August 6, 1977

Thanks for my birthday card. My birthday is August 6, not the 5th or the 4th, but the card came today so I guess our ESP came through for us (small joke). I would like to be your friend and reciprocate the feelings you expressed. Even though our lives are not entwined in a three-dimensional way I still feel there may be some good we can do for one another.

It was interesting hearing about Ray. I of course had no mental image about who he was before your description came. This thing about deep romantic love often has a lot to do with our "imprints", i.e. the pictures we have in our mind, whereas the relationships that turn out to go somewhere do not always have the same joyful/tragic intensity (thank god or somebody ). I reread some of your letters and came to a part where you described building an image of someone's face in your mind over the years and secretly loving it. But when you actually met a person with that face it didn't turn out as well as the fantasy. My relationship with Bill didn't turn out as well as the fantasy either, so next time I'm not going to trust the intensity as much.

I've never told you about Paul, and now's as good a time as any. During my summer vacation after our first year together I went to a psychiatrist on Washington Square because someone I knew told me he was fantastic and understood young people very well. When I met Paul I told him all about you, but I said the thing that had upset me most in life was Karl. Paul is the first man who ever really understood and was turned on by what my relationship with Karl had been all about, especially in the sense that Karl had taught me a higher sense of values. This really freaked me out. And to top it off, he said that he wanted to become a new Karl for me! I knew that I had found something I had been longing for for years, that I had found my destiny.

To give you some idea of the sense of discovery involved, imagine growing up with loving parents who are one day killed in a car crash and finding out that you're living in a world where no one has heard of the word love, where you can't communicate about the things that mean the most, where people who hear about your longings conclude that you must have had some degenerate and perverted relationship with your parents.

But although I was excited about the relationship, nothing much happened in those few weeks remaining before I went back to St. John's. I saw Paul twice a week, and saw that he was an unbelievably profound and loving man, but somehow felt that being committed to returning to school and having the status of being just another patient means that it wasn't real, that it couldn't really matter in the long run. One of the ideas that Paul gave me was that it was ok to assert myself, that I was an assertive person. He was the first man since Karl who ever said I was beautiful. This made me feel exhilarated and I began to see all the ways in which I didn't stand up for myself and saw how this new image of personal power as a constructive, moral and beautiful force was something I had always secretly believed in much as you had always worshiped your hidden ideal.

When I got back to St. John's I was cold to you at a dance when you were clinging to me because I wanted to feel this new independence and strength. I remember telling you that I had a new image of myself, a more masculine no-nonsense attitude toward life and was thrilled when you told me that you liked my new image.

I sent Paul my current diary, and he shot back a note saying that he had read it in its entirety. It seemed that I was becoming more than just another patient perhaps but I wasn't sure whether even this wasn't prescribed in one of the psychiatry manuals. I made an appointment to see him at Thanksgiving.

That meeting blew the lid off my life and completely broke the blockage to my development that Karl represented. Paul told me that he had fallen in love with me and that he wanted to belong to me. He said that the only thing that could really snap me out of my depression was something real like this and that from now on we would not be patient/therapist but could take it wherever I would lead.

Up to that moment I had not suspected that Paul was a homosexual. In fact it was precisely because he understood the idealism of my relationship with Karl that I felt safe he would never accuse me of being one. I had always thought homosexuals were degenerate sexually-obsessed people, but this new revelation that Paul was homosexual did not cast aspersions on him but rather all my preconceived notions.

There will come a time when knowledge about People's ideals and sex lives will not be secret and hidden from view, but at that time and given my puritanical upbringing this was a terrible shock to me. I still believed in Paul and wanted to be in his life, but I had never felt sexually attracted to a man and didn't know how to start or even if I wanted to.

When I got back to school I didn't mention a word of this to anyone. Once I asked Abbot if many psychiatrists were gay, and he said yes and seemed to know quite a lot about the subject. It was in fact at this point that I began to have some respect for him and want to talk to him more, even though his political lectures were boring and not to the point. Anyway, a few more carefully composed letters swam back and forth between Annapolis and New York. We decided to se each other during the Christmas holidays.

