or a new one, can help there. So can friends that you have REAL relationships with. That means you have to be consistent, you can't disappear. You have to be honest about WHY you disappear, about your fears and your hiding. The people who like you less for these weaknesses aren’t your people. Plenty of people will understand, and love you for YOU once they understand you better.

This is a tough spot for you. I've been there a few times, so trust me: Your life is going to get better and better. Escaping is not going to help. Rewarding yourself in moderation will. But you absolutely must 1) exercise, 2) write down your feelings for you and no one else, 3) eat good things, 4) sleep regular hours, 5) get up early and do your academic work AT THE LIBRARY, 6) expect more from your therapist 7) tell your parents the truth, 8) focus on graduating AND on potential careers, and 9) remind yourself, over and over and over, that things will get better.

THINGS WILL GET BETTER.

You are not any different than almost every single smart person I know. We all went through this kind of despairing stage. We all fall back into it sometimes, even now, and we have to crawl out again. But look, nothing compares to that feeling of aimlessness that comes from being very young and uncertain about what you want from your life. It almost made me feel sick when I thought about it today. So trust me about this one thing: You may never feel THIS bad again.

But it's also true that being happy and productive and having authentic relationships and CARING about your career goals and the future takes hard work for smart, depressive people. It takes hard work. Years from now, your life will be beautiful, and you will still have some bad days where you wonder if you're the kind of person who wants to escape or hurt people or destroy everything you've gained.

But you're not. You can show yourself—your real, vulnerable, shaky, scared, sad, worried self—to real people. You're a good listener, and a hard worker. You're not fucking up that badly. You just need to tell people the truth. "Just tell the truth." JUST. TELL. THE. TRUTH. It's time to start daring to disappoint people – your parents, your friends, your ex-girlfriend. Call them and explain what's happening to you. You will crawl out of this hole. Be gentle with yourself, but ask yourself to stop hiding.

The second you decide to show your true self to the world, the whole world shifts. You make the world better, when you're open and vulnerable and you tell the truth. You make space for other people to tell the truth. When you dare to expose your sadness, your weakness, your longing, you set other people free. You give them hope. You make them love this world, in a way that seemed impossible just a few seconds before.

And maybe that's not JUST a path out of this dark place you're in. Maybe it's also your calling. Maybe it's part of what you're here to do.

You can start right now. All you have to do is tell the truth. You don't have to carry this load. Put it down, and keep walking. You are light, and free, and this crazy world loves you just the way you are.

Polly

Do you feel like the depressed, abusive antihero of a critically acclaimed television show but want to upgrade your life to summer blockbusters? Write to Polly and discuss!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

Photo by Linda Tanner

The post Ask Polly: How Can I Stop Being a Shut In Once and for All? appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

I think my husband is spineless, selfish, and prioritizes his convenience over my emotions. 

Background: My husband is from another country. We visit for a month or so every summer, when he catches up with friends and family. I am cool with this. (I do wish he might also, I dunno, set some time aside for his *wife* during our only vacation time, but that's another letter). However, he has this one friend whom I would actually happily feed to rodents of an unusual size.

I had a stillbirth almost five years ago. It took a year to figure out what the problem was, during which I had two more miscarriages. They diagnosed me, I got pregnant again, I was considered high-risk, and I spent the next nine months giving myself shots once or twice a day and getting ultrasounds every week or two. The next time we went to his hometown, his dickweasel friend spent a good half hour merrily lecturing me on how American women abuse the system; how healthy women in *their* country only get two ultrasounds during their entire pregnancies; and how American kids are probably all going to have brain damage.

Assuming this idiot had completely forgotten the stillbirth of one of his supposedly closest friends’ firstborn, assuming he's too fucking stupid to do the math and think, huh, the lady I'm talking to might have some health issues that necessitate additional care, there's the fact I'M AMERICAN, five months pregnant, and he's assuring me my kid will be hideously damaged. I was feeling some pretty severe anxiety about the whole situation at the time. (For context, after a lifetime of avoiding psychotropic drugs, I went on anti-depressants a week after I found out I was pregnant, when my doc asked me if I was happy about the baby and I burst into tears out of sheer terror that something was going to go wrong with this one, too). So the fact that my husband sat there while his buddy went off on his little spiel, missed the fact that I was so upset that I spent the rest of the night on the porch desperately wishing I still smoked, and refused to drive me back to where we were staying so we slept at the dickweasel's house—none of that went over well. 

Nevertheless, we came home, and it eventually blew over. Our son was born, and is delightful. Two years have passed, and I'm pregnant again. My husband is planning to celebrate his 40th birthday at the dickweasel's house (in keeping with his charming personality, the dickweasel refuses to go out anywhere during the annual get-togethers and makes people go to his place out in the boonies). I'm not going, and my husband is trying to guilt-trip me by whining about how he only sees his friends once a year.

I've never wanted a knight in shining armor, but I feel like my husband massively let me down by not intervening or speaking up for me after the fact, or even calling me a fucking taxi so I could get out of there. I'm usually pretty mouthy, but I was, a) out of my element in a foreign country where I don't speak the native tongue, b) kind of in shock that anybody would be so fucking cruel and insensitive, and c) vulnerable. Just plain vulnerable and hurt. I feel like he's compounding this every time he tries to bully me into letting it go and just making nice with his bro. I feel like he's placing the convenience of his having a feel-good reunion over the fact that I am PREGNANT again and ANXIOUS again and the thought of having to smile at that douchebag and grit my teeth and try not to punch him/cry if he makes any further cracks on this go-round is giving me massive agita. Hence this letter. Any tips on how I can convince my husband to get his head out of his ass? I will pretty obviously not be going to this party, but I'd like to figure out a way to dredge up some shred of respect or understanding for the father of my children.

P.S. Yes, we are in counseling. No, no common ground has been found on this issue. 

The Ultrasound & The Fury

Dear TU&TF,

That sounds terrible and it couldn't be more of a perfect storm. You have PTSD, or similar feelings of extreme anxiety and stress around the stillbirth. Women who've been pregnant before can ALMOST attempt to understand how deeply traumatic and horribly sad that experience might have been for you. But I'm guessing that most of us can't touch the extreme hell of it. The physical and emotional recovery must take so long. And maybe it's never really complete. Because when you're pregnant again, it's pretty easy to conjure it all up: The vulnerability, the fragility, the fear.

So first, I want to say that I feel for you and I'm so sorry that you had to experience that kind of trauma and sadness. I'm also sorry that your husband hasn't done a good job of trying to understand and adjust to the full force of your pain and anguish—in order to show solidarity, to have your back, and to demonstrate that you're in this building-a-family thing together.

It's fundamentally crazy-making to be aligned with someone who doesn't automatically jump to your side and protect you when something HE KNOWS and YOU KNOW was truly awful for you is being dredged up and treated clumsily and idiotically by an utterly clueless (and aptly named) dickweasel. It must feel almost like an out-of-body experience. Here you are, married to/intimate with this man, and he would rather shrug off what was probably the singular most traumatic event of your life? And there you are, all big and pregnant and anxious, and he'd rather chuckle along with his bro than make a gesture of solidarity? That's the kind of moment when you feel like you must be going crazy. Like your sanity is being tested. "Wait a minute. Shouldn't he… Am I nuts, or should he defend me on this one, no matter what? Isn't this a little wrong? Doesn't anyone else see the wrongness here?"

But let's put on our empathy caps for the sake of improving this very bad situation. What compounds your problem is that your husband lives far away from his country and his family and his dickweasel bros and therefore romanticizes them a lot. He isn't good at simultaneously grappling with your extreme trauma and his sense of loyalty to his longtime friend. This may be a simple matter of convenience and overload—feeling feelings seems much harder than just barking, "LIGHTEN UP, BABE!" and moving forward. Or, he may be plagued by his own feelings about the stillbirth—feelings he wants to shut off, and in addition to that, he may have a sense of having lost all steady connection to his home. He may feel (unfairly) that you've taken over his life and on those rare occasions when he can go home, he wants to do it full-on, without taking the smallest sliver of his new life and new responsibilities into account.

(I'm not implying that his behavior is okay; I'm just trying to make it easier for you to weather this perfect storm. He's being a baby, of course. He knows exactly what's up and he's STILL being a dick about the whole thing. For christ's sake, when this thing with the dickweasel happened, you hadn't had a successful pregnancy yet. You were floored and upset and he ignored you and made you sleep in the dickweasel's house. He should be ashamed, but instead he's being stubborn.)

Why? Let's assume it involves heavier stuff for him. You're not saying, "My husband is constantly undermining my feelings." If that were true, you'd have bigger fish to fry. I don't doubt that it's symbolic and representative of overarching troubles in your marriage. But there's also something fundamental going on—some reason why he feels that yielding to you on this front would mean giving up his last shred of independence and his last tie to his bros and his homeland and his roots. We can't help but wonder, ”Are his roots a wee bit dickweaselly?" Not clear. But somehow his pride and his sense of self and his bromantic delusion are on the line.

Still, it’s pretty fucking stupid that he's choosing THIS battle, though, which is related to you HAVING HIS CHILDREN SUCCESSFULLY WITHOUT FALLING APART. You're pregnant again, vulnerable, full of feelings about the stillbirth and the last traumatic bullshit visit with the dickweasel, and all you're saying is "I can't be around that dude in this state, BUT YOU ARE WELCOME TO LEAVE ME BEHIND ON YOUR 40TH BIRTHDAY AND GO HAVE YOUR FUN." That alone is pretty generous of you, if you ask me. You could say, "You know what? Fuck you. I'm pregnant and fragile and we're going to have a family birthday party with our son, and it's definitely not going to be on this creep's turf. You're just going to have to accept that you have a family now and this is what a birthday looks like." 


So this is your gift to him. His bromantic birthday doesn't have to get trampled on by the actual human being about to bear his second child. But he needs to recognize that this is a very generous gift, and stop pressuring you to go to the dickweasel's house with him. And at the dickweasel's house, when other people ask why you're not there, he needs to defend your choice, because that's what a good human being who cares about his partner's feelings does.

Maybe, in order to thank you for this gift, your husband should consider trying very hard to finally grasp what you've been through—with the previous pregnancies, and this one. Maybe it's time for him to finally recognize how these things shape your experience. And when he finally recognizes this, or at least tries to, it will make your marriage stronger and happier. So you need to ask for this, and be very specific. If you just keep saying, "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND YOU DON'T GET IT FUCK YOU!" it won't sound like a request. It will sound like an attack on his character. Like a way to fight him.

You don't want to fight. You want him to conjure up his best, most honorable self. You want to remind him that he's a good, loyal man who loves you and wants to protect you and your kids, who cares about your feelings and will defend those feelings even when it's not all that easy to do.

Even if he doesn't get it, he needs to take your word for it. That's what I told my husband right after our first kid was born. He would do things with the baby that didn't seem safe to me, and if I spoke up about it, he'd always say, in the same exasperated tone, "JUST RELAX, IT'S FINE!" He knew everything because he'd already had a kid, see? So I had to get very calm and sit him down and look him in the eye and say, "Listen. I know you feel like it's fine. MAYBE IT IS FINE, IN FACT. But I'm having a heart attack just watching you. That's not fine. And you have no way of really grasping how NOT FINE it feels for me. Having a baby is like lopping off your own head and handing it to someone else to take care of. My fucking cells want me to protect that thing you're holding. I can't help it. I can't say, 'Hey, cells, relax, it's fine, he's not going to drop my fucking head on the floor… I'm pretty sure he won't, anyway.'"

And then I said this: "I have a RIGHT to be uptight about this fucking baby. That's MY right. I'm going to try not to be controlling forever and ever. But right now, with a giant scar in my gut, feeling emotional, trying to make sure that baby survives? There's no physical way that you can understand this feeling. No fucking way you can touch it. So just accept that you don't get it, step back, and grant me this fucking right."

I sound like a lot of fun, don't I?

The point is, your husband needs to grant you the RIGHT to be extra sensitive and weepy and needy and intense and anxious when you're pregnant. And maybe you need to spell it out for him. Because having a stillbirth must feel like having someone cut your head off and then smash it with a sledgehammer while you watch. I'm sorry to be so brutal. I'm just trying to put this in terms that your husband MIGHT understand, at least enough to understand that he doesn't fucking understand. He needs to give you the benefit of the doubt and trust you on this. I don't know the big picture for you. But right now, in your circumstances, you want your husband on your side. Pick a calm, happy moment, and tell him you need him as an ally. You need his help. You need him to respect your feelings.

The really terrible thing about being with someone who doesn't empathize well is that 1) it makes you harder on yourself which 2) makes you harder on other people and 3) instead of seeking out more caring people on whom you might lean occasionally, you tend to preemptively write people off or globalize or overgeneralize and assume that NO ONE will empathize with you at all. These things are subconscious, mostly. What happens is, you feel isolated and sad and lonely and you struggle mightily within your marriage to explain, express yourself, and get a toehold emotionally, and one day you wake up and you realize that, instead of seeking a wider circle of support, you've actually been isolating yourself. Because you're tired! And overwhelmed! And you're angry at yourself, and sad, too. You don't really want to expose any of your friends to all of these things. And maybe you don't want your friends to know what a dick your husband can be sometimes.

But listen to me. I'm sorry for everything. I'm sorry you feel so vulnerable right now. I know this birthday thing is awful. Talk it out with your friends. Don't let anyone say it's just this thing you're "stuck" on. But try to be calm. Try to take care of yourself. Keep going to counseling and do your best to express yourself there. Be patient with yourself and everyone else. You have to cultivate a peaceful home life right now, for your own good, no matter what's going on with him.

Do you have female friends to lean on? If not, you need to work on that. You need a lot of support from women in your life when you've got a husband who struggles with empathy the way yours does. You can't walk around angry and anxious all the time. You need to let off steam and feel supported by other people. I'll bet that's hard for you. Don’t stay in this angry place. Let yourself feel sad. Ask for help when you need it. And don't do the dishes every night when you're visiting your husband's country. Explain that you're trying to take it easy and stay positive and you need to be careful. Don't try to live up to other people's expectations of you, or battle their ideas about American women. Just be kind to them and take care of yourself.

