![]() And I fear that even if I do manage to write, that the stories I write-about my vagina, etc.-will be disregarded and mocked. The truth: I am sick with panic that I cannot-will not-override my limitations, insecurities, jealousies, and ineptitude, to write well, with intelligence and heart and lengthiness. That said, I’m high-functioning-a high-functioning head-case, one who jokes enough that most people don’t know the truth. I’ve been clinically diagnosed with major depressive disorder and have an off-and-on relationship with prescription medication, which I confide so it doesn’t seem I throw around the term “depression.” “Depressed writer”-because the latter is less accurate, the former is more acute. I know I’m not the first depressed writer. I start to think that I should choose another profession-as Lorrie Moore suggests, “movie star/astronaut, a movie star missionary, a movie star/kindergarten teacher.” I want to throw off everything I’ve accumulated and begin as someone new, someone better. But it’s not that I want to die so much as have an entirely different life. I often explain to my mother my phobia that to be a writer/a woman/a woman writer means to suffer mercilessly and eventually collapse in a heap of “I could have been better than this.” She pleads with me: can’t it be different?Ĭan it? I want to jump out the window for what I’ve boiled down to is one reason: I can’t write a book. Think of the canon of women writers: a unifying theme is many of their careers ended in suicide. I understand women like me are hurting and dealing with self-trivialization, contempt for other more successful people, and misplaced compassion, addiction, and depression, whether they are writers or not. Several months ago, when depression hooked its teeth into me, I complained to my then-boyfriend about how I’ll never be as good as Wallace he screamed at me on Guerrero Street in San Francisco, “STOP IT. I get up, go to the computer, feel worse.ĭavid Foster Wallace called himself a failed writer at twenty-eight. I lie facedown on my bed and feel scared. I look up people I used to love and wonder why they never loved me. ![]() I’ve sat here, at my desk, for hours, mentally immobile. I am up late asking you a question, really questioning myself. Right now, I am a pathetic and confused young woman of twenty-six, a writer who can’t write. I write about my lady life experiences, and that usually comes out as unfiltered emotion, unrequited love, and eventual discussion of my vagina as metaphor.Īnd that’s when I can write, which doesn’t happen to be true anymore. Strayed said after some thought.I write like a girl. So in some ways, a guy telling you on a first date is being admirably honest,” Ms. “Well first of all, we’re fooling ourselves if we think that only the people who tell us they have bedbugs actually have them. “Your hotel, subways, furniture on Craigslist, movie theaters…bedbugs are the HPV of insects too, because some people aren’t allergic to the bites, so they can give it to you without knowing they are infested.” ![]() “Are bedbugs really that common in New York? Should I be worried about my hotel?” Even if you do, you’ll probably go crazy and spend the rest of your life seeing bugs and developing a psychological disorder.” ![]() “And,” we added for dramatic effect, “You can never, ever get rid of them. “What if you meet someone you really click with, but they have bedbugs? How soon should they tell you? And since they can be transferred by clothing, how are you supposed to let them touch you? Would you let them into your house? What about your children’s welfare…bedbugs go after kids.” Instead of answering for a general audience, our questions were specific to New York (or at least a major city). The New York Observer had approximately 1 hour to pick the advice queen’s mind…but we created a catch for the Portland native. She was only in town for the evening, to read selections from her new memoir, Wild, at the Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn. It went from snarky relationship advice to something much more personal…and universal, under the 43-year-old Portland author’s touch.ĭear Sugar always answered her readers’ questions with anecdotes from her own life, but instead of over-sharey, Dear Sugar became something of an online Oprah. Strayed took it over from her predecessor, Steve Almond. On Stephen Elliott‘s site The Rumpus, Dear Sugar has blossomed in the two years since Ms. We rushed into Midtown’s fancy french bistro Cognac, already five minutes late to meet Cheryl Strayed, the recently (or not) outed authoress of the Dear Sugar advice column.
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