I am dreaming now, with
Drifting thoughts
Of days past by
In rooms bright lit with
Full and happy sighs,
As night descends with
Cooling velvet softness,
Touching sweetly, lightly,
As in days remembered,
When your own caresses answered
As I kissed you, gentle lover.

— Judy (1966)

Even though I was shaking like a leaf (inside) we did our best to relieve the pressures and start to be friends. But it just seemed that the harder we tried the more self-conscious and fucked-up I became. After a few days of this, he told me that I wasn't ready for this yet, but that he would wait for me and be ready when I could take advantage of what he had to give me.

I felt relieved, but terribly disappointed at my performance. Yet I knew that I wasn't saying goodbye to Paul, and that even if it took me years to gather up my courage I would come back and we would be close. From that moment on the wheels were turning inside me, slowly disengaging me from the world of St. John's College and reorienting me towards a more independent and creative position in life. I also became more curious about homosexuality in general even though I had no intention of being seduced just for the sake of a cheap thrill. You may remember my complaining about Douglas Allanbrook cornering me occasionally in the music practice rooms. If that's all there was to being gay, then I certainly wasn't going to have anything to do with it. But then I remembered Paul, and kept my eyes open.

I decided about this time that I would leave St. John's and move to New York, where I could learn more about myself and homosexuality and prepare for my relationship with Paul. I didn't feel badly about leaving you because we had never made any eternal pledges to each other, and in fact you had encouraged my interest in other girls. (Would you have encouraged my interest in other boys?) Anyway I felt so fulfilled by our relationship that it was as if we would be together till the end of time no matter what happened. Do you remember when you told me that even if you were married and hadn't seen me in years that you would up and take off with me for a week if I were fucked-up and needed it? Do you remember when Abbot threatened to get me in trouble in school if I didn't stop seeing you and I told him that I had been planning to give up the relationship by summer anyway, but that even so he could go to hell?

At any rate, my first year in New York was pretty grim and lonely. It wasn't long after the last time you visited me in April '68 on Eleventh Street that I felt that it was now or never with Paul and me. That July we became lovers and have been close ever since.

Slowly over the next few years I began to reclaim my inner identity from the encroachments of society and conformity. I learned to be independent and set my own course. I shut out the past completely because I wanted to give myself totally to this new adventure. When Paul's third book was published in 1969 I helped by writing the jacket copy. As Paul moved to a more homosexual practice, more of his patients got to know one another. Therapy groups based on Paul's ideas were formed, and in 1973 we started a center on East Ninth Street off Second Avenue called The Ninth Street Center.

So I have been busy, even though I have not "become somebody" in the ordinary sense. Still I feel that the life I have chosen, as stressful as it can get, is far better for me than any of the conventional images of success we have in society. I don't feel blocked anymore. I feel that I can work on my development and learn more and more and not be just another victim of the system.

What I like about you so much is that you've never been captured by the system either. That's why I liked the part in your letter where you say that you feel your whole life is starting over again, that you are still an adolescent inside wondering what you want to be. This tells me that inside you haven't given up and haven't copped out on your capacity to see beauty in people.

Judy, I could go on and on like this, but why don't I stop here and give you a chance to get a word in? I wanted to tell you that I was really proud of you for having the guts to step out of your relationship with Ray. I think you're learning to protect yourself more and to feel that you're something more than a rag doll for people to walk over. You're much more than that to me, and you always have been.

By the way, Paul gave me a big bamboo spider for my birthday. We named him Dracula.

January 23, 1985

Thanks for trying to write to me about a real psychological issue. I know it's hard for us to communicate at this level, but it's important in the long run and very much worth the effort. I guess I'm glad that distance forces us to write since it's a lot less stressful than trying to get across a lot of things in person. Each of us tends to put so much effort into formulating what we think that it's hard to hear what the other one is really saying.