You aren't putting up with shit this time. You love yourself too much for that. You're growing. You're getting stronger. You know yourself better than you ever have. Take pride in who you are and how far you've come.

Do your best to make him understand. But no matter what you ask for and don't get in this world, you always have yourself. You are smart and resilient, and you deserve to feel happy and loved. Give yourself what you need, and don't let the dickweasels get you down.

Polly

Does your life feel like it is on hold but you want to zip through it like a DVR recording of that soccer game where America lost? Write to Polly and discuss!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

Photo by Ron Dunnington

The post Ask Polly: I Had a Stillbirth and My Husband Totally Lacked Empathy appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

I’m writing with a deceptively simple question. How can I be vulnerable? Some pertinent background: I’m an academic, working in a field that requires me to live in very remote places for extended periods of time. I find my work incredibly engaging and rewarding, and I know I’m lucky in this regard. Still, the life of an academic (particularly a traveling academic) is often isolating. I don’t have a place to call home. My family is deeply dysfunctional; although I love my parents and siblings, our relationships are fraught and I have never felt unconditionally loved by my parents. I was diagnosed as a child with OCD, and spent a great deal of my youth feeling broken and inadequate (a feeling my parents intensified by approaching my disorder punitively). From a young age, I learned that I couldn’t count on anyone to take care of me except myself. This stubborn independence has served me well in my chosen field, but it has complicated my relationships. I have wonderful friends scattered across the world, but the distance adds to the wall I have built around myself; I have a hard time truly letting people in.

My romantic relationships have also been complicated–sometimes I settle for men who aren’t a good fit, just because I know I can rely on them. Other times, I ruin relationships because of my raw neediness for love, which leads my partners to take me for granted and belittle me. My current boyfriend is in many ways a great fit—fiercely intelligent, bitingly funny, supportive of the demands of my career—but he thinks of me as "clingy," and this terrifies me. I don’t know if I’m happy in our relationship.
 
Recently, I underwent a medical crisis that required me to return to the States for treatment. Alone and incapacitated in a city where I knew no one, I had to confront the ways in which I have isolated myself. It’s a paradox: I never hesitate to be there for friends when they’re in crisis, but I can’t be honest about my own insecurities. I feel so grotesquely needy, but I can’t ask for help. I recognize that my desire to be selfless and untouchable is actually selfish—I would be a better friend, a better partner, a better person, if I could be more vulnerable. But how do I do that without morphing into the whiny, broken person I’m so afraid of becoming? How do I balance the demands of my career with my desire for a permanent home and a lifelong relationship? If I give up my work, I fear I’ll let go of my sense of purpose in life.

Thank you so much for any insight you have to this dilemma. I know my question is nebulous and hard to answer, but I always value your insight.

Hard Shell, Soft Chewy Center

Dear HSSCC,

I'm so glad you wrote to me, because I've been pondering the paradox of survival vs. vulnerability a lot lately. I look at my two young daughters, twirling in their dresses and giggling and making friends and just generally frolicking with the bubbly rainbow unicorns (when they're not threatening to kill each other with their bare hands), and part of me wants them to be tough, tough, TOUGH more than anything else. I want them to be strong enough and resilient enough to tell all naysayers and girl-haters to fuck themselves. I want them to do exactly what they love with their lives without questioning themselves and wondering what everyone thinks of them every step of the way.

I was tough, thanks to the fact that my parents were pretty focused on toughness. I was extremely sensitive underneath the toughness, of course, but no one needed to know that. I had bluster, swagger and a devil-may-care attitude. I knew I was unique and funny and full of ideas—or at least I knew how to pretend that I was confident in these things.

But the coping methods that get us through a rocky childhood among unyielding parents and critical siblings, the tools that help us survive those Lord of the Flies teen years, the strategies we use to secure graduate degrees and good jobs, the tricks we employ to attract funny, confident, successful men are not always the same things that bring us true happiness and satisfaction in life. They might help up to age 30, but after that, toughness and bluster and overconfidence can seriously hamper hopes for intimacy and stability and long-term satisfaction.

"IS THIS SOME ANTI-FEMINIST DON'T BE BOSSY BULLSHIT YOU'RE ABOUT TO FEED ME?"

Fuck no. All I want to say is this: You are a false advertisement. You appear to be a carefree, independent, globe-trotting academic—the living, breathing dream of every flinchy motherfucker on earth. You seem tough and engaged in what you do—and why shouldn't you? You ARE tough. You ARE fully engaged with your work. You DO love your life.

But you're also something else. You're also soft and squishy and you hate that part of yourself. When the softness comes out, there's anger there. You're ashamed. You serve up your softness with shame because that's what you were taught to do when you were little. "This is not how you make friends, I know that. This is how you make people hate you," you say, in tears. "I know I'm gross. I know you don't want this."

But it's not JUST that you're serving up softness with a grimace and saying, "YOU WILL HATE THE TASTE OF THIS, LET ME APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE." No. It's also that you're always in the company of some dude who doesn't like vulnerability. You date guys who see vulnerability—which is the very heart and soul of who you are—as weakness. You are with a guy who takes the very best of you, the rawest and most sincere essence of you, and he says, "I don't like this clingy thing you do. I know your history with your parents. I can understand why my indifference feels like rejection. But I don't care. This clingy thing is inconvenient to me, so you should stomp it into submission."

And isn't that exactly what your parents told you to do?

Forget him. I'm not saying he's a bad guy. He wanted a tough academic lady who'd never whimper to him. But that's not who you are. If there's one thing I've learned, it's this: You can't resolve not to be clingy. You have to feel understood and supported, and then you’ll—quite naturally—be less emotionally needy, because you'll trust that the guy you're with is there for you, and can accept every part of you, come hell or high water.

Sure, you could take a stand. You could say, "No, I'm not clingy. I'm a human being with emotions and needs. You can either show up and be a good boyfriend, or you can hit the road." Sometimes a guy will wake up and take notice when you make it clear that showing up isn't optional. But if he doesn’t do that, you really should think about moving on. Working on your vulnerability with someone who secretly (or not-so-secretly) hates vulnerability really, really doesn't work.

This isn't about him, anyway. This is about your relationship with yourself. It's also about how you relate to your female friends. You may have to work on those two parts of your life before you can successfully pursue romantic love or a long-term emotional commitment. Basically, you need to practice sounding like a whiny, broken person without getting angry at yourself for it. You have to be this way and accept it and allow it and stop hating it. That's the first step. You have to let the ugly, needy shit in and let it exist without spreading your fear and loathing all over it. You have to make room for cryface and learn to see it as beautiful.

That can be tough to do on your own. I'd get a therapist, and cry to her. Her, not him. Because I'm pretty sure from what you wrote that your intimacy issues start with women and will be healed more quickly/effectively in the presence of a woman. If you're thinking "Oh no, I'd really rather have a male therapist!"? That might actually be your love of toughness and denial and pushing down all softness talking.

Ok, so whiny, broken cryface in the presence of a therapist is not insanely groundbreaking, but it's a start. What you have to do after that is whip out the broken cryface in the company of a good female friend. This means you have to select one friend, explain to her that you need to try to be more vulnerable even though it feels totally weird, and warn her that you may call her JUST TO CRY sometimes. Yes. Embarrassing. But important. It helps. It's good for you and good for your friend, too.

Do you have a friend who could handle this? If you don't, then stick with the therapist for now.

Personally, this was a big deal for me. I never would've found and accepted a guy who's smart and funny and ok with softness and vulnerability if I hadn't learned to cry to a friend of mine first. Crying to a close female friend is a way of saying, "See, this is me. I know it's not incredibly fun and entertaining but it's not repugnant and hideous and shitty either. I'm just a person, leaning on another person. This is what people do, and they shouldn't have to feel ashamed or terrible when they do it."

When I was younger, I thought my purpose was to entertain people. I thought I was boring other people if I couldn't entertain them. If I talked about emotions, it had to be a joke. Just being NEUTRAL, having nothing to say, being a person in the room, was unacceptable. I was the charming gabby one who kept everything afloat. And being sad? No one wanted that.

I used to have nightmares about being a hideous monster surrounded by regular people who felt sure I would eat them. No matter what I said, everyone would run away from me, screaming. Being myself meant scaring the shit out of other people. Expressing my emotions was as bad as chasing people and eating them whole. I believed, as you do, that I WAS SO GROTESQUELY NEEDY.

For a while when I was in my late 20s, I wrote songs about this, about monsters who clean up well and pretend to be normal, but who can never truly be loved. One song had the line "I want you more than I want myself." I think that's where you always land when you're not showing your true self. You work really fucking hard and you focus on the other person and you entertain and charm and keep the conversation flowing, and you don't even care if you lose yourself along the way. Maybe that's the point. You either date guys who are indifferent, and that makes you clingy, or you date guys who aren't all that impressive—because maybe then they won't leave you?—and you get clingy anyway. You work hard to put the not-that-great guys on a pedestal. The focus is on them, so you don't have to feel your own feelings or think your own thoughts. But the more you focus on them, the more you imagine that they're about to reject you, just like everyone else has. Or as I described it in my monster song, I'd sit around "[f]eeling small, watching your shadows of doubt play on the wall."

Breaking this habit is an enormous and daunting task. Even if you reject the flinchy dudes, that doesn't mean you're suddenly going to accept a sincere dude who pays close attention to you. Who wants someone to meet the monster? Anyone who accepts the monster must be kind of a dork and a loser, right?

The bottom line is that it's very sad, to feel so angry at YOUR VERY SOUL. To rip your soft, chewy center out and hide it under the floorboards? That goes against everything pure and real and good in the world. So we have to take that monster and turn it into a gentle lamb—not by changing the monster, but changing our perception of her. First YOU have to love the monster. Invite the monster in, let it cry. Embrace the cryface.

I know, it's embarrassing and blech, so uncool. This world fucking hates honest, soft, open, emoting women. HATES HATES HATES us. We are the giant oozing sores of the universe. Why? Why do we prefer people with blank Frankenstein expressions, or worse, painted-on professional smiles, and loathe the cryface? Why do we hate weakness so much?

All I can tell you is that embracing cryface has made my life so much better. The tears flow over the craziest stuff—singing competitions, sad songs, the endings of good essays and great books.

Also, fuck the word "clingy." Does he want a girlfriend or not? If you're not calling him around the clock and freaking out, he shouldn't give you a hard time about looking for a tiny shred of emotional sustenance from THE PERSON YOU ARE IN AN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP WITH. Jesus Christ. There are so many NEW ways for Mr. Flinchy to be evasive and freakish these days. There are new advanced levels of Fuck and Run being played out there, there are new insanely high scores being racked up in the game of Sexual Assassin, enabled by dating sites and social media. Sexual predators who don't mind playing faintly human-like versions of themselves online have it pretty goddamn good these days.

And it's sad. Because somehow, a lot of people think that their emptiness is going to be filled by tricking a lot of people into sleeping with them. Or they assume that real, shared intimacy is just an elaborate trap set by needy, empty women. It's hard not to wonder if we aren't hollowing ourselves out, taking the lowest common denominator among us and telling ourselves stories about how they represent everyone else. But luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. Luminous fucking beings with soft, gorgeous feelings that, if they're invited in, will blossom into something rich and layered and inspiring. So let's not paint ourselves as monsters who cling.

Once you invite the soft, emotional part of you to live with the rest of you instead of being banished to the closet around the clock, once you accept and allow space for that part of you, you will naturally reshuffle your priorities. You can't THINK your way to a solution here, either with your boyfriend or with your dilemmas about balancing your career with your need for a long-term home.

It's a long process. See a therapist. Lean on a close friend, and if that's not possible, work on making your friendships closer. You CAN count on other people. You need to learn to see that, to know it. But mostly, you need to believe that your whiny, broken self is also your best self. It's hard to believe that. It feels almost absurd. But that's where it all begins, somehow. It begins with loving that whiny, broken self, until it's not whiny or broken at all, it's just REAL. You have to love what's real. YOU have to do it first, before anyone else can do it, to show yourself that it's possible.

Your toughness will not dissolve into thin air and leave you powerless. You will still be an adaptive animal. But you will no longer be an invention, imaginary, pretend. You will no longer need disguises. You will no longer accept excuses. And later down the road, you will be supported and loved for what's real for the first time, and it will feel incredible.

Polly

Are you a brittle, hard candy shell but want to be smooth and infinitely flexible and resilient like Laffy Taffy? Write to Polly and discuss!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

Photo by Michelle Bender

The post Ask Polly: My Boyfriend Thinks I'm Clingy and This Terrifies Me appeared first on The Awl.

Hi Polly,

I’m 29 and have been through an enormous amount of shit that is both situation-specific and universal; I am not unproud that I’ve made it this far, considering. I’m in therapy and have been off and on since I was eight, looking for a way to beat back some severe depression and find good reasons to keep doing normal people things that actually feel excruciating. I’m on some meds now that make me not feel like I’m walking around without any skin, but I know that’s just about getting level and now I’ve got actual work to do. I just have no idea where to go or what to do next.

I’m committed to not being a sadsack asshole anymore, and I’ve learned so much. I’m trying to stay away from both tepid and unhelpfully intense relationships that remind me of my fucked up childhood. I’m looking for ways to dive deep and be okay with metaphorical heat and darkness and actual solitude and uncertainty. I want so much to hold on to what I like about myself—my bravery, my depth of feeling, my brutal, nasty intelligence—while also learning to be an actual regular person who can do things like enjoy basic times of friends without boozing myself into maudlin unbearableness, or getting so discouraged at my job that everyone wonders what I’m even doing there until I get fired. It’s like I keep figuring this shit out, and then forgetting it immediately.

I guess, I just can’t find a good middle ground about anything? When I imagine what my “best life” is, it’s only possible through a time machine. I don’t want to write, or be a writer, I want to have already published a barnstorming first novel at seventeen that made me universally adored and celebrated. I don’t daydream about meeting a good dude and making it work, I lose hours imagining having never met the asshole abusers or lukewarm Mr. All Wrongs. I’m so lonely, because I’m never as kind or gracious to myself as I am to my friends, but every chance I get to make a connection, I cock up with try-hard nonsense or totally losing my shit. I try to make plans, try to remember that good people with good lives have to work for them, but I almost always feel like I have missed the boat for any of the normal stuff people do or enjoy. I want to want things for myself, but can’t follow through on anything, like I already think that I’ve failed and should just bow out, or second guess if I really want those things or can make them work until opportunities have sailed right on past.

