On The Weight-Loss Call-and-Return Catch-22
For me, it's always the context and the unsolicitedness of it, rather than the often innocuous wording (excluded from this: the specific aggressive "How Did You Do It"). There's something so specifically off-putting when one gets the unexpected pleasure of discovering all the people who were holding their tongues, like if you don't have something nice to say, wait until someone loses 35 pounds and then say it weird?
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On Really Good Books You Could Spend Your Allowance On: Part One
I loved Jesus' Son but when I think about it now I can only think of the jerk who squatted in my sophomore dorm and "borrowed" my library copy of it (I have a strong desire to go back in time and scream "take a shower!" at that guy. Alas, there is no such thing as truly free, limitless weed without a creeper to come with it.) ANYWAY.
Keret is fucking amazing too.
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On "We invited readers to contribute a photograph of someone close to them who died this year"
These pictures, ah! The datedness of the images was touching: all the people who lost their parents submitting images of a small child with a young mother or father and the folks grieving adult children giving photos of a toddler. It was heartbreaking to see the versions of people that we keep, long after they are gone.
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On Bus Crushes, Door-Non-Openers, and "Scumbag" Siblings
@momentisaflower @teenie It depends on where you go. There are people getting sober in their 20s who are not in the "young people" meetings (in cities, definitely). More than anything, if someone wants to get sober the best piece of advice is to try to identify and not compare. Those older folks in AA were once young alcoholics too.
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On NBD
It's such a hard thing, isn't it? The details aren't the same for me but the feelings. Yes. It's so frustrating- we create and sharpen tools that allow us to make it through (people disguised as monsters, monsters disguised as people) and then those tools fail in such a spectacular way. That magic of crawling inside yourself and turning off the lights dissipates. What comes next, after "surviving" is incredibly hard and the only way to properly explain it is to live it. It's a funny thing- I focused so long on taking of care of myself by myself and then it turned out that help was outside of my self and with other people.
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On The Best Time I Made a Celebrity Think I Was a Moron
I was walking down the street in midtown and passed a familiar looking older guy who I was sure was somebody's dad, but I couldn't figure exactly who. I smiled and did a sort of wave so that I wouldn't seem rude. A few steps later, I realized that it was not actually the father of someone I knew but rather the actor who played Reverend Camden on 7th Heaven.
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On Back to School Clothes
The Fiorucci shirt with the angels (so much babysitting money, so much pleading for a ride to the mall!). My memory stops of the outfit stops there because I then remember I needed that shirt due to repeated viewings of Can't Hardly Wait. Probably worn with some Bradlees pants with an elastic waistband.
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On You Have One New Death
Thank you for this and I'm so sorry for your loss.
What comes after this still baffles me: the reminders of a birthday for a dead friend who is never going to get any older, status updates from another late, great friend's account by her sister. The digital afterlife can be so confusing- like all the lost friends are together in a room far off, somewhere adjacent to all the former best friends and ex-boyfriends, tagging pictures every six months to remind you that they were once there too.
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On Daughters! What Are You Gonna Do
Yiiiiiikes. I always find it super fascinating to read these horrorshows (saves me a call home, hoping that a new, sane mother picks up). It's sort of sweet for this lady to leave her daughter a time capsule to be opened later in therapy.