Of course I approve of your developing relationships with other people. It's the only way you'll ever learn about the human race and find out what you have to give. That's why I've encouraged your participation in therapy groups even though I felt that you'd be above the people around you. Even when we can't learn directly from another person, we can learn how to give to them, to teach. Probably you'll emerge as the real teacher in your therapy group.

I want nothing more than for you to feel free to explore life at your own pace and in your own way, to develop many kinds of relationship. Friends, teachers, lovers and students will all find their way to your door and must each be dealt with differently. The man who wants to "go out" with you most probably senses your well-developed sensitivity and responsiveness and feels a need in himself to explore the meaning of his attraction to it. This has constructive implications not only for him but for you. You can't really grow just from finding what you have to give to one person, be it me or anybody else. What you have to give only becomes clear through a matrix of experience. So although I want us to stay close and grow closer, you'd have to make an effort to expand your life independently sooner or later.

About your reluctance to confront me with the truth: I am hard to speak to, especially when I'm angry, but partly we're also dealing with the phobic nature of your intensity. Every time I've asked you what you want from a relationship with me, or what you feel about our relationship or about me, you get all shy and embarrassed and mutter "Well, I know I don't care about you as much as you want" It sort of makes me angry to see you get so helpless, but I usually keep it to myself for fear it'll make things worse. But do you see how intimidated your answer is? You act as if I'm fishing for a particular answer I'd like to hear when actually I'm simply trying to find out the facts. If you care a lot, I need to know. If you don't care much, I need to know. And what matters more than the degree is the quality, the form and structure. Asking information is a right of friendship, and I won't stop asking questions just because you haven't thought it through. Slowly you'll just have to learn that you're allowed to speak the truth to whatever extent you understand it, and that I'm big enough to deal with the incompleteness of your viewpoint. I love to cuddle with you in bed, I don't needed to be cuddled when it comes to facts of life.

Actually, I have noticed you coming out of this intimidation somewhat in recent months. Often the signs are a certain crabbiness, along with a resolution not to hide it. There's a touch of this in your letter, for instance. A more conventional person would say you're getting old and crabby, but not me. I really thought it was great the last time I visited you when you yelled at me to stop snoring! I was so surprised I almost laughed. Despite the trivial contexts, I feel somehow that this is a true breakthrough for you.

But learning to feel free to say what you think doesn't mean that you'll always be right or that I'm always going to agree with you, anymore than trying to drive a car means you'll succeed at the first attempt. The remarks in your letter about racism are so naive that I was shocked. I guess I like to think that you're just like Paul and implicitly understand exactly what's going on in my life, but every so often I get hit in the face with the fact that we really aren't as close as we used to be and that in fact you're very narrow in some of the ways you think about life. I have slept with people of color and kissed scores of gay black men, at the Center and in my personal life. There are no real differences between individuals that correlate simply with color. There are lots of cultural differences and "socioeconomic" statistics, but that stuff correlates so poorly that color alone is just not a significant diagnostic indicator. And I always care more about the exceptions anyway.

To find out what's in a person you have to take them seriously, get involved. In my life I choose to get involved with only those people who can take the full impact of a serious give and take between growing people. I not only don't take seriously the great mass of humanity, but largely I simply ignore them. In a light mood I'll make jokes about them, and I think ethnic humor is funny as do most blacks and latinos and minority people I know. So do you.

I once went to a bar and stood near the pianist. He said "Hi there," and I noticed he was blind. Since he sounded very open and friendly, I decided to take a calculated risk and whispered, "Were you aware that corduroy was Helen Keller's favorite color?" "No, no, no," he said, waving his hand, "I've got a much better Helen Keller joke than that!" He was delighted that I trusted him enough to go beyond the "poor blind nerd" stereotype. Making a joke about a stereotype is in fact to make fun of the stereotype, not the type. The best Jew-bating jokes I've ever heard were told by Jews themselves, some of which are even too strong for my taste. Jokes serve merely to amuse, and you can't use a person's esthetic preferences to read the content of their soul.