This attitude made more sense, I guess, when my dreams were so big they were laughable. I’m barreling down the road towards middle age, the time to become a child prodigy or set myself on the path to run the world or start an epic hundred-year romance are gone. I’ve tried to lower my expectations for myself, to accept that my big dreams, or even normal-sized ones, aren’t in the cards, but I can’t shake the sense that what I want and what I can achieve are so far apart that even tiny things feel beyond reach. 

Writing to you feels like a cop out, because it seems like you’ve addressed all of these things before. But seriously, how do you love yourself? How do you accept your flaws and strengths and offer your best to others while trusting they will make allowances for your worst? How do you be a person? I’m struggling here to make any reasonable plan, or even take a simple positive step, to being happy and whole.

I know there’s no secret, and I don’t really want to live in a Jules Verne novel, but seriously, how does someone actually get to a place where they can combine and use all the good advice they’ve been given, and just live a life?

Sincerely,

I Need A Meaning I Can Memorize

Dear INAMICM,

It's funny that I should stumble on your letter today, because I'm sitting down for the fiftieth time to write an introduction to a potential Ask Polly book, and I'm pretty sure that I'm going to fail, yet again, to come up with a clear, coherent message, a MEANING TO MEMORIZE.

Because you can't sell a book today without a short, snappy, memorizable meaning. I'm not sure you can sell anything without a zippy message attached to it. Literary agents, publishers, publicists, talent bookers, lifestyle magazine gurus, opinion page honchos, network executives, TV producers, studio heads, investment analysts, local politicians, world leaders, archangels, God, Yoda, Darth Vader? They all want a concise, coherent, provocative, urgent, necessary, salty-sweet message-nugget, and they want it delivered from the head of the Great and Powerful Oz, flanked by flamethrowers aimed at the sky.

At the very least, they'd like you to smile a little more often, and flat-iron your hair.

Helpful, regular people might say to someone like me (or you!), someone with enormous expectations and weak follow-through and brutal, nasty intelligence and a tendency to dive into maudlin unbearableness, "So, smile more and flat-iron your hair, for fuck's sake. What's the big deal?"

What do we say to that? Because "Smile and flat-iron your hair" is a meaning we can memorize, right? Just hide your wishy-washy self behind the fucking curtain, aim the flamethrowers at the sky, and speak into the Mr. Microphone with the All-Powerful Deity effect turned on. This is what our skin-deep, tl;dr culture appears to want from us: distilled three-second tidings. Slap your long-winded ass in a saucepan on medium heat until the confusion and the second-guessing burn off, but so do the complexity and the unanswerable philosophical questions and the soaring but somewhat vague epiphanies.

Instead of reading like a cry for help, though, your letter sounds almost like a mission statement. Because, even though you feel isolated and lonely, even though you've drawn circles around your so-called "bad" behaviors and said, "I need to do less of this," even though you're ready to get on the "right" track and start feeling happy and "whole," you also paint a pretty compelling portrait of how it feels to be a complex person in a world that embraces forced smiles and simpleton wisdom and bulletproof solutions, a world that kicks the wishy-washy and the maudlin to the curb. In some ways, your letter sounds less like "Here are my many fucking problems" and more like a kind of rallying cry for complicated, sensitive, brutally smart human beings who crave a meaning they can memorize but who are also severely allergic to memorizable meanings.

Likewise, I think I'm struggling to write a general-purpose introduction that encapsulates the kind of snappy, three-second messages that signal a saleable product for the same reason I struggled to tolerate annoying jobs and half-assed relationships and passive-aggressive friendships when I was your age. I got all weird and wishy-washy or I cocked up with try-hard nonsense or I totally lost my shit. I knew that I should smile more and flat-iron my hair, but even thinking about these things made me want to show up unshowered and ramble incoherently about all of the reasons everything in the world was bewildering and wrong. Somehow KNOWING that there was ONE right answer only made me want to offer up five hundred wrong answers instead.

Right now, you are the living, breathing manifestation of five hundred wrong answers. Your letter, if you reread it with the right spirit of appreciation, is a paean to wrong answers.

But listen, I'm not sure you have a big problem with follow-through, or long-term commitment, or wholeness. I think your problem is about introductions, literal and figurative. Regular life was excruciating up until not so long ago, right? You are just starting out on a smooth path. You clearly don't love your career, and maybe you suspect that your friends, what few friends you might have, are incapable of understanding you. You haven't really dated a man who's healthy yet. Give yourself a break, because you're only twenty-nine years old, and YOU JUST GOT HERE, to a place where you're not an unhinged, severely depressed, unstable human attracting other unhinged, severely depressed, unstable humans. Also, beginnings are not easy, precisely BECAUSE they demand that we get behind the goddamn curtain and act like we're simpler and less conflicted than we are.

Just as you believe that you should somehow retool yourself to be more resilient and optimistic and tenacious and THEN life might be ok (but you are still, somehow, resistant to being retooled), I imagine that any Ask Polly introduction I write will get flat-ironed until I don't recognize it anymore. I might start with something dark and digressive on the outside with a chewy optimistic center, but eventually it will be hammered into a less dark and digressive state.

That's a problem. Because the real value of this column and the reason it could only thrive on the weirdo terrain of The Awl, is that it's exactly as unwieldy and rambling and flawed as it needs to be in order to kick up some tiny speck of redemption. Maybe there are coherent messages along the way (DARE TO BE "THAT WOMAN." KICK TEPID MEN TO THE CURB. Or my personal favorite: COME ON HIS HAMPTON BLOUSE AND MOVE ON), but if you cut straight to that message, why would you even care? I wouldn't. Who wants to sound just like every other little digestible square of upbeat text in the world, the text of cereal boxes and lifestyle magazines and yoga retreat pamphlets and TEDx talk summaries and organic tea bags?

Although I do think that we're stumbling half-blind into an era of newfound indifference to memorizable messages and the Great and Powerful in general, it's hard to know what we should put in place of the simpleton wisdom and the well-styled gurus. For example, I just watched five new TV comedies and dramas that will air soon, and every last pseudo-subversive one of them either features blood and gore and worms crawling out of eyeballs, or nasty people who insult each other and talk about masturbation and what's going to get them off around the clock like overgrown, angry teenagers (see also: a real-life version of that TV show "Just 'Batin'" from Idiocracy.) Even when culture rejects the zippy, Live Your Best Life, self-improvement-as-extreme-overachiever-sport messages out there, the results aren't all that appealing or meaningful. A few minutes in, someone smashes someone's head in with a tire iron or makes some casual joke about anal sex, and the carnival's over before it even started.

So this is what I have to say to you: Forget easy slogans. Your tendency to think of yourself as a damaged, sad misfit who might never fit in or be happy, who needs to be fixed? It's understandable, but it needs to change. Even though you had to identify the extreme duress of your past and locate the ways in which these traumas formed you; even though you STILL need to be wary of tepid men and intense overbearing people who will use your scars to bend you to their will; even though you will probably ALWAYS, in some tiny corner of your brain, suspect that you're too fucked by your circumstances and chemistry and nature to ever be a regular person in the world with an equal shot at happiness as everyone else, you also have to, simultaneously, try to let that stuff go. You have to learn to take all of these ways you bungle your introductions, with darkness and digressions, and embrace them a little.

Because it's pretty fucking hard to follow through with things that start with forced smiles and flat-ironed hair. You have no way of knowing how good or bad you are at sallying forth from a point that feels authentic and gratifying and real, whether it's a job or a friendship or a love affair. Personally, I've been amazed at how easy I find it to be married to someone who's actually interested in me, insane rambling wishy-washiness and all, and I've been surprised at how hard I'm willing to work at a career that feels meaningful (occasionally!) and offers chances for me to delve into complex subjects without glossing or reducing or oversimplifying (sometimes!).

You write, "It’s like I keep figuring this shit out, and then forgetting it immediately." That's not your strange little personal problem. That's not what makes you uniquely fucked. That's a universal truth, a fundamental dimension of the human condition. You know who feels that way? You, me and everyone we know. Fucking OPRAH feels that way, or she'd have fallen asleep while interviewing Deepak Chopra a long, long time ago.

So: We can all continue to be controlled by the ILLUSION that this is not how it is for everybody else. We can decide that we hate our jobs because we are SINGULARLY stubborn and lazy and bored. We can decide that we quit things because we are UNUSUALLY unable to deal. We can get angry at ourselves, over and over again, because we are uncertain and full of longing. Or we can wake up and notice that this is a common thread of human existence, easily traceable through history (although perhaps less true of people who had to, say, wake at dawn and plow the fields, which is why Viktor Frankl always advocated structuring a depressed person's day with lots of hard labor and very little time to reflect).

Did I mention that we're in conflict with ourselves? We're in conflict with ourselves because we want A MEANING WE CAN MEMORIZE, but we also DISTRUST ALL MEANINGS, memorizable or otherwise. In other words, we are like Goths in black leather with pretty highlighted, flat-ironed hair. We are huffing spray paint and watching Oprah. We are Hannah Montana, skipping and chewing bubble gum, and we're also Miley Cyrus, fondling Alan Thicke with a giant foam hand. We are Julie, cruise director of "The Love Boat," smiling and gushing about bingo on the Lido Deck, and we're also Khaleesi, Mother of Dragons, growling, "I will answer injustice with justice!"

We are angry and hopeful and disappointed and we want more. We also blame ourselves for wanting more, as if we should've been stronger inside than to be molded by a culture that trains us, from the moment we're conscious, to want more, more, more. As if we could simply shut out decades of snappy three-second messages that remind us, over and over again, of our hunger and our thirst. As if we could endure a non-stop media barrage of sexy Amazonian humans with flat-ironed hair who never age, repeatedly saving the day on our big screens and saving orphaned children in our magazines and speaking in snappy messages and trading in a five-million-dollar beach house for a twenty-million-dollar mansion on the Italian Riviera every few milliseconds. As if we could encounter these frothy, airbrushed fairy tales for most of our lives and emerge feeling peaceful and satisfied with our frizzy hair and our imperfect love lives and our mountains of debt.

Of course you don't want to write. Who wants to sit and try at something and rarely get paid for it and possibly fail at it? I don't want to do it a lot of the time. We all wish we'd published a barnstorming first novel at seventeen that made us universally adored and celebrated. OK, I would've been fine with that happening at age thirty-seven, actually. Age forty-seven would be ok with me, too.

But I also know that I wouldn't be completely satisfied with that. Even if I were to publish a brilliant bestselling novel, I'd be halfway through the book tour (hating it, like the fucking ingrate I am), and I'd already be wondering if I'd ever publish anything half as brilliant as my first novel. I'd already be plagued by worry over whether I could pull it off all over again.

And even though there are some people reading this who are thinking, "OH FUCK YOU PEOPLE, I WOULDN'T BE LIKE THAT AT ALL, I'D FUCKING ENJOY EVERY MINUTE OF UNEXPECTED LITERARY SUCCESS!" most of those people would be running in some other form of tiny circle, worrying about something else, like we all do.

The only thing you gain as you get older is the ability to look around you and say, "This is pretty much what I get, and I'm not going to have this forever. I'd better really enjoy it." But don't get me wrong, I'm not all peaceful and satisfied. I'm just thrilled to be more peaceful and satisfied than I was ten years ago. I can go on vacation without getting twitchy. I can hang out with my kids without playing Candy Crush or impatiently scanning the news, sometimes.

What I'm trying to tell you is that life is fucking hard and messy for everyone, and there is no quick way to memorize a little motto or jingle that will see you through the messiness and the melancholy. No one will save you. No one will make you feel whole. I personally knew a guy who published a barnstorming first novel at seventeen that made him universally adored and celebrated, and his life has been a rollercoaster of highs and lows since then, just like the rest of us. I don't know if he's happy or sad, but he definitely never wrote another novel. (That might mean he's very happy, mind you. I don't know. But that first celebrated novel certainly didn't solve everything.)

Success at writing rarely adds up to anything you can touch. You either write because you enjoy writing or (more commonly) you like how it feels to have written something. These are merely things you do with yourself. Even if, by some miracle, you become Jennifer Egan overnight, you still have to face the same question: Do I want to practice my craft today or not? Can I find meaning here? Does it feel good to do this, even when I fall short? Can I accept that I will usually fall short, that it takes a ton of work to gently massage a bad thing until it becomes a good one?

Because even though you might think you don't want to work hard at anything, I think you're wrong. You worked very, very hard to get here. Clearly, you enjoy hard work a lot.

Go watch that documentary about Jerry Seinfeld returning to stand-up comedy after making something like eight hundred million dollars from his sitcom. Because in the end, even for a megarich megastar, it's all about craft. And WHAT is harder than trying to make a joke funny enough to make a room full of people—PEOPLE SKEPTICAL ABOUT MILLIONAIRES—laugh? Why would Seinfeld try to do something THAT DIFFICULT, that embarrassing and possibly catastrophic? Because the alternative was to retreat to Neverland and hire a doctor with a fondness for propofol.

If you're not dodging chemical bombs or walking five miles through the desert heat to find potable water, you have to wake up and shut off your bad brain and work. When your work is done, you have to figure out how to shut off your bad brain and relax. You have to recognize and accept, in your bones, that accomplishing everything you've ever dreamed of (like Seinfeld) feels a little bit like never having accomplished anything. You will still have to inject meaning into your life every day, somehow, some way.

Speaking of "celebrity" profiles, the other day I saw a teaser for a TV special about that guy who says "Let's get ready to rrrrrrumble!" at big events. In the teaser, Rumble Guy describes that fateful day when he tried out a bunch of different stupid catchphrases, and landed on the one that was stupid enough that stupid people might get all frothed up every time they heard it. Then Rumble Guy's brother, who is or was his manager, talked about how they were extremely strategic about building a gigantic fortune around this one stupid catchphrase. I assume they made sure that NO ONE ELSE COULD EVER SAY this stupid catchphrase, except for Rumble Guy. That way Rumble Guy could spend the rest of his life flying around the country, uttering this one stupid catchphrase, and then taking home a giant bag of cash.

