But just a little, and maybe the last for a little while. Maybe.
I’m not sure where I first heard the phrase “There are ways and ways of looking at things.” It’s quite possible that I made it up myself, but if I did, it was at least influenced by (if not lifted from) Ordinary People, one of the best novels ever written about adolescent depression (or maybe I’m just biased because so much of it resonated with me when I had my first, worst bout of major depressive disorder (as the DSM-V calls it), at sixteen). Because that’s what Conrad ends up learning from his therapist, among other things: that you can choose, at least to some extent, how you parse a situation or a relationship. It’s my watchphrase in my better times, and sometimes even in my more difficult times, when I remember to invoke it.
Its particular relevance to all of my recent introspection about the subject of friendship—both the distressing little episode I had in St. Louis and the unrelated whirlwind of reconnecting with old friends—is that I’ve always, always tended to dwell on how bad I am at friendships, and I had been thinking that both what happened a couple of weeks ago in St. Louis and the fact that I’d lost touch with so many people who were once such a big part of my life were evidence of my inability to interact successfully with people over an extended period of time. And maybe they are, but there are ways and ways…and in this case, the fact that the people in that room in St. Louis are still my friends and not only don’t hate me for what I wrote but actually understand it, and the apparent fact that the people I’ve been reconnecting with are as happy to hear from me as I am to hear from them,* suggests that maybe I’ve been looking at this the wrong way all along. I was afraid of opening a Pandora’s box with many of these posts and the contacts that have developed as a result, and I haven’t at all, really (well, maybe a little bit of one in a corner over there, but we won’t talk about that just now, if ever…and okay, it’s not so little at all, but that’s enough about that). I’ve been in a tizzy of sorts from all of this, but not in a negative way at all. The only vaguely negative emotion I’ve felt has been apprehension, and even that’s been mitigated by something like joy, I think.
(And I have to say that even the remote prospect of possibly seeing anyone who hasn’t seen you since you were a sylphlike early-twentysomething is an excellent motivational tool when you’re trying to eat less and eat better and go to the gym as often as possible.)
There are ways and ways. It’s sort of a platitude, but hey, when you’re a clinical depressive, sometimes platitudes are essential in getting you through.
Three entries in one day = not a page read or a stitch knit since I got home…and I really need to finish the damn cat bed already so that I can start on a garment for moi, plus I’m reading, a year after every other lefty on the planet, Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas?, about which more later, and would really like to plow ahead and finish it. I usually read nonfiction at a fraction of the speed with which I read fiction—I read fiction pretty damn fast, although not nearly as fast as I used to—but I’ve been finding this book a very quick read, except that between friggin’ new TV shows and too much e-mailing/blogging, I haven’t read more than a chapter since Sunday. And oh look, it’s time for “CSI” now.
*Got a quick note from my beloved friend Peter, who has been a close friend for just shy of 20 years but with whom I had slipped out of touch with for just a little too long, today and he was as glad to hear from me as I was to have finally written to him over the weekend. When someone ‘s been dear and true and loyal and supportive to you for as long as Peter has to me, it should pretty much be illegal to let them fall out of your life entirely, even if you live in different places and both have busy lives.
The Peter I’ve met? Bravo for you.
I maybe ought to read Ordinary People. I’ve never read it.
I dunno, which one have you met?
(This one is the semi-famous one, formerly of from Minneapolis and generally associated with a well-known defunct Mpls. band.)
I’ve been thinking I ought to read Ordinary People again. I re-read it when I was well past my teens, but that would still have been over 10 years ago, I think. I found flaws in the writing the second time through that I might not have seen the first time, since I wasn’t yet an editor, but still thought it was an excellent book. And it still rang very true. Oddly, I hated the movie when it first came out, because it wasn’t true enough to the book and I thought Mary Tyler Moore was completely miscast. But when I saw it again in my thirties, I was surprised by how good it was. Still not as good as the book, but very well done—and Mary Tyler Moore’s performance was pretty stellar, actually. (Besides, it had Timothy Hutton in it, and he is so my type…)