For the record, and so you'll know in the future, here's what I want out of you. First I want a friend, a committed reliable person who is always going to be open to me, who will listen and talk when I need it. The only thing I really have no tolerance for in the human race is when people slam doors in each other's faces (like what happened to me this summer). I don't think you could ever do that. You've always said you'd be open, that our relationship was permanent. I feel the same way about you, even when you flabbergast me. We will continue to have stressful moments because we will continue to grow. The thing you need to discern is not stress but the difference between stress that helps you expand, to stand taller than before, and stress which is oppressive. I tried to make it clear to you in 1978 that I didn't need to sleep with you in order for this mutual exploration to proceed. I said that when we didn't have sex we were able to put much more into our communication.

Sex is exhilarating but leaves me drained. I'm much more patient and continuous in my feeling for you when we keep it at the level of friendship. But I felt that it was going to be very hard to keep sex out of our relationship because it was part of our history and because I wasn't sure you understood the constructive reasons for my saying it wasn't necessary. I didn't want you to feel I was rejecting your commitment not to reject me; that kind of thing. But we have never even talked about fidelity. If we were living together I think fidelity might be a healthy course for a while, but I slept with someone last summer and you're free to develop strong attachments that involve sexuality too. I care only that they be healthy for you, and reserve the right to object when they're not, as I did about the man who mistreated you and stole your medical kit.

I feel that we'll always be lovers, and more than lovers. I want to be important to you, to feel that you need me, but it can't happen just because I want it. It has to happen on a basis of my actually giving you something which you need. Only you can decide if I'm reaching you or not. What do I want to give you? Good sex, frankly, you can get from a gigolo. What I want to give you is a suspicion that there's a bigger world out there than you have so far allowed yourself to participate in. There are people with big dreams and big goals who are hammering these dreams into reality with every breath they take. They're hard to find, but they're the ones who count. If you don't look, you'll never find them. We encourage this at the Center, but even in the largest metropolis around we have a low hit ratio, so understand that you're up against serious scarcity at the start. You have to situate yourself in contexts which attract these people. Therapy groups often do, as do liberation movements of one sort or another. But many creative people drop out of these sooner or later and strike out on their own into unknown territory. You know them when you see them — you just don't see them very often.

And yes I want you to love me. But I've always used the words love and power in a much deeper way than most people. Power is a name for the way I relate to the world around me. For me, you are a person who starts loving about five seconds after you get up in the morning. All of the qualities we've discussed: the deep conceptualization, being good to people, developing insight — all start with love or they go nowhere. So in this sense you've loved me all along, and been damned good at it. The night twenty years ago I asked "Why do you have trouble just saying you love me?", I didn't mean "Can't you say you love me even if you don't mean it" but "If you've already done the hard work of learning to love me, why is there a problem with merely saying it?" I used to assume it was because "love" was a supercharged word that would remind you of Mike and make you feel helpless, but I'm sure it goes deeper than that. Yet partly it's also a question of verbal skill-building. You have to start taking serious communication seriously. The last twenty years have pretty much been devoted to getting your medical degree. Now you have to go on to more important things. It's not going to be enough from here on to carry bed-pans or raise kids. They can only postpone the inevitable depression you'll feel for not living your life to its fullest potential.

In the final analysis, I don't really mind your lack of development. I've felt since we got together again in 1978 that you were someone I could really care about, even if you were living in an impoverished world with no friends worth having and no particular psychological goals. Some of my friends wondered how I could care about someone who wasn't doing anything with their life. But I don't require of the people who come to me for counseling that they be fully developed in order for me to care about them, only that they sincerely want to grow, and the same goes for you. I will continue to care about you because I know you need to grow even when you yourself don't seem to think so. I hope you can make use of what I am and what I have tried to live up to in my life.