In contrast to the Seinfeld documentary, this story epitomizes the absurd Dr. Seuss-like world we inhabit today. Because not only did Rumble Guy have the gall to trademark his shitty catchphrase, not only did he have the gall to charge millions for it, but he also had the gall to sit around in front of the camera and smugly discuss what a fucking genius he was for coming up with that one enchantingly idiotic idea—not even an idea, really, but a string of five pointless words. I don't mean Rumble Guy is a bad guy. Of course not. But can you FUCKING IMAGINE being that guy, and happily riding the fumes of something that stupid for the rest of your life?

It takes a special kind of a person to do that. And honestly, when you present me with your string of difficult questions, this is what I think about. I think about hard work and the ability to suspend your disbelief, how those two things are really what constitute follow-through—with love, with your career, with your friends. You ask me, "How do you love yourself? How do you accept your flaws and strengths and offer your best to others while trusting they will make allowances for your worst? How do you be a person? I’m struggling here to make any reasonable plan, or even take a simple positive step, to being happy and whole.” All of these things mostly boil down to hard work and suspending your disbelief. You have to be a little bit like Jerry Seinfeld and you have to be a little bit like the Rumble Guy. Because even though one guy gets up in the morning and does something really challenging and maybe even embarrassing (and then, yes, eats delicious fucking meals and flies places in his private jet) and the other guy just mutters five empty words (and also, yes, eats delicious fucking meals and flies places in his private jet), both of those guys know how to do something very important: They know how to shut off the part of their brains that say things like "Oh my god, I made the world's best sitcom and maybe I'll never create anything that good for the rest of my life!" and also "Oh my god, I'm just a cheesy dude with a spraytan and a growly voice!"

It goes without saying that these people have their problems. We all do. Do they love themselves? Do they offer their best to others? Can they make plans? Are they happy and whole? Who the fuck knows? What the fuck is "whole"? What does happiness look like, exactly? They do what they do and they don't question it. Or, they mute the questions for just long enough to get 'er done.

THAT SAID, my guess is that you won't be able to suspend your disbelief and shut off your bad brain until you let your disbelief and your bad brain have their time to shine. Again, you are grappling with introductions, with trying to appear smooth and kind and not-maudlin and never-brutal. What you really need is space to be maudlin but not unbearable, brutal but not nasty, dark and digressive but not self-destructive, rambling and vague but not impossibly self-involved. You are a good writer and you should write more, because it will allow you the time and space you need to let everything out. In my opinion, when you're complicated and smart and damaged and sensitive and self-conscious, you can't just "accept" your flaws, you have to embrace them.

Embracing your flaws is, paradoxically, closely related to suspending your disbelief. It's about rejecting the snappy message that the world wants snappy messages. It's about daring to be fucking "tl;dr" in order to also access "win" and "yaaasss" and the "omg."

You will never be the polished, one-dimensional person this world desires. Let the world have their airbrushed, frothy sloganeers. You need to make messes and embarrass yourself. When you stick your neck out and open up and embarrass yourself, lots of people will find you intolerable, because lots of people don't like half-formed, wishy-washy, scattered introductions. The more you accept that and let your hair down anyway, the less you'll compulsively try too hard, hide, drink too much, hate yourself, cock it all up, etc.

You must stop trying to fix things, and start trying to love what's not completely fixed. You must be flawed and scattered, in as active a way as possible. Your work is to find some place for flaws and maudlin scatteredness. Find your own craft, and maybe even find your own messy fucking catchphrase, too.

In fact, maybe snappy messages and catchphrases aren't so bad after all. Maybe we hate them because most of them feel so willfully blind to how it feels to be a person in the world. But maybe you can cobble together a message that you really believe in. Maybe you can look at what you fear the most in yourself, and love that part of you instead. You may not feel love, but you will be resolved to show yourself love anyway. You will stop using harsh terms to summarize your glory — your unique, off-kilter glory. Or maybe you'll still use harsh terms but you'll imbue them with glory, somehow. You'll appropriate the most soul-sucking messages that were ever used against you: YOU WILL COME ON THEIR HAMPTON BLOUSE AND MOVE ON.

Let yourself ramble. Let out the full scope of who you are. Find your own meaning, and memorize it. Let your meaning be scrappy and misshapen enough that you can feel love for it. Get up in the morning and open the window and say:

I AM MAUDLIN AND BRUTAL AND BRAVE.

Say it like you mean it, until you mean it. Suspend your disbelief. Then get to work. Let your flaws lead you past the awkward beginnings, past the skin-deep introductions, past the clumsy trying-too-hard greetings, to the good part, to the bad part, to the real thing. Just keep moving forward, breathing in and out, trusting that darkness and digressions will lead you to love, bright and pure and real. Follow your best intentions and your worst fears and feel how excruciating it can be, to simply endure the beating of your tender heart. It hurts, and you're exhausted. Look around you: Everything is beautiful, right now. Smudgy and melancholy and incomplete and unbearably beautiful.

Polly

Are you a three-second memorizable message and want to be tl;dr? Write to Polly and discuss!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

Photo by Jay Aremac

The post Ask Polly: You Are Not Uniquely Fucked appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

First of all, let me assure you, I feel like a huge asshole just for asking this, but I've been chewing on this question on and off for more than a year without any real resolution, so I thought I'd turn to you. Here's the deal: I'm wondering whether I'm abusing feminist ideology in order to justify a natural shyness around women and, if so, whether you could find me a new narrative that would help me feel less bad about acknowledging and acting on attractions.

I've always been seriously shy about any aspect of dating, sex, hooking up, whatever. It's not that I have trouble interacting with women—indeed, my female friends greatly outnumber my male friends. I have no problem making friends with women and, in general, I feel I am generally more comfortable in mostly female environments (this probably came from being thirteen and being constantly made fun of by the other boys in my class, as well as growing up with two older sisters). While I'd hesitate to call myself a feminist, mainly due to my concerns about being appropriative, I would say that I have an enduring interest in gender politics that I do my best to express through my actions.

This interest began to manifest after unrequited crush no. 4,523, around my mid-twenties (I'm in early thirties now) when I began to wonder whether the reason I was so unhappy about my lack of meaningful romantic relationships was because of my attitudes towards women. It has, I believe, helped a lot internally: by working to change a lot of my problematic behaviors and mindsets, I'm not nearly as hung up about sex and relationships as I used to be, and overall I do feel like I approach thoughts about women in a much more healthy way than I used to, helping me get out from being the seething ball of bitterness and anxiety that I was when I was younger.

Despite this, however, dating still fills me with dread, and even though I no longer look at my lack of a love life as some sort of scathing indictment of who I am as a human being, I'll admit that I'm still kind of lonely and would like a relationship, or at the very least to get laid more than once or twice a year. However, I seem to not want to do anything about it because I can't help but think that everything that could be done to do so upholds some unhealthy societal norm.

So, for example, when my friends comment that a cute woman has been flirting heavily with me all night, and tell me to go for it, I say that there's no way to tell what she's really thinking and that the last thing any woman needs is to feel like she can't communicate the way she wants to without some entitled creep getting entirely the wrong idea, and that some people are just naturally flirty and we shouldn't assume that that's some sort of indicator for desire, and that if she REALLY liked me that way she would have made it much more clear, and I don't want to assume that any display of friendliness is automatically some attempt to get something going, because that's a real problem in the way men and women interact nowadays. And then I bring up that she has a boyfriend, and I should respect her choice and it's creepy to hit on someone in a relationship as if I know more about what she wants than she does. And my friends go, maybe she wants a new guy, to which I say, “If that were the case then she can say it and make things clear and unambiguous because I'm not going to try and override a decision she made about her own life.” This, incidentally, is the point where one of my friends says, "You're letting your feminism get in the way of your game," which makes me think but, at the same time, I think it would be safer to err on the side of not doing anything to avoid contributing to a toxic environment.

Or, talking to my one sister about a very attractive woman at one of my group activities, she said why not ask her out, and I said that she probably didn't join the group to meet guys and I shouldn't create an atmosphere where she has to worry about being hit on constantly. Besides, I just *know* she doesn't think of me that way (I mean I don't really know for certain, but I generally make the assumption that women aren't interested in me that way, so why bother with someone I think isn't interested?). So I don't want to make her uncomfortable or anything. Or when my sister’s husband asked whether I ever talk to attractive people I see on the subway, and I respond that that's the LAST place anyone wants to talk to a stranger and that women are harassed all the time by people who can't take a hint and I don't want to be one of them because nine times out of ten everyone on a subway, men and women, just want to be left the fuck alone.

Or, last week, I was hanging out with two friends of mine, both female, and one of them began giving me some sort of vibe that involved sitting MUCH closer than necessary, initiating much more physical contact than she had ever before, and also briefly and purposefully stroking my fingers under the blanket. When the other friend left for a bit to walk her dogs, she looked up at me and said she couldn't concentrate on the movie, and I kind of just froze and said that I thought we should watch (stupid, stupid, stupid) and she harumphed and moved across the couch and bundled up her blanket and crossed her arms and acted weird to me the rest of the night. But I've known her for two years and she never had given me any indication that she was interested in the past, and neither of us were at all sober and I don't want to be predatory and take advantage of someone, and she shouldn't have to be concerned that I would try, she should be able to have fun and get fucked up with guy without having to worry that he'll try to fuck her. And how do I know that what I perceived as flirty behavior isn't just all in my head and she didn't mean anything by it? Because that happens, not just to me but to people everywhere. But her reaction made me think I fucked up somehow, and I ALSO don't want her to think I was necessarily rejecting her because she's WAY cute and awesome and smart and principled and if I'd known I was good to go I totally would have gone for it, but I felt the situation was too ambiguous and now I'm worried I made her feel unattractive in that moment, which I know from experience is a terrible thing to feel.

So, things like that. Not helping matters is that the times when I have thought I was good to go, it turns out I had miscalculated, which made me feel awkward and probably made her feel that way too, and so I'm just crappy at trusting my instincts when they're telling me "say you want to kiss her!" because I've been wrong so often in the past and it's felt terrible and I don't want to feel that way.

And so I'm wondering whether all those fancy explanations that I wrap up with deep political meaning are just excuses to justify me not pursuing the relationships I want, like the problems I've always had with sex and dating just went to grad school and came back with an MA in women's studies and philosophy but, at heart, is still the exact same problem. It's the same fear—that there's something fundamentally unlovable about me and if I ever express a desire for someone in any way, they won't like me anymore because how could I even SUGGEST such a thing—except dressed in big words and given some sort of political justification. Like, it's not that I'm shy and need to learn to take some risks, it's that I'm not going to impose myself on someone who just wants to be left alone and live her life and have male friends who don't try to hit on her, because I refuse to be That Guy. They're different mindsets, but it's the same result: I don't bring up the topic of possibly dating people I'm attracted to and decide it's not that bad having a new friend, because, obviously, awesome people don't stop being awesome just because they're not sleeping with me, and I want to have awesome people in my life.

One thing I've been thinking about is that my mindset could be making this assumption of sexlessness on the part of women, as if they don't also have bodies that get horny as well, but I'm not sure if that's really reflective of my thoughts because I acknowledge that women also want to have sex, I just have a very difficult time thinking they want sex with me. And then I've been thinking that it's unfair to expect women to take on all of the risk in romantic interaction by wanting them to make the first move and not responding to anything unless they make their desire abundantly clear, because as a man who was raised with the expectation that I'm the one supposed to do all the asking, that fucking sucks and why do I want to burden women with having to do that. But, on the other hand, it sounds like WAY too convenient an excuse and could just be my mind trying to rationalize the predatory hunter/prey model that has caused so many problems in the first place! We must always police ourselves for bad thoughts, I believe, for the oppressor within can be far more tenacious than the oppressor without, and I wonder whether this is just the inner enemy speaking.

So you can see I've been having a rough time and possibly missing opportunities to find what I want in other people. It's only recently, though, that I've started wondering whether I'm hurting other people by doing this, people who may have actually wanted me but I refused to respond because I didn't think things were clear enough and I didn't want to risk making them feel shitty, which in turn could be making them feel shitty (admittedly, it's the final example that got me wondering this).

Am I overthinking all this? How do you both pursue the relationships you want while still staying true to ideals of gender equality? How can you be more comfortable expressing what you want while not going overboard and becoming an entitled creep? And, finally, should I have kissed that girl in the last example?

Sincerely,

Just a Dude

Dear Just a Dude,

Dude. There's this movie, "Legends of the Fall," that's ostensibly about three brothers, all in love with the same woman (Julia Ormond). But really, the movie is a soft porn bodice-ripper for ladies who saw Brad Pitt in that one small role in "Thelma and Louise" and decided that he was tasty man candy. If that sounds hard to believe, go watch "Thelma and Louise” (Again. You're a male feminist, so I know you've fucking seen it.) and you'll understand why Pitt had a certain undiscovered-fuck-toy appeal back then. He had this weird country-cousin allure that made him exactly the sort of squeaky plaything you wanted to ferret away to a secret corner of the house and chew to tiny little bits.

I saw "Legends of the Fall" in a crowded theater on opening night because my Irish boyfriend loved to see cheesy American blockbusters on opening night in America, among Americans. We both knew the movie would probably be stupid, and it WAS stupid, but that incited more rowdy audience back-talking, which was the real point.

Anyway, there was this one scene where scruffy cowboy Brad Pitt asks his little brother, Elliott from "E.T.," (Henry Thomas!) whether or not he's fucked his brand new, smoking-hot fiancee, Julia Ormond. Elliott says something like, "I am not… That is not… When the time comes, after we are legally married, we will… m-m-make love."

Brad Pitt replies, in a low growl, "I suggest you fuck her."

So that's pretty much the sum total of my advice to you. I suggest you fuck her.

The fact that you go from NOT wanting to hit on women with boyfriends and NOT wanting to hit on women on the subway (both reasonable) straight to NOT wanting to respond in any way to an obvious expression of sexual interest (by a woman who interests you!) really underscores how much you've overgeneralized this problem, confusing reasonable self-restraint with some overall philosophy of non-intervention.

