The Long Road Out

Familiar bile after interactions with you. You blaming others for your mistakes. You claiming your truth doesn’t smell of rot. You claiming what you want is best for others who know you disdain them and wouldn’t lift a finger. You don’t exist for us, except as an untalented boring and endlessly looping nightmare. As someone easily forgotten when you stop throwing loud temper tantrums and sucking air and nutrients out of every room. You whose diagnosis requires multiple daily pills to replace your destroyed friend or foe biology and to stay alive. You whose are so certain it hurts. You whose lookalike and genetically matching father has never been wrong. To this day. In you. You who also never successfully practiced law or any other profession. You who can’t read the room. Any room. Even rooms where you’re lonely and afraid. You who hurt yourself doing psychedelics yet commits the malpractice of coaching others—passing on the risk and ignorance and danger. Ho...

I’ve awoken at 3 or 4 the last few mornings. Sad because my friend is down with her college roommates for a reunion weekend, and I was hoping to catch up a little. Instead I’m awake petting my cats and dealing with my enemy—the first in my life but she’s a pretty miserable personality and not interested in my needs, to put it as gently as I can. Never was, never is. There’s a new documentary out on narcissists and the damage they do. A friend told me it repeats the research I studied a few years ago to understand why someone like my ex, or Trump, could exhibit sociopathic disregard for others. Sane pattern in these two and in millions of others. Reading about Trump or hearing from my ex makes me sick to my stomach. I think recording these sleepless moments releases some of the disgust and anger and shame. Writing isn’t as effective at healing as I wish, though. The trauma, PTSD and pain caused by narcissists is real and documented. There are thousands of support gro...

…while your workmates and friends moved to better jobs and never invited you along. …while first timers attended your workshops and plays and readings, and never came back. …while you backstabbed whoever wasn’t in the room, primarily me. …while you fabricated truthes to cover your dishonesty. This began the first week I knew you—“I told you I was married.” No such thing, Ms Narcissus. …while you were afraid to confront those who should have helped you or ask those who could have helped for aid. …while you belittled your parents. …while my parents refused to stay under your roof. …while our two cats both died on your watch, after kidnapping. …while you bounced checks. …while you lost job after job after job.

This from Ellie Mystal and The Nation.  I love and thank you for speaking the wretched truth.  This newsletter is going to hit your inbox on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which means you’re no doubt being flooded with remembrances and retrospectives. And regrets. The country’s response to the worst terror attack in our history was to launch a global war of hysteria that consisted of rage-bombing two countries, destabilizing an entire region, and seeding a police state that has now been fully weaponized by an authoritarian regime against its own citizens. Moreover, every post-9/11 mistake we’ve made has been understood  as a mistake  in real time—not by all, or even most, people in this country, but by enough that nobody can credibly claim to have been unaware of the dangers. But the majority of Americans were always going to want to respond to violence with more, overwhelming violence. The majority of people were always going to be willing to ...

I look back at the life I had in NYC in 1994. And the one I left 30 years later. I was rich in friends—I now have none there. I had a higher net worth and cashflow than I have now. I had not experienced humiliation, depression, PTSD, or grieving. Or tsunamis of shame. I had two parents and a functioning brother. I was upbeat, happy, and multi-skilled. Reasonably athletic in many many sports. I was a great downhill skier. I read widely and believed a better world full of cooperation, respect and love was possible. I looked forward to sex with my partner (I just recovered that after 30 years of insulting and unsatisfying sex). I had never met a person who intended me harm. I only had shortterm debt. I believed I’d center my life in Manhattan forever and that it was second to none. Now I hope I’ll never see it again. I owned a business. I still do. 45 years without a down year. I felt successful. Now I feel like a slacker. A fucku...

No, not Trump—though similar. My ex: 1. Is not a lawyer and has never managed a legal case 2. Is unemployable 3. Can’t balance a checkbook or compute power of ten math. 4. Has Addison’s disease but doesn’t acknowledge its symptoms. 5. Trashtalks all her friends day in and day out and disappears in the presence of those who should educate or support her 6. Meditates (imagine this mess without meditation and you’d have Trump again—a fiery ball of ignorance). 7. Not really relevant perhaps but last she told me she was a lifelong bisexual polyamorous individual. Anyway she cheats on lovers and taxes. 8. Has never done therapy. 9. And—cliche alert here—she’s a life coach! Seriously. Those who can’t teach gym teach life coaching? How’s that client list doing? Lots of return attendees? She is an unsolvable lump of obsidian in my life. A dog with a bone. A eternal daily drag on joy. A poison and blockade destabilizing my healing investigations of depression, g...