Please let me know how it goes with your friend, and let me know his name so we don't have to talk about him indirectly as if he were someone we disapproved of. I'm glad you decided to trust me about this. I won't let you down.

Wednesday, October 1, 1997

Thanks for your letter, and the second one I got just yesterday in response to my postcard. What you've said contains lots of new content, as well as much that I had suspected but which hadn't been confirmed. This letter will be mostly questions about you and how you think about your life. I want any advice I give you to be based on real knowledge of what you've done with yourself in recent years, not in how I remember you or would like you to be.

First, I was interested in what you had to say about the job you recently lost. You had told me earlier that you liked it because you could wear clogs to work so naturally I didn't think it an important loss, but your new information talks to the enthusiasm you've now lost about what you want to do with your life. Clearly a job like that is what you want to go towards in your work life. Of course, it's just as clear that even the best job will do nothing to improve the quality of your private life, which is a separate topic entirely, but everyone needs to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's," i.e. to survive in their time and place according to the adaptive demands of their social environment whether or not this accords with their creative talents or abilities. You've been very clear about what kind of work you're in the market for and you have every right to "go for it" as long as this doesn't compromise your mental health.

About losing touch with old friends: I don't think you need to feel guilty about Harry. He was an adult, and if he had wanted you in his life he could have told you so. If neither of you kept in touch with the other, maybe there wasn't that much either of you had to say that could be expected to be of much value. Not every relationship can be expected to be continually stimulating. You need to leave room for courtships (in the larger sense) that fail, after all. I wonder about this, Judy: do you seem to habitually develop attachments to people to whom you think you still owe something to years after they've let go of you? I've occasionally seen you get weighed down by personal commitments that are more based on what you might call intimidation than a living, rewarding, bi-directional give and take. Could you talk about this in your next letter?

I was amused at your depiction of your neighborhood as being infested with Jesus freaks. Now that I know what you're up against, I understand your not wanting to get involved with any local mental health projects, professional or "amateur." But the question then becomes, if you recognize a need for other "awake" people in your life, why are you living in a backwater town? You used to put down New York every time you visited me, and I've never quite figured out if you understood why I'm here or not. It doesn't take genius to hate crime and dirt and pushy yuppies. But large cosmopolitan areas allow a greater variety of community and special interest groups to evolve. In NYC there are gay groups, lesbian groups, S&M groups, career groups, religious groups, nudist groups, Scientology groups, political groups — you name it. Sooner or later everyone finds some pond in which they can operate as a social creature and find their life nourished in some way they wouldn't find in Vermont (my current geo-fantasy). And, yes, you can even start your own revolutionary humanistic center and reasonably expect a few like minds to drop by once in awhile.

Incidentally, I probably need a little less social contact at this point in my life and may in fact move to Staten Island or someplace where I could see a tree once in awhile and have a loft big enough for all my stuff (half of my books are stored in a warehouse). But it seems to me that right now you need to go in just the opposite direction: to jump off that shelf in the warehouse your boyfriend has filed you in and to get back into a life of interpersonal richness, whether he can take part in it directly or not.

Speaking of your boyfriend, I have tried over the years to have, and largely succeeded in having, a positive and constructive image of his effect on your life. With the new information you have disclosed, however, it's hard for me to continue to see him as having been a real step upwards and onwards in your growth process. I truly know very little about him other than to think that there must be something pretty wonderful about him if you could love him as deeply as you do, did, or thought you did. In any case, I hope you talk more about the history of this relationship in your next letter. In what specific ways, for example, has this relationship helped you develop yourself? How have you helped him to reach his full stature as a creative human being?

As a person who believes in the critical importance of mated relationships — and therefore in sunsetting relationships that have ceased to be mated — I suspect that you need to ask yourself if it isn't time to start looking for your next important human contacts rather than to continue trying to revive what used to be between you and your boyfriend. And you can start by finding a few simple friends who'll get you back into feeling alive again.