Stop analyzing the psychosocial and political layers of every single interaction with every woman. Are you interested or not? If you are, say so. When a lady is fondling you on the couch, that typically indicates that she's interested. If you'd rather say, "Can we pick this up when we're not drunk?" that's great. If you want to say, "Can I kiss you?" that's also good. But freezing up and getting confused and then feeling bewildered by her silence and anger, but not saying a word about any of it, and THEN slicing and dicing the whole thing intellectually, passing it through every high-minded filter known to humankind? This is a squandering of precious youth, an offense against hormones and nature and humanity. PLUS, WHO HAS THE ENERGY FOR THIS SHIT? Open your mouth and speak. Say what you want. Politely stating your desires in the presence of an apparently interested human being is not a high crime against womankind. It just isn't.

If the woman in question isn't interested, she is free to tell you that. What's the problem? Where is the insult or injury there? Give a woman ample opportunity to set you straight. Feel free to apologize for presuming. But don't apologize for even CONSIDERING opening your mouth. Admitting that you have attractions and desires does not make you an oppressor. No.

I can see why your friends are encouraging you in such a wide range of situations, some of them not entirely comfortable. They just want you to stop thinking so much and do something, ANYTHING. Because you are not some stalking carnivore that needs to be shot. Stop worrying that it's offensive or poisonous or wrong to think or say this or that. Yes, I do admire your EFFORTS to always police yourself for bad thoughts. I agree that people should try to honor their highest selves, rather than merely assuming that their behavior will naturally match some stanky half-assed selfishness displayed by the lowest common denominator of humankind. But I think that these valiant efforts of yours, and all the analysis you put into every single wasted moment of your squandered existence as a virile young human being, are clearly beginning to stand in the way of your happiness. Instead of thinking quite so much about every dimension of what a woman wants and thinks and feels, I would suggest spending a little time getting to know a woman, or a few women, who interest you. That means asserting yourself. Speaking up. Saying what you want. Telling someone how you feel.

After you start dating someone? Trust me, THERE IS PLENTY OF TIME TO SLICE AND DICE EVERYTHING YOU DO IN A RELATIONSHIP. You will have many, many opportunities to recalibrate and reconnoiter in order to ensure a totally egalitarian pairing. The entire power dynamic of a union is not established and then set in stone within the first few milliseconds of a given interaction. There are multiple times, over the course of a relationship, to reconsider your actions, give more generously, reassert your interest in your partner's feelings, inquire after your partner's comfort. All of these things are likely to go well for you, because you care. Healthy women will appreciate your ability to put them front and center, to listen, to sensitively take their feelings into account at every turn.

But in the beginning, it's pretty black and white. There is desire, or interest, or a spark, or there's nothing. How will you know if you don't ask?

Do you need to analyze whether or not you seem predatory, or wonder if you're creating the wrong atmosphere? I'm not saying there aren't situations where these questions might be appropriate and even welcomed. On the subway, or in the company of a woman with a boyfriend: Good idea. But I'm just going to go out on a limb and guess, based in part on what everyone else is telling you, both with words and without words, that you are not in clear danger of behaving predatorily in an everyday situation with a woman who's FONDLING YOU UNDER A BLANKET.

You are, however, in danger of hiding in your hidey hole forever, of ignoring bright, flashing "COME CLOSER!" signs, and of never ever kissing a pretty woman or dating a lady or doing anything, at all, ever. You are in danger of remaining paralyzed by your neurotic thoughts indefinitely.

And that's a cop out. Your overactive, pro-feminist, hypercritical imagination is a cop out. You are more comfortable writing endless, winding sentences about why you shouldn't act, why it wouldn't be RIGHT or GOOD to act, why it's NOBLE and DECENT and RIGHTEOUS not to act, than you are with action, and desire, and the feeling of feelings.

I have to admit, there are a few red flags in your letter. First, you describe your past in very vague terms. What are you talking about? It's tough to tell. Second, the women in your letter are suspiciously faceless and interchangeable. You didn't offer a concrete detail about any of them. You seem to find them appealing, but it's never clear WHAT EXACTLY you like about any one of them. Does one woman excite you more than the others? When a faceless multitude of women add up to a problem? That's a little suspect. Let's not just skin the damn cat, here. Let's unearth your true desires and feelings and figure out WHO out there is lively and spontaneous enough to blast through your complexly constructed web of rationalizations and teach you to live a little, goddamn it.

I'm not sure you know what you want, though, because you're blocking your feelings with this rambling, self-blaming paralysis of yours. You need to make less room for your thoughts, and make much more room for your feelings. I suggest you stop thinking, listen more, ask questions, and feel your feelings. I suggest you smile at the woman you really do like. Notice how that feels—making eye contact without apology. I suggest you ask if you can kiss her. If these things go well, I suggest you talk about your attraction to each other. I suggest you express your interest without qualifying it with disclaimers and intentions to ensure that you are not in the least bit offensive or suspect. I suggest you leave all of the complicated sociopolitical ramifications out of this picture at first, if at all possible. And if all goes well? I suggest you fuck her.

Because you are not a walking encyclopedia without a working penis, are you? You are not a sex offender, either. You are not poisonous, simply because you're a man. You are a polite person. You will ask her for her consent many times. This is clear. You will be kind and you will pay attention.

But you're not a fucking computer. You ARE an animal. She is an animal. This is a good thing. I suggest you fuck her. And if you're lucky, she'll recognize that she's an animal, and she won't get clouded up by her self-consciousness and self doubts and she'll fuck you, too.

Now obviously, there are people who will read those words and assume that I mean, "DOMINATE THE LADIES, MALE OPPRESSOR!" Get real. I'm not telling anyone to become a player overnight or fuck and run or hit on women with reckless abandon. We all know about rape culture and the insane rape-y shit happening all over the place. Go read that long New York Times article about the woman who was raped at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. I mean, seriously, WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING OUT THERE?

But let's not let our criminal caveman culture keep us from realizing the full force of our sexual potential. Early feminists, suffragettes, and enlightened men have fought very hard to assert that women are not merely vessels that make babies or vessels to get fucked, we are sexual beings with thoughts and desires of our own. Please don't infantilize us with your condescending, overconcerned intellectualizing. I know you mean well. You want a new, more helpful narrative? We women want what we want, just like you do.

You're not evil. We're not helpless. Get over yourself. Put your ego aside. Far less is at stake in a single interaction than you believe. The hero doesn't succeed or fail here. People out there find love when they learn to show up and be themselves. I know, you're shy. That's why you have to practice a little, and make a few mistakes. Stop trying to protect yourself. Stop trying to control the outcome. Stop trying to remain perfect and harmless and blameless. Turn off that twisted brain of yours for once and just say what you want and ask what she wants.

You have the rest of your life to bring gender equality into your relationships—at home, at work, everywhere. You will always do that, and god bless you for it. But there is a limited window for saying, "I want to kiss you. Can I?"

Don't think. Feel. Ask. And if the answer is yes? Go for it.

Polly

Do you wish Brad Pitt would say something to you in a low growl? Write to Polly and discuss!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

The post Ask Polly: I Want to Get Laid But I'm Afraid of Oppressing Women appeared first on The Awl.

Hi Polly,

I'm trying to figure out how to get the gist of this across without writing a novel, but here goes. I am a 30-year-old woman who is really hitting her stride. I bought a home with my boyfriend who recently became my fiancé, I have a great job and live a great life in Southern California. It's a dream, and I can't wait to start a family blah blah blah.

Obviously these are the types of joys in life that you want to share with family, but I only have one family member left, my mother, and right now I have such anger toward her that I feel like it would be therapeutic for me to tell her she can't be in my wedding, or have anything to do with me for that matter.

Choices she made throughout her life basically made my childhood chaos and my life a living hell. She divorced my father, and remarried an asshole with three sons who pretty much tortured me for four years straight. She used to forget me at school until dark, and then she would send one of her employees, often a grizzled contractor in a smelly truck, to pick me up. I grew out of my clothes, and she didn't notice when I wore the same (too short) pants to school every day for weeks. Sometimes I wouldn't see her for days at a time, because I would take the bus to school, and she would work through my bedtime. When I tried to tell her about my unhappiness, she said things like, "Stop feeling sorry for yourself." or "Who ever told you that people are supposed to be happy? No one is happy. That's the way life is.” It’s sad, in hindsight, because that must be how she really felt.

As an adult, I can see that she had her own problems with her husband, and their failing business put her in a tough spot financially, so I know she was working to make ends meet during those times that I didn't see her. And I can't be mad about being poor, you know? I just tried to make things easier and not make waves. I was a perfect student in high school, got straight As and over thirty thousand dollars in scholarships. My mother looks back on these as the "glory days," unaware even today how often I crouched in the bathtub crying with a razor blade to my wrist, wondering if I had the guts.

At my freshman orientation for college, I was drugged, raped, and left in a field outside the dormitory where we were staying. (I didn't tell anyone for many years; I thought that's how college was and I was a silly amateur.) After that, I completely lost control. I drank heavily and started using a LOT of cocaine. I was extremely promiscuous. I was disrespectful to my mother, getting wasted at family gatherings and smoking cigarettes outside of church. My mother reacted by being completely disgusted. By now, she had a new husband and had recovered financially, so now she was in a position to criticize, apparently. She constantly made unkind jokes about my drinking and partying to other people. She seemed embarrassed of me and openly told me she was many times. She acted like I was a criminal, although I still graduated from the (pretty prestigious) university I attended in four years with a 3.0. I sometimes reminded her of how my step-brothers would lock me in a closets all day and yell taunts at me through the door, or held me down and shove dirt-filled socks in my mouth or snap me with rubber bands until I cried, and she would say, "What? They did NOT. No, you guys just played." Okay.

Finally, after about six years of self-destruction, I picked myself up, saved some money, left the small town we were in and moved to a big city. Four years later, here I am, a shiny new penny. Because my improvements were made here, and not in front of my mother's face, she can't stop rubbing those days in my face every time that I see her. I've told her I don't like it, but it seems like it's some kind of reflex for her. I'm in therapy now (when your mother tells you no one is supposed to be happy, it's hard to feel deserving when happiness finds you), and on one visit I asked if she might consider going herself. She said something like "If I open that door, I'll never close it again."

I want to repair things with her, because I have no one else, but when I am around her I am filled with so much anger that sometimes I have to leave the room. She has cried and told me she wants our relationship to be better, and I am surprised at how ice cold I feel toward her. I feel like she contributed to my decline and then mocked me for it. I don't want to have holidays with her, and since my fiancé has a lovely, large family who will soon be my in-laws, I feel like I shouldn't have to, at least until I'm ready. My question is, do I HAVE to forgive her? Can I just tell her that I don't want to see her until I've made more progress with my therapy? Or is that… evil? Should I push myself harder to be civil and put up with it because she's old and all I have that's left of my blood, and that's what people do? Because I genuinely don't know if I even can. How do I fix this?

Sincerely,

Mad at Mom

Dear MAM,

You don't have to forgive your mother, and it's certainly not evil to make your own choices about this. I don't think anyone else can understand how fundamental her betrayal of you feels, so taking other people's advice in the matter is tough. There are people who will ALWAYS say, "You must honor your mother and be good to her, simply because she's your mother." There are also people who will ALWAYS say, "Seriously, fuck her. Do whatever you want. I cut my family off and it feels great."

What's interesting is that the feelings generated by other people's opinions about your mom can tell you a lot about where you stand. When someone tells you, "Be good to you mother, you ingrate. She's the only mother you have and that's what people do!", that probably kicks up that old feeling of not being understood or cared for or heard or supported. It reminds you how, when you came out of the closet as someone who felt misunderstood and invisible, instead of being loved, you were insulted and treated as a worthless, embarrassing aberration. So you not only want to say to that person who doesn't get it about Really Bad Mothers, "You have no fucking idea how bad it felt!" but you also actually FEEL lost and misunderstood and neglected and insulted and abandoned in that moment.

But then, when someone else says, "WELL, fuck her. Tell her she can't come to your wedding. Tell her to go fuck herself"? That doesn't feel like relief either, does it? Because if that were easy to do, you would've done it already. It's not just guilt that's keeping you here, it's the sense that other people can't really understand THIS side of things either; they can't understand why you feel a little responsible for someone who's pretty fucking heartless, and who never took real responsibility for you.

You're obviously conflicted over this. Maybe it's just that you're a person who doesn't do the easy thing. Maybe you don't believe in easy things. Or maybe you just feel, at some level, that you don't want to be a person who cut off her mother forever. It gets dicey to write that, because certainly there are people who suffered physical abuse out there who actually get a kind of PTSD when they see their parents' faces. But I still think, in your case, that it's a legitimate thing, to simply acknowledge, "Even though I can't TOLERATE my mother at all, I also have trouble understanding myself as a person who'd ban her mother from her wedding."

So there are a million things in play here. There's the physical feeling, the sense-memory, of being neglected and ignored by your mother, as well as the sensation of being treated like a leper in public, at the exact time when you needed her most. There's also the intellectual response, the reasoning part of your brain that says, "She was busy piecing her bad marriage together and struggling to stay afloat financially." The intellectual analysis, though, also includes a pretty damning picture of a woman who is willing to distance herself from you IN FRONT OF OTHER PEOPLE, BECAUSE YOU MADE HER LOOK BAD. That one is almost unforgivable. Because what kind of an animal says "You're embarrassing me!" instead of saying, "I'm worried about you"? I don't know that many people who are capable of that level of betrayal—public betrayal. Particularly when your good little straight-A girl is essentially admitting she's damaged, and looking to you for help. As a mother, it's your job to see vulnerability and need in someone who's pushing you away. I get that it's not easy, that it kicks up your own damage. But it's still your fucking job.

That said, your mother's damage and issues are also a factor to weigh here, like it or not. You mention her circumstances and take them into account, but you don't really mention how she was raised. My own mother was raised by a mother who was an alcoholic. My struggles with her always lead back to that. There's a pretty concrete reason she was never that great at embracing and caring for me when I felt vulnerable. That didn't change the sense-memory of feeling rejected at the exact moment when I needed her most. But it did mean that I tried to remind myself—intellectually anyway—that I was the one who was arguably more capable of rising above our fights and seeing clearly what was needed to fix our relationship.