I'm not trying to "get you back," Judy. I'm very happy with Jennifer. She shares my psychological world in a rich and close way that — although I never give up hope — you and I have not yet achieved. And I don't claim, as some do, that you need a lover to grow. Learning to handle the stress and problems of losing a lover is a perfectly valid kind of growth. But I also like to say that, in a larger sense, we are all always working on a mated relationship if you define this as whichever relationship is most important to us at any given moment (leaving out immediate family, naturally). Even sexualized relationships have non-sexual phases, after all, which are as indistinguishable from close friendships as are gravity and acceleration. You need someone to provide you with psychological stimulation. Sexual intimacy will come when it's healthy, and even then it may not be appropriate.

I always try to help people to see the good (if there is any) in what they want to regard as bad news. You say your menopause "causes one to totally loose track of who you are, and eventually re-emerge as someone else." I don't need to tell you that all of the great religions of the world ascribe the birth of saints to just such a process, indeed the birth of consciousness itself. If what you were wasn't that great, what could be so frightening about what you're about to become? Surely you won't unlearn all of the insights you have already gathered about life and other people? Have you tried to look at the bright side of this?

I'm going to go out on a limb briefly here to say that I don't think you always know how to distinguish an obstacle from an opportunity. I think you sometimes miss out on opportunities to grow merely because they are on their surface inconvenient or distressing. You complain, for example, that thirty years ago you used to dream about not being able to get through to me. It may surprise you that I'm quite pleased to learn this. It means that I was indeed very important to you and that you wanted to be closer to me than we were. Do you think any 25-year-old in her first extended non-family relationship gets close to the other person without a lot of trial and error and, yes, failure? If you think it all comes naturally, like the birds and the bees, then girl where have you been?

Oscar Wilde said that the advantage of the emotions is that they lead you astray. A. A. Milne said that the advantage of being disorderly is that you'll constantly make discoveries. And of course you know the one about "If you don't know where you're going then all roads will take you there." I describe falling in love as being almost always a catastrophe — at least if you're doing it right. It's like the proverbial definition of life: what happens to you while you're planning something else. Falling in love keeps us innocent, keeps us pure, keeps us from taking our worldly success and failure games too seriously. And if the failures bring momentary darkness, then remember (as my refrigerator magnet says) that "when it is dark enough, men see the stars."

The problem thirty years ago wasn't that you had bad dreams. Your dreams were merely foretelling your destiny as a creative human being embedded in the history of social progress who would need to keep the goal of inner development first and foremost in her mind for a lifetime. The problem was that we didn't know how to hold on to the promise of a future of real communication and fulfilling intimacy that would have made the work ahead of us worthwhile. Hence we gave up and, like children, said "that was nice while it lasted." Now you and I have three decades of growth and learning to draw upon to again build a bridge between us — this time a bridge of intellectual clarity rather than sighs and blushes and giggles, a bridge by which we can help one another to live better lives than each could achieve alone, rather than a bridge to temporary shelter from the rain.

Judy, I'm convinced that you don't have any idea of how beautiful you are, of how important you could be to the kind of people who really need your special gifts. I sometimes cry when I think how good you were to me thirty years ago, of how much I needed it just then. You saved my life, you nourished me back to health. You're a natural healer. You need to apply these talents to the people you love in your personal life in a focused and conscious way to nourish your real inner identity. You can't find it all in that great job in the sky or by hanging around old friends. Sometimes you can find it in the little surprises of life, in the way you treat the next homeless person you encounter, for instance. But you also need people around you who can be nourished in the way you nourished me and who can give back to you what you need: a sense of your value and importance as a person, a sense of security in relation to the world of experience. Are you conscientiously developing these skills and insight into where and how to apply them? Please talk to me about this.