But she was an amazing mother in many other ways. Your mother, not so much.

In addition to all of that, you've got to throw in issues of identity: How you see yourself, how you want to be seen by your new husband and his family, how they view family, how they might react to your mother. You feel like a shiny new penny now. Maybe you're afraid to introduce your future husband to the scared, vulnerable, angry person you were before, the one who waited in the dark for mom to pick her up, the one who woke up in a field, the one who heard, through a drunken haze, her mom's voice, making fun of her.

Your future husband is going to meet that person, though, whether you like it or not. He's going to meet her. It's your job to introduce him to her, in a way that makes it safe for both of you, in a way that makes it less likely that he'll reject her or get embarrassed by her or mock her the way your mother did. Because a few years into your marriage, when you're working together to raise a baby, blah blah blah, you might feel weak and try to overcome that weakness with anger. And if he treats your weakness with disdain, your view of him could cloud over with rage and blame that you can't really understand or control.

In fact, when you write, "It's a dream, and I can't wait to start a family blah blah blah." That’s maybe the most revealing part of your letter. That "blah blah blah" says, "I don't feel comfortable expressing that I'm just another fool for this mainstream heteronormative fairy tale," sure, but it also says, "I don't feel comfortable expressing any hope about my future, or even a desire to love and be loved, because I don't have a right to happiness like that and anyway fuck you, it's none of your fucking business anyway." It also says, "I sort of want to get married and have kids, but if it all falls apart I won't be surprised, really, because my whole life up to now has been a shitshow of epic proportions."

So your letter might be about your mother, but these issues stretch far beyond her. This isn't about whether or not to invite your mom to your wedding, this is about whether or not to invite your past self into your current relationship. It's also about identity, and control, and pragmatically pursuing a dream vs. optimistically, unguardedly throwing yourself into a dream without shame. It's about owning your weakest self. When you got drunk and slept around and did coke in college and after, you were trying to access your omnipotent, bulletproof self, sure. But you were also trying to access your weakest self. As a former lonely, straight-A student with no one even watching, no one supporting, no one approving, and a bunch of jackals at home locking you in the fucking closet (while your one trusted guardian lamely chalks it all up to juvenile high jinx), I'll bet you have trouble letting your weakest self out of the closet. I'll bet you have trouble crying and telling the truth about how bad you feel and opening your heart, blah blah blah.

And before we go any further, let me just say that I FEEL YOU. I love my brother and sister, but they sometimes locked me in the closet and when my parents got home (yep, olden times) they just laughed at the silly tomfoolery we all got up to while they were away. Years later when I was about 24, my mom found a note I wrote to her as a kid that said, essentially, "Please, PLEASE do something about these sadistic fucking jackals." She sent me the note because she thought I would think it was hilarious. And because I still had trouble crying and telling the truth about how bad I felt, I DID think it was hilarious. I laughed and laughed and showed it to my friend and she was like, HOLY SHIT THIS IS TRAGIC AND SAD. And I was all NO IT'S FUNNY BLAH BLAH BLAH SHUT UP IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS HA HA FUCK OFF.

I'm not implying that you're that far gone. I'm just saying I feel you. Some people are taught, growing up, that they have people they can lean on. Other people are taught that when the shit comes down, they're on their own. And when people who always had people to lean on tell you, "Oh, lighten up. She's your mom."? That in and of itself is enough to make you feel sad, to remind you that you're on your own.

And maybe it makes you strong, too. Maybe it makes you say, "I will not let anyone drag me down. I will be a shiny new penny forever. No one will fuck with the good life I've built!" Surviving requires toughness. Why let people fuck with your good life?

But I want to encourage you not to be TOO tough and too perfect. I want you to be open-hearted and unafraid of feeling what you feel, whether it's sadness or anger. Having hope for the future, to me, depends on being open to the past in all of its ugliness. Letting in the ugliness will give you a richer appreciation of the present and the future. Building a rock solid marriage and a good relationship with your in-laws depends, in part, on not hiding or trying to be better than you are. I mean, you do have to try, around husbands and in-laws. But you also have to relax and own who you are, and allow yourself a little breathing room. It is truly a miracle, how shiny and new you can feel when you're with someone who cares about you and supports you and doesn't fucking disappear the second you get a little sniffly. But it's also unnerving how forlorn you can feel when something small goes wrong—you don't get enough sleep, you feel passive-aggressively insulted by your shiny new in-laws (hello, universal, shared rite of passage!), you don't like the way your shiny new husband changes the subject when you try to talk about your crazy mother for more than a few minutes. It's ok to admit that the past has a hold on you, that it bleeds into your future sometimes. By pointing this out, I'm not painting your future black. I'm telling you that the future will be richer if the past is included there.

There are people who can't include the past in their future, because if they do, they won't survive. I feel terrible for them. I don't mean to imply that THEY should get over whatever they suffered through. But we're talking about you. The way you describe your current circumstances—the fresh start, shiny penny stuff, the new family, the new husband, the new everything—makes me think that cutting off contact with your mother will make your life harder in the long run. Even if we cut HER feelings out of it—and I have no trouble doing that considering her actions—I still think that YOU are worse off if you walk away. I think you're going to grow more if you try to express yourself to her and connect with her, in spite of everything. By doing this, you'll be working on your relationship with yourself. By doing this, you'll be improving your chances of a solid marriage. You'll be tolerating the feelings of extreme anger and sadness that, like it or not, may be triggered by your spouse and your children some day.

Blame is a tangled thing. You have every right to blame your mother for what you went through growing up. You have every right to stand up to her now, to tell her to stop shaming you for your relatively minor personal mistakes, which are NOTHING compared to hers. You have a right to your anger and sadness, which are understandable. The part where she insults you, in front of other people, for being drunk and lost—that’s the part that just twists the knife for me. She really doesn't deserve to be called "Mom," does she? She doesn't fucking deserve your mercy, at some level. I guess some might say that every living being deserves mercy. But grinding your face into the mud when you needed her most? Fuck her. Really. When did she hear you? When did she take your word for it? When did she listen? Why should SHE be allowed to speak?

Maybe the answer is to call her by her first name, to never call her "Mom" because she didn't really earn that name. Maybe that's a way to pay homage to your anger for a while. Maybe that's a way to allow some room for the giant fucking injuries that she inflicted, the ones she refuses to acknowledge.

The question here is not about what SHE needs or wants, can you see that? It's about what you need and want and require to move forward. Maybe, ultimately, you will end up cutting her out of your life. But right now, you're still so young and everything is changing for you. Right now, there's a lot of beauty and promise in NOT cutting her off, in letting some of her ugliness and some of your hatred for her into your present. Instead of seeing her as something unfair and unsafe that needs to be shut out or kept away, I would try seeing her as an opportunity for expanding your ability to feel what you feel, and strengthening your resilience and flexibility. She presents you with a great opportunity, to accept what is. You might just become someone who can stand still, full of anger, full of sadness, and just feel it and accept it. Paradoxically, sometimes that's what living a good life is all about.

Because the more you can untangle your blame, emotionally and intellectually, and allow for the fact that your mom is a very different person from you—a damaged, confused and lonely person—the more you'll be able to untangle your blame in friendships, in work relationships, in your marriage. It will take years and years of effort, to talk through this in therapy, to feel your way through these emotions. You may never feel warm feelings for your mother. But right now you blame her for what she did, sure, but you also blame her for who she is. She had money trouble, worked too much, married an asshole, and believed that people shouldn't complain and that no one should expect to be happy. That part sounds like seventy percent of the people out there. That part sounds like my mother. I'm not saying it's the same, because it's not even close to the same.

But I'm not convinced it would feel good or right to cut her off, and I don't think "delaying" your contact with her is necessarily the right move. You don't have to see her over the holidays. But you can stay in contact and try to work through things a little. You can also make your disappointment in her crystal clear. You can write down all of your grievances and send it to her. You can say that you need to do that, in order to consider maintaining a relationship with her. Maybe that will crush whatever relationship you have. That's ok. You are committed to stating what's true for you. If she wants to address it and let you know the pressures and troubles she faced and faces, she can do that in a controlled setting, or in a letter. You can clarify that you are not interested in hearing about what a drunk slut you were anymore. You can draw boundaries and ask for what you want.

My point is, you have options. You don't have to make a sweeping decision at this moment. You can experiment a little. Thanks in part to your mother, you seem to believe that people can't talk these things out. You think that you're supposed to either accept emotional abuse, or cut it out of your life completely. But there are other choices. Some of those choices might make you feel like you're cathartically expunging poisonous feelings. Some might make you feel angry. Feeling anger is not necessarily bad for you, if it's anger that you've bottled up and or tapped into by getting wasted. You need to try a few things before you leave your mother behind. Not for her sake, but for your sake, and for the sake of your female friendships (which may not be great with a mother like her). You need to try a few things for the sake of your future family.

I wouldn't necessarily advise most people to lay out their grievances to their parents. Certainly I would never tell anyone to expect apologies and new understanding from their parents when they do so. But this is where you are. I think you need to dive in and take some risks and see if being heard doesn't make you feel a little better. I think you need to recognize the beauty of this moment.

Because this moment is bigger than your mother. This is your moment to invite that lost, lonely girl from your past in, and take care of her, and show her love for the first time. This is a moment that separates you from seventy percent of the people out there. This is the moment that you choose feelings over the need to tell an easy story, blame the enemy, shut out the past, control the future. This is the moment you admit that you still have sadness and fear inside you, that you are NOT in mint condition, that you can't simply be placed behind glass, free from further injury.

The world is full of injuries. The world is full of love and soaring, unlimited gratitude and elation. There is darkness waiting for you, and there is deep love and joy waiting for you, too. You will be safer without your mother. You will be happier, and more vulnerable, and richer, and stronger and more full of hope WITH her. When you were younger, you wondered if you had the guts to kill yourself. But exits don't require guts. Facing an uncertain future, full of fear, full of rage—that requires guts.

It feels dangerous not to cut your mother out. It feels dangerous to care. And maybe you never will care. But these dangers are good for you, because they lead to the truth. You can't simply do things the right way, the opposite of the way your mother did them, and skirt disaster. It's not that simple. You have to forge a whole new path that combines toughness and vulnerability, anger and acceptance, blame and forgiveness, boundaries and flexibility.

You deserve happiness. You know that, intellectually. But I want you to FEEL that you deserve happiness. By moving through your feelings for your mother, and tolerating those feelings, and allowing them space, and letting your husband see them, and letting your friends see them, too, you will feel your way toward happinessreal, true, lasting happiness. You can only feel your way there. Stay open, stay vulnerable, and feel your way there.

Polly

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Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

The post Ask Polly: Should I Cut My Abusive Mother Out of My Life Forever? appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

I want to be known, and to know other people. I crave intimacy, and not just physical intimacy. I realize everyone wants these things. But I am afraid I will never “be known.” It seems that no matter what I say or do, no one will ever know the REAL me, not in full. When I talk to people I often feel like I’m talking to them through a thin glass wall. I want people to benefit from knowing me, and for me to be able to reach out and help other people, and empathize with them, and build proper relationships.

Part of the reason I can’t seem to is because I always feel so conflicted and complex and hidden—a packet of lies. I am frequently a coward and seem to revert to speaking in cliches whenever I talk to people. It’s as if I can’t ever say anything original or even true, and instead just mirror other people’s energies and opinions back to them constantly. Lately, maybe as a result of growing up a little (I am nineteen), I have begun to move from comfortably cruising along, content to spin a web of fakery, to craving honesty. I am learning almost everything I usually say is just a reaction, and depends on who I talk to and the circumstance. I have started consciously trying to think and be honest, and in fact I’ve swung the other way now; it’s almost as if lately I get a kick out of being blunt and slightly jarring in my vulnerability.

I open my mouth and what comes out is never what I mean. I’m not just talking about a slight lack of eloquence, or slightly jumbled thoughts—rather I seem to have NO brain to mouth coherence. I am honestly surprised every time I hear myself. It’s either a blundering, babbling shadow of what I mean to say or, more frequently, it’s something completely different. I find what comes out of my mouth almost novel. No amount of concentrating seems to help. To make it worse, it is always a lie. Not ever a lie as in a full-on, made-up lie, but rather a bunch of things I’m sure I don’t really think, or if I did, I would not have worded that way. I often sound dumb and fake and shallow, or worse to me, insincere. I don’t think it’s just fear, either. It even happens when I am around people I’m comfortable with, about trivial things. It’s as if I can’t get ever straight what I think, while at the same time it’s somehow crystal clear; and then my mouth ignores both of that anyway and makes its own stuff up. Whenever I sit down to write, the truth seems a lot more apparent and comes readily—but this is real life, and I want to be able to communicate honestly and in the moment more than just, say, online.

If I can’t communicate with any consistency or honesty, then how can I have any real, valid relationships with anyone? And the worst part is I am not really exceedingly awkward or shy. People think they know me. How do I deal with the guilt that they don’t know me and that I’m constantly presenting them with an instinctive half-version? Trying to be more real seems impossible and complicated for the above reasons, and then I start over-analyzing to what extent I am meant to be open with them anyway, where do I stop, and how to say it, and do they REALLY understand what I’m saying, and why don’t I understand THEM. Then I just give up and start thinking that I am just a more complex person with too many different shades of thought and opinion and history, and maybe it would be better to ignore everyone and embrace that and blah blah blah.

I know how ridiculously self-centered I am being. There are more important things to be focusing on than whether people know me. But I want them to know me fully so badly, and I can’t help thinking it would make me a better person. I guess I’m asking: How? What can I do? Why can’t I seem to be real?

Thanks so so much.

Miss Perceived

Dear Miss Perceived,

Your letter feels a little sad up to the point where you mention, in passing, that you're nineteen years old. At that point, I'm pretty sure most of the people reading your letter rolled their eyes and clicked over to a video of a puppy falling asleep. But the three nineteen-year-olds who read that thought, "Oh my god. Why don't I remember writing and sending this letter?!"