When I was a kid I was taught to focus on my talents and gifts, to be proud of being good at math, for example. Something I've been thinking a lot about lately, though, is how good it feels to really face where my limits and blind spots are. Once I admit them and accept that that's where I'm starting from, then I can begin to learn new things rather than just defend my ignorance. For example, I'm really bad at understanding health and nutrition. Compared to the logical clarity and simplicity of physics — even quantum mechanics — the interactions of prescription drugs, say, seems endlessly complicated and resistant to scientific prediction. That's why all my life I've simply rejected trying to learn about health and nutrition. I simply gave up, and convinced myself that it was all magic and superstition. That's not a path to learning much, is it? So now, I simply face the fact that I'm not comfortable with memorizing factual observations made by others about complex phenomena. (I'm much more comfortable when I can learn a few rules and then deduce everything through logic, as I can with math, chess, music and software.)

This reluctance to trust knowledge I haven't personally verified probably stems from my distrust of my parents' lies, but what of it? The good news is that I'm learning how to learn. It's breathtaking, even if I can't quite explain yet what a protein is or why we need them. Of course I will continue to scorn the nuttiness of the more uncritical adherents of New Age medicine, but I have been impressed lately with Andrew Weill, who seems very genuine and not at all a snake oil salesman. Have you followed his work?

Well, that's enough for now. I hope we have initiated a genuine dialog such as has not before been possible between us, and one that we'll enjoy and have a little fun with, too. I don't mean to disparage the communication and closeness we achieved in the 1960's, which was revolutionary and life-giving for me. But now we are much smarter people with greater goals and an actual history of growth and creative achievements behind us. We don't need to defend our egos any more since it's so much easier just to recognize our incompleteness and be open to learning what others have to teach. I know you have much to teach me, and I hope I have something to offer you too. I don't think we need to correspond every week, because sometimes it takes a bit of thought to hear what the other person is really saying. But I do hope we keep in closer, realer, contact from now on.

September 6, 2007

I agree that a lot of bad things have happened to you in the last twenty years, but having me as a loyal friend wasn't one of them. Nor did it turn out to be an especially good thing, either. Once you decided to gamble your entire future on getting married you never really let me into your life again, and I can only help people who know how to open up and share their growth process with another person.

I don't know who gave you the idea that you've ever been victimized by me. If I thought you were a gullible person I would suspect that they were one of the last of that dying breed of shrinks who earns a living by manufacturing "false memory traumas". In any case, here's what actually happened. Ten years ago you sounded very depressed and I suggested we have a few conversations over the phone to see if I could help. No one got upset. No one raised their voice. No one slammed down their receiver. I offered some ways out of your dead-end predicaments with your husband, all of which you found too scary. Oh well, I thought, at least I tried. So I let you go without protest, and you went back to doing absolutely nothing to protest his neglect. Instead of taking charge of your life as I had recommended, you went back to twiddling your thumbs, hoping that someday he might change so you wouldn't have to.

Surely I can't be the only person who has tried to help you and been rebuffed, Judy. But rather than be consumed in shame and look for ways to blame the other person, you need to let these exploratory failures die. Otherwise you'll be stuck in this same angry helpless rut you're in today for the rest of your life. Don't turn speedbumps into tragedies just because your life seems so empty that even a tragedy seems an improvement. Don't be satisfied with the false glory of victimhood.

The way to find fulfillment is to own your life: live in the present, and plan for the future. A lot of people must have disappointed you in your long life, but they're no more important to you anymore than I am. Don't cling to what they did or didn't do. Listen to the birds sing in the morning. Wonder once more what's at the end of the rainbow. Run into an empty field at night and watch the stars come out. Give yourself permission to fall in love.

Love is what you need to light your way through life, Judy, not anger. I won't contact you anymore because it clearly disturbs you in a way that's not healthy for you. But please remember that, no matter how bleak things may sometimes look, you still have a lot of people who care about you and who want you to have everything you deserve and more. Use them to help make possible what seems impossible. Friends, not shrinks, are the best tools civilization has yet forged in the service of mental health.