At first glance, in other words, your current difficulties are very age-specific. That's not a way of discounting your feelings. It's simply a way of saying that you are not alone. What you describe exquisitely well in your letter is the sensation of recognizing, for the first time, that the self you present to the world is an amalgamation of emotions and circumstances—a mix of calculated, self-conscious reactions that doesn't seem to bear any relation to what you carry around inside of you. I remember that feeling so well. When I was very young, I wanted to show my REAL SELF to someone, anyone, but instead I was always skimming the surface, saying stuff that felt insincere or untrue. When I did break through with a bold statement, even that felt like a lie. It was like I had to build up a big head of steam to tell the truth, and that head of steam itself undercut what I was trying to say so much that it all came out jumbled and disingenuous.

Here's something that people don't admit very often, or don't remember very often: Talking and listening is really fucking hard when you're very young. When you're smart and complicated and you're just getting to know yourself, putting all of that into words without feeling like a self-involved asshole is pretty much impossible. And if you REALLY want to be known, if you REALLY want to be accurate, and genuine and real? Well, it takes a long time to get there. It takes a lot of recalibrating. How much do you want to say, and to whom? Who are your real friends? Who will understand? Even if you ONLY factor in the self-consciousness of talking to people you're not sure will get it, that alone is enough to make you feel sick to your stomach half the time. And I say this as a fellow introverted extrovert.

I need to write a book about being a fucking extrovert. Because it's an illusion, the notion that people who like to show off and speak up feel any more comfortable or genuine or at ease with themselves than the introverts. Sometimes knowing exactly how to "seem" and how to behave is more of an albatross than anything else. You're so good at being what people want you to be that it's a serious struggle to be what YOU want to be.

And that's a lonely formula. I was pretty good at being liked by other people when I was younger, but I wanted someone to appreciate the REAL ME, the worried, sad, scared, fragile, messy me. I couldn't imagine how to make this person known to other people, particularly the sorts of people who already strongly preferred the plucky, carefree freak I pretended to be. It's tough to drag out your messy inner self when you get a lot of love—and praise, and, you know, boyfriends—with your skin-deep charm and your empty swagger.

And we ALL fall back into our old tricks over the years. So your letter is valuable, not just to other nineteen-year-olds who are struggling to calibrate how much they reveal and keep to themselves (see also: all of them), but also to people, old and young, who unexpectedly ask themselves, "How much of what I say is genuine and heartfelt? How much is pure habit? How much is pure bullshit?" Because it's easy enough, on a bad day of imperfect interactions, to look back and think, "Everything I say is either the habitual, knee-jerk flavor of bullshit I've been spewing for over a decade, churning out the same old watery talking points repeatedly, or it's self-involved drivel that no one could possibly care about. I'm either engineering responses that maintain people's comfort levels, or I'm returning to crusty old 'opinions' that I'm not even sure I still hold."

Now, clearly, there are those who will read this and think, "What kind of a mixed up motherfucker are you, anyway?" But here's the good news: You're the kind of mixed up motherfucker who will have extremely honest, intense, probing conversations with other people in your life. You're the kind of mixed up motherfucker who will meet like-minded souls and REALLY get to know them well. You're the kind of mixed up motherfucker who will evaluate and reevaluate where you stand in relation to others, who will work hard to grow, who will try very hard not to hide behind the standard rationalizations of personality and social convention.

When I was a few years older than you, I fell into a strange place where I felt like everything I said was overbearing and abrasive and maybe even untrue. I noticed that I had a bad habit of making bold statements that I didn't necessarily believe, simply for the sake of not prattling along and satisfying other people's expectations of me. Maybe I was trying to get attention. Maybe I was lonely and in pain and I was trying to find someone who would support me, and it was coming out all wrong. But around that same time, I noticed that my then-boyfriend mostly said things that he decided a decade prior and had been repeating ever since ("Every boy should own a dog"). Occasionally, he'd also make statements about superficial aspects of the future. ("I am going to fill my house with mahogany furniture," "The bar I own will have red leather booths.") Because I was (and still am) kind of an asshole, I soon fell into the habit of challenging everything that came out of his mouth ("You don't even like working at a bar, what makes you think you're going to like owning and therefore living in one? You think just because you picked out the red leather booths, that's going to make it all feel like a dream come true?")

Eventually my comments formed a direct assault on what I saw as the superficial, unexamined nature of his personality. I was tortured (by my own nature as a mixed-up motherfucker) and unhappy (because I truly didn't know myself yet and therefore didn't know what "me" I really wanted to present and share with the world) so I couldn't stand to see him skip along, happy as a clam, burbling on about bars and mahogany and red leather booths. He wanted to pick out a nice red wine and talk about its subtle hints of cherry and spice, and I wanted to take his feeble ego, freeze it, and then slice it into very very thin slivers and examine it under a microscope.

This didn't go well for either of us. I still remember the day that I found his journal—an honest attempt to comply with my demands that he examine his longstanding assumptions instead of persisting on such a shallow path studded by empty distractions—and I read one mundane entry after another. There was no self-examination. There were no personal insights. There weren't even colorful anecdotes. There weren't any subtle hints of wit and spice. It was just "Spent the morning folding clothes. Sort of dreading work tonight. Went on a long walk to clear my head." Would someone this concrete ever want to hear about my tangled thoughts and complicated emotions?

Apparently not; he dumped me a few weeks later. "We're too different," he told me. "Thinking too much the way you do makes me crazy. If that's shallow, then I guess I want to keep being shallow." Even though I had been a condescending asshole to him a lot of the time, I cried my eyes out. "I'll never date a guy who's this hot again!" I thought. (He wasn't the only shallow one.)

The point here is that it's really tough to be authentic and genuine when you're around people who aren't well suited to appreciate your particular flavors of authenticity. My authentic self is wordy and vague and emotional and second-guessing and concept-focused and digressive and pretty goddamn exasperating to your average bear. You average bear just wants someone to smile and sip the wine and giggle and eat up the shit about the red leather booths. Your average bear does not have much interest in mixed-up motherfuckers like me and you, Miss Perceived.

And let me tell you something else I've learned since then: My authentic self comes out on the page in a way that it doesn't in person. That doesn't mean I'm a big liar in my interactions with other people. But because I'm not a total sociopath, I do cater to other people's needs. I listen. I adjust. I play a lot of different roles and not every role is compatible with mixed-up motherfuckerdom. That's called being a fucking adult. Not everyone needs to know about everything. I'm not lonely, so I don't feel compelled to tell everyone everything. I don't even feel compelled to tell many people all that much.

The real knot here, for you, is that you want to feel genuine and real but you don't know who can stomach it. You want to be known, and know other people, and you just don't know how to go about that yet. You may not know anyone, yet, who can handle knowing all the things you want them to know. You may not know anyone who WANTS TO BE KNOWN.

A lot of people don't want to be known. A lot of people would very specifically prefer NOT to be known. A lot of people would like to stick to the facts, to concrete plans, to preferences, to something they read in a book or in the paper. Originality is not the goal for many, many people. Unique, independent perspectives don't necessarily interest them. Liquid intelligence is nothing to them. They want to hear facts and figures. They don't want imaginative rambling. They want you to shut the fuck up, mostly. They won't say so. You'll just feel all queasy and weird when you talk to them, and you'll quite naturally start lying whenever they're around.

That is not abnormal. That's healthy. That's you trying to figure out how much to share, and with whom.

You are a very expressive writer and thinker, particularly for a nineteen-year-old. I want you to write at least two pages, every day. None of it should be polished. Let yourself ramble. Explore new ideas. Express mixed emotions. My guess is that you're not going to feel known by others, and you're not going to feel satisfied with the way that you SEEM to other people, until you master the art of expressing who you are in words, on the page. You don't have to aim high at all. You just have to write down your thoughts and emotions in plain language, as you did in your letter to me. You have to do that often. You need to get to know yourself through your writing. You need to get to know what's true and what's a lie, and you need to work on appreciating and feeling proud of who you really are. You have a lot to feel proud of. Practice that. Make it a part of your day, every day.

Then go out into the world and try to be genuine, but stay in the background a little more. Focus on listening to what other people say more. Pull your focus away from how they perceive you. This is one of the most freeing things you can do, and I didn't learn to do it for a long, long time. Try presenting a slightly flat person to the world—experiment with that. Just be another person in the room. Try to become comfortable with showing only small hints of who you are to other people. Stop trying to explain yourself and stand for something all the time. Stop trying to swim against the tide. Run the risk of boring people with your silence. Women often find that challenging when they're young. They feel like they have to make a mark, they have to be CLEAR in what they believe and feel, they have to be SEEN AND KNOWN AND RECOGNIZED AND APPRECIATED.

What if you just showed up and remained an enigma? That might feel pretty refreshing, actually. To appreciate other people, breathe them in, without asserting yourself. To take in the camaraderie of the moment in a simple way, without reminding yourself that you're really alone, that no one will ever understand you, that everyone is different from you. Most people ARE very different from you. Once you know yourself and love yourself and find a few people who are very, very similar to you, that will be OK with you.

Have faith that someone will understand. You're lucky, because you express yourself really well in writing. In time, you'll find complicated people who are EXCITED to know you, and to be known. Trust that this will happen. In the meantime, just be with people, and write. You don't have to choose to be an introvert or an extrovert. You can be both. You don't have to choose between the truth and lies. It's not actually that black and white. We all say some things that feel incomplete and not totally accurate—every single day, we say things out of habit or out of some compulsive, emotional reaction. It's okay to be messy and experiment with what you want to say and who you are; it's ok to be inaccurate and blustery and flat-out wrong sometimes.

I learn a lot about how I feel by writing. The more I write, the more genuine and relaxed and happy I feel, out in the world. If I couldn't write, even now, it would be harder for me to be pleasant and appropriate around people who are very different from me. And if I didn't have some close friends who really appreciate my nasty sense of humor and my bad ideas and my overly critical notions and my mean streak and my occasional blasts of insecurity, I would struggle. I would feel lonely. Instead, I feel KNOWN. I feel known because of the things I write, and I feel known because I am free to be myself in some circles. I have people to call when I'm feeling confused, or tired, or intolerant. It's nice to feel known.

You are the kind of person who will be known—and seen and appreciated and deeply loved—by other people. Trust that. You will get there, and you can give that to yourself right now. Every day, you have to step back and take a second to say, "I am one mixed up motherfucker." Say it with pride. You are someone who's naturally committed to tapping into the richness and complexity of life. Your mind contains colorful, violent, ever-changing galaxies. You will honor who you are, no matter what. You will walk among the cliché-spewing creatures of habit, wearing a peaceful Mona Lisa smile.

Polly

Have you been waking up in a steaming mess of your own filth every single day, and you can barely walk? Write to Polly, and she'll reassure you that you're only five months old!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

Photo by Leo

The post Ask Polly: I Want People to Know the Real Me But It Just Won't Come Out appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

I started dating a guy a few weeks ago, and yes I know, a few weeks is NOTHING, but, even in that short time some things have come up and I'm having a really hard time separating what is just me being sabotage-y and too fucking sharp, chopping shit up into julienne cuts, and what might be legitimate signs that this is not a good match, which I am overlooking because I am too busy chop chop chopping.

About four years ago, I was in a pretty terrible relationship. He was bipolar, and later on, I found out he lied about pretty much everything: He had a long-term girlfriend, and when he told me that he spent three months in a psych ward where I couldn't see him, it turns out he was actually living with her. It makes sense now. I pretty much never saw his house (he said he was living with his parents) or most of his world. It was always him in my world. The relationship eventually became abusive, to the point that I was scared for a very long time, stopped sleeping, and finally, swallowed a bottle of pills in front of him in a desperate and stupid attempt to make everything stop.

I moved far, far away, started fresh and created a great life, but it's left me with a terrible, panicky feeling that all men are hiding something harmful. I can feel myself bracing for the rug to inevitably be pulled out from underneath me.

Since then, I've had a few relationships, none of which have really triggered any of this. Until now. With my last significant relationship, we hit things off right away. He lived a ferry ride away, so he'd often come over and stay for a several days, and we'd go off on little trips and adventures. Spending that kind of time with someone felt really good; it felt really secure, and it made me so happy to fall asleep and wake up beside someone I thought the world of.

This new guy, he wants to take things slow. We've seen each other quite a bit, and now that it's been a couple weeks I want to sleep beside this guy. I am not talking about sex. I just mean having him spend the night or me stay with him. I can feel him get weird and flinchy about it, and it really fucks me up. That, and a few little things he does, have started triggering bad memories from my ex, and I am having a really hard time reconciling them. I tried explaining my past and why I am suddenly acting overly analytical and self-sabotaging even though I don't want to, and now I feel as though I wish I had never told him anything. When I told him that my ex used to force me up against a wall and hold my head while he punched the wall inches from my face, his response was that his ex punched him in the face and broke his nose, but that he's not projecting that onto me because I'm not her. I get what he's saying, but it also made me feel diminished and like some sort of fucked up trauma pissing contest was taking place. He used a similar response another time when I told him something heavy after he had asked about it—he said I blindsided him by saying stuff like that—and both times, I walked away feeling really shitty.

Polly, normally I am pretty level headed and decisive and confident in my decisions and know what I want and what I'm about. When I'm with this guy and something comes up, I feel so fucking confused and unsettled and like I should have never said anything. I'm so scared of being mind-fucked again. This guy is really smart, and really good at arguing his points, and it makes my head hurt because I don't know if I'm just messing it all up because I'm terrified, or if this guy maybe has some serious controlling tendencies because he won't stay over because he says he'll only fall asleep if we have sex, but does not want to have sex yet. He also made me feel like I should be more appreciative that he's let me come over to his house, because even his parents have only been there two or three times in ten years. Am I just spinning in my own insecurities?

Self-saboteuse

Dear Self-saboteuse,

This guy you're dating is bad news. He's a control freak and kind of a dick to boot. The fact that he responds to your very personal, vulnerable stories not by listening and empathizing, but by one-upping you with his own traumas and then touting his relative maturity and healthy boundaries AND THEN referring to such sharing as "blindsiding"? These are more than just red flags. They're warning signals, the way someone walking up to you and setting your hair on fire is a warning signal.

This is a guy who experiences vulnerable, expressive sharing as an assault. He's four weeks into this thing, and he's already making it crystal clear he doesn't want your feelings to come into play. He wants you to feel ashamed of sharing that stuff, so you won't be tempted to share it again.

What's really confusing—and what makes you feel insecure, like you're the source of the trouble here—is that what he says about how he feels about you is completely at odds with how he behaves. He might even be able to plainly and intelligently state his good intentions and proclaim himself healthy, but please trust me, all of that stuff is just him using his intellect to build elaborate scaffolding around aggressive, controlling behaviors that he absolutely fucking refuses to change. He is a smart, arrogant motherfucker who's building an entire worldview around what he needs and doesn't need. Guess what he doesn't need the most of all? You, acting like a fallible human being. Guess what he really, really doesn't want? You, showing up and telling the truth. What's truly fucked is that HE WILL SAY THAT HE WANTS THESE THINGS. But you will see, time and time again, that he does NOT want these things. He wants to live in a bubble, safe from other people's needs and emotions.

To be clear, I'm not even talking about a run-of-the-mill tepid dude, who's maybe initially flinchy or distant, and then over time either gets less flinchy and falls in love (admittedly somewhat rare) or gets more distant because emotions make him feel awkward or he's just unsure of what he wants or he knows he's not all that interested. Tepid dudes might drive you nuts, but they are not necessarily going to make your life a living nightmare. Controlling guys who say one thing and do another are absolute hell, because they act like they're all in, but at the exact moment when you feel the most raw and sad and flawed, they will trample all over you. They hate weakness, in themselves and others, and they don't know themselves at all (in spite of what they say about "doing the work" and trying hard to be self-reflective and humble). And your emotions make them feel (wait for it!) BULLIED. Controlling guys act like bullies, but project all of that bullying onto you. They victimize you, and then act like they're the victims.

I was in a relationship with a control freak a long time ago. He was instantly very into me, and very intense and sure of how he felt. He believed in me. I was amazing. He wanted us to spend tons of time together. And then, when we quickly started to clash, trying to sort it out with him was a fucking NIGHTMARE. If he couldn't corral a conversation exactly where he wanted it to go, he would become furious and accuse me of controlling him. Everything got turned back on me. Even when I stayed calm and focused on "I" statements, it didn't help. (He'd say things like, "Did you see what you did there?" as if my emotional experience was just another way of fucking with him.) In his eyes, everything I said or did was manipulative. I couldn't directly ask him for what I needed. I couldn't listen and wait and ask later. When I opened up about triggers, when I admitted weaknesses, when I broke down crying out of frustration—all of that only made him more angry. One particular week, he was fixated on how I needed to take responsibility for my own shit and be more vulnerable with him. So I admitted some big insecurities, through tears. His response? Rage. "How did we land here, exactly?” he asked. "And how can I prevent it from happening again?"

The real trap of dating this guy is that he'll never leave you, as long as he can repeatedly deflect everything and push it back on you, until you're convinced that YOU have to change and get "better" if the relationship is going to work. This is a sensitive guy who had a very unpredictable upbringing, which, taken alone would be fine. But he dealt with it by controlling his environment, by leaping on top of conversations and controlling them, by developing a seriously rigid outlook on the world. As long as he feels like he's in control, everything is great. But the second he feels out of control, the world falls to pieces and he's a totally aggressive, dismissive, awful person.

The trauma pissing match and the lack of empathy and the referring to sharing as "blindsiding" (perceiving emotions as an attack) that you describe—those things are enough to say fuck no to this guy. Because this path leads to ruin. You will feel less and less sure of who you are with him. Your self-esteem will suffer and you will become a pale shadow of your former self. No way. Fuck that.

The refusal to sleep over is its own, separate problem. It fits in with the controlling profile, but it doesn't necessarily indicate, in a guy who isn't dismissive and unfair, that there's no future there. I will say that it does point to someone who's not that flexible and maybe a little threatened by true intimacy. I have friends who've dated guys who disappeared regularly. They have the date of the century, and then the guy insists on 1) not fooling around and 2) going home separately. They're six months into the relationship, but the guy can't tolerate hanging out for more than a few hours at a time. And maybe there are women who live this way and match this style perfectly, too. But that sounds pretty bad to me. Men who do stuff like that value their independence more than they value intimacy. Fine for them, not so great for someone who cares a lot about sharing a life.

So look. I know I'm painting a grim picture. To be clear, the guy you're dating probably has no idea what a controlling guy he is. I'm sure he wants to love and be loved like almost everyone else alive. I'm sure he thinks he has good intentions and feels like he's just standing up for what he wants. But he has very little humility. He doesn't know himself well, and he doesn't really want to know you. He doesn't want to yield to the wildness of the unknown. He wants to stay safe, stay in control, and stay protected in a carefully constructed, regimented world of his own making.

It doesn't get better from here, either. Look, you're already saying "Maybe I'm just overanalyzing this!" I've rarely worried that I was overanalyzing a great relationship. Truly great, promising relationships are actually very tough to overanalyze. Because everything is working just fine. There's nothing to chop chop chop! But when you're with someone who doesn't make space for who you are, someone who keeps indicating, in different ways, that he doesn't want to get to know the full, breathtaking scope of you? That's a problem. This is someone who is afraid of spontaneity and uncertainty. This is someone who wants to live in a clean, well-lighted cage. This is someone who hates surprises, someone who can't just let go and see what happens next.

This guy likes you because you're self-deprecating and you second guess yourself a lot. He's hoping to control you. THIS MOTHERFUCKER IS BAD NEWS. Even if he's not punching the wall next to your head in a few months, you'll be feeling isolated and lonely in his company. Becoming physically and emotionally entangled with someone who feels tortured and assaulted when you tell the truth, and share your past, and/or cry? That's the definition of wrong. You'd have to hate yourself a lot to walk down that path.

And look, we all have some self-hatred on board. Forgive yourself for falling for this guy. Forgive yourself. I'm sure he's very charming. You haven't dated him that long, though, and you know already that this is a big, big problem. Don't worry that you're too paranoid. Instead, trust your instincts. I know you don't want to give up on this. I know you're thinking of the million and one reasons you shouldn't bail yet. I know you're thinking you'll never find anyone who's this great. I know you're worried that you'll keep running into the same trouble, over and over again.You're wrong.

You will find someone who loves your wildness, your pain, your past, your ugliness, your flaws, all of it. If you stay vulnerable, if you keep telling the truth about who you are without fear, you will find someone who's trustworthy enough and strong enough to leap into the unknown with you. You will find someone who isn't afraid. Forgive this poor guy. He is very fucking afraid.

You are not afraid. If you stay with him, he'll want you to become smaller and smaller. But you will never be small, so he will never be happy with you. You are big and bright and courageous. You'll find someone who matches you. Keep the faith. Talk to a therapist, take care of yourself, trust your instincts, and above all, keep the faith, because it'll happen. Keep being true to yourself, and it will happen.

Polly

Do you grab tree branches so hard that your knuckles turn white and your fingers want to fall off? Write to Polly, and she'll tell you how to loosen up!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

Photo by Adam Brill

The post Ask Polly: I Think My New Boyfriend Might Be a Horrible Control Freak appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Readers,

I need to tell you a story. That means this will be just like every other Ask Polly column, except this story is a little longer than usual, and at first, when you read it, you'll ask, "Where's the tepid dude of the week?" Just bear with me.

In September of 2012, after reading and admiring The Awl for years, and writing a few short humor pieces for them, I sent Choire Sicha an email. 

Subject: Existential advice column
That's what I should be writing for The Awl.

Come on, pay me a tiny bit and it's yours! Just enough $ so my husband doesn't roll his eyes and spit whenever he hears the word "Awl."

Choire's one-word reply was:

DONE.

Two days later, I sent in my first column and The Awl published it, and thus began one of the best gigs of my career. My first editor, Carrie Frye, let the term "pious fuckwinder' run in my second column. My second editor, Choire, was even more tolerant of dubious strings of adjectives. (He also once forgot to pay me for five months, but when I responded with a three-thousand-word screed on the madness of freelance writing, he sent me a check and published my screed and paid me for that, too.) My third editor, Matt Buchanan, let the term "dickweasel" run. In a world full of pious fuckwinders and dickweasels, in other words, The Awl is an island of sanity, and originality, and humility. I had hoped to never leave.

Then three weeks ago, Stella Bugbee, the editorial director from New York Magazine's The Cut, called me. She told me that they've been in the market for an advice columnist, but haven't been able to find the right person. Apparently people want real advice, not gimmicks, she said. People want good advice from a writer with a really strong voice, she said. People want guidance from someone who's wise and thoughtful and fair. 

"Why are you talking to me, then?" I asked.

"We want you to come to The Cut," Stella said, whose voice seemed to indicate that she dresses really well. "We're prepared to double what you're making.” I snorted audibly. Then I multiplied my current rate by two and wrote it down on a nearby piece of paper. Hmm, not exciting enough. So I multiplied my current rate by three and wrote that down. Then I multiplied it by four, then five, then ten…

"Hello?" Stella said.  

"I don't know," I said, staring at the largest number on the page and imagining myself on a beach in Belize, surrounded by bronzed towel boys serving fruity drinks in hollowed-out coconuts. I pictured other bronzed towel boys arriving with huge platters of aged cheeses and soft cheeses and fresh breads and cured meats. "Eduardo, I said Cambozola, not Gorgonzola." "I'm so sorry, Miss Heather."

"Are you still there?" Stella asked.  

"I love The Awl so much," I said. This came out quite naturally, because I wasn't lying like I usually am when people ask me how I like my current employer.

Stella proceeded to tell me more about The Cut, how they don't just write about breastfeeding and sixteen super-sexy summer styles. They cover a wide range of topics, and it's very writer-driven, just like the rest of New York Magazine's empire. She said some other stuff, but by that point I was so deep in a Belizian towel boy fantasy I sort of lost the thread. "So what's it going to take?" she asked. 

"I like aged cheeses a lot," I said. "And they're pretty expensive. But I don't want to change the column, You know what Ask Polly is: It's four thousand words, half of which are variations on 'fuck' and 'motherfucker.'"

Stella sighed. Her lips sounded so glossy.

"You would retain full creative control." Creative control, yes, I thought. The bronzed towel boys came back to mind.

So I got off the phone to talk to my husband, who looked disappointingly unbronzed and wasn't carrying a towel or an array of soft cheeses.

"People will think I'm a sell out!" I told him. "That'll be refreshing, for people to imagine me doing something that someone actually pays me for.”

"What's a sell out?" my husband asked. (I guess people don't use that term anymore.) "Does that mean you'll make some fucking money for a change? Because that would be fucking awesome," he said.

"But it's a fashion and beauty website. People will think I dress better than I actually do!" I said. "That'll be cool, for people to imagine that I'm not just some dipshit who bumbles around the house in soft pants all day. I wonder if they'll imagine me in white linen…"

"White linen? Like Don Johnson used to wear on 'Miami Vice'?" my husband said, who would never sass back to me like that if I made more money. 

So I emailed Choire. I thought he might be really angry or BEREFT at the thought of losing Ask Polly, but instead he was very nice and said it would be crazy for me not to seize a great opportunity, and that The Awl is all about nurturing young writers with cool ideas and letting them fly and be free when they move on to bigger things.

"I'm not actually young," I replied. "I'm older than you."

"Lol," he wrote back. (Did he think I was joking?) 

"I really am older than you," I wrote back.

"OMG, I hate olds! Lol!" he replied.

Anyway. As someone who, generally speaking, hates change, I know this might not sound like great news to some of you who read the column every week. But I think it's a great opportunity for Ask Polly to reach more people, and a great opportunity for me to give the column more of my attention instead of squeezing it in between other gigs. (No, I didn't get Belizian towel-boy money; this is still an online magazine we're talking about, and not the Sultanate of Brunei.) New York Magazine is run by smart people and employs some of my favorite writers. I've been assured that they don't want to change Ask Polly at all, and they intend to nurture and support the column for the long haul.

Writing this column has been much more rewarding than I'd ever dreamed it would be when I first pitched the idea to Choire on a whim. I've gone from getting one or two letters each week to getting ten to twenty letters every single week, without fail. I love writing the column. I don't want to stop doing this anytime soon.

I'm not a big believer in gushing about your love for your readers. But Ask Polly readers are pretty fucking special, let's face it. We have a few things in common, maybe. A certain kind of stubbornness that's often misinterpreted as a bad attitude. A certain kind of skepticism that's often misinterpreted as contempt. We are unique snowflakes who sometimes feel uniquely fucked, even when we can recognize, intellectually, that our experiences might just be universal. We are sensitive flowers who act tough anyway. We are damaged goods who remain optimistic—in spite of having spent a little more time in the half-priced bin than was good for our tattered egos.

I'll publish my last Ask Polly column on The Awl next week at the usual time, which is also the same day that my first column will appear on The Cut. I hope you'll join me over there, among the glossy-lipped and the snappily dressed. The habitat might look a little shinier, and you might be simultaneously repulsed and turned on by headlines that say things like "Yoga For Swoll Hunks." But I'll still be offering up the same digressive opinions and pious fuckwindery you've come to expect from me.

Whatever happens next, though, please keep on telling the truth and sticking your necks out. Good things come to those who are brave enough to show the world exactly who they are, without shame. And look, soon enough, you can be sure that someone will give this owning-of-your-flaws an embarrassing name, in the hopes that we'll all get shamed back into the closet and go back to believing that every misstep and mistake should be airbrushed out or masked behind a smile and a high five.

Let's not let them shame us, though, ok? Let's keep on fumbling along, imperfectly, with pride, with grace, with humility, with an open heart. Let's be messy and courageous, you and me and all of us. Let's not be afraid to ask for exactly what we want, and to celebrate exactly who we are, and to eat lots of aged cheeses if possible. But most of all, let's stick together and celebrate our messiness, and our courage. 

Polly

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) was The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

Photo by itchys

The post Polly Asks: New York Magazine Wants Me to Write Ask Polly For Them. Should I Tell Them to Piss Off? appeared first on The Awl.