On Hating Terrorists

By Raina Lipsitz

I was not a New Yorker on 9/11. I was a coddled college sophomore, ensconced in a nicely appointed dorm room in New Haven, physically and psychologically far enough away from the city I would later call home to get through it all relatively unscathed. Watching images of the planes crashing into the towers and desperate Manhattanites clutching homemade signs, sick with worry for their missing relatives, I felt despair: what kind of world was this? But although I felt sadness, fear, and intermittent furnace blasts of hopelessness, I did not feel rage.

Why not? Partly because New York was not yet “my” city. And partly because rage felt beside the point; the men who’d crashed the planes were dead too. The United States hadn’t yet found and executed the “mastermind,” but, somewhat nonsensically, that didn’t feel as urgent to me as it would have had the actual hijackers escaped unharmed. My politics also made anger unlikely: I wanted the surviving “bad guys” to be caught and tried in court, but I don’t believe in the right of governments to assassinate or execute individual people. And I believed that my government had blood on its hands (which doesn’t mean I think we “deserved” 9/11; merely that I think acts of terror are never justified, whether they consist of U.S. soldiers bombing women and children in foreign villages or a band of extremists flying planes into American buildings).

I am not a Bostonian. But for reasons I don’t fully understand, the Boston marathon bombings—the latest act of terror in an increasingly terrifying world—pushed me past some internal tipping point. For the first time, I felt rage.

I fantasized about being there when the police caught and interrogated the men who did this. I pictured neo-Nazi perpetrators (the least sympathetic kind I could imagine), big, angry, male cops, and an extremely rough interrogation (even in my revenge fantasies, I am rarely the violent one). I thought about how much I’d enjoy watching terror bloom in the eyes of the skin-headed bastards cold-blooded enough to blow up an 8-year-old.

And then, last Friday morning, I saw photos of the suspects (one of whom had already been shot and killed by the police). I saw their faces. And while my rage didn’t disappear, its intensity faded. The suspect they hadn’t caught as of last Friday morning reminds me of my 21-year-old brother (big, bewildered eyes, tousled hair, dark complexion). The suspect they hadn’t yet caught is 19 years old.

19-year-olds can be dangerous. They can be murderers. But they can’t be more than 19 years old. A 19-year-old is a 19-year-old, for better or worse, in rich countries and poor. And an 8-year-old killed by a bomb is an 8-year-old killed by a bomb, whether that bomb was planted by Chechen terrorists in Boston or by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan or Vietnam or Japan. Somebody’s baby is somebody’s baby.

It’s not that I didn’t want the 19-year-old who appears to have planted one of the Boston bombs to be caught. But, having seen his face, I badly wanted him to be caught and tried rather than tortured and killed. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if no 8-year-olds were ever bombed while standing on their streets or playing in their backyards, no matter what country they live in?

It’s hard not to feel that this is a lousy world. But rage doesn’t make it better. Revenge doesn’t make us safer. And hating the people who do things like this doesn’t reduce the number of people who do things like this. Tempering legitimate anger with compassion, which is far more difficult to summon, might help. It’s worth trying.

Love is a Choice, Not a State of Being

By Shulamith Firestone

Will you say, “I do” even when you think you don’t
And hope things can change in a day?
Will I say, “I love you” even when those are just words
The way words sometimes are when you pray?

–“Heading Home,” Nerissa and Katryna Nields

When I was a teenager, I couldn’t wait to fall in love. I imagined that having a serious boyfriend would mean I’d be happy all the time, never feel bad about my body, and have mind-blowing orgasms on demand. Then I grew up and learned the difference between my romantic comedy-inspired fantasy of love and the real thing.

The real thing wasn’t bad. In certain ways, grown-up love lives up to the fantasy most of us have as teenagers. It does feel great to find someone with whom you’re sexually compatible, it is fun to have someone to go to the movies with, and it is wonderful to be told you’re pretty by someone other than your parents. At what felt to me then like the extremely advanced age of 20, I acquired my first boyfriend, and I loved every second of it. I made out with him on street corners, snuggled up to him in bars, and texted him obsessively. I talked about him nonstop. In an ill-advised bid to be treated like an adult, I dramatically revealed to my profoundly un-shocked mother that I was sleeping with him. It all felt thrilling and sophisticated and hugely significant. This was what it meant to have a lover! This was what it meant to be in love! I was finally sexually visible, in the precise way I’d always yearned to be: a boy had claimed me.

Of course we were students—on study abroad, no less—and neither of us had any real responsibilities. Fast forward to my mid-twenties, when I lived with a boyfriend for the first time. I loved him with such girlish intensity that the first weeks floated by like a dream; I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to share a bed with him every night. But soon the illusion broke and our life together seemed less and less idyllic. He left dishes piled up in the sink, worked constantly, and rarely expressed affection; I grew resentful and bitter and felt miserably alone.

At 30, I’m in love again, and we’re considering living together. I’m old enough now to know that love is not a glowing bubble that encases you in perfect happiness and makes it impossible to get hurt. It’s a promise; it’s a prayer; it’s a delicate balance that requires constant maintenance, seriousness of purpose, and good will from both partners. It can come and go in a day—but if you’re committed, you work hard to bring it back again. Love is a choice you have to keep making if you want to stay together. And it gets harder and harder to make as you get older and other pressures begin piling up (kids or no kids? where to live? how to make money and how to spend it?).

I’m still grateful for love. And amazed by it. But I no longer believe it can fix me as a person or free me from pain. Sometimes I wish I still did.

Things ex-boyfriends have said to me after I said, “I love you”*

by Shulamith Firestone

  1. I feel something for you that’s stronger than “like” but not as serious as “love” . . . I would say that I “loke” you.
  2. Who really knows what “love” is, anyway?
  3. I know.
  4. I don’t not love you.
  5. I’m not sure what you mean by that.
  6. I think you’re very smart.

*At least they were honest! If you’re not ready to say it, you shouldn’t. And in hindsight I’m grateful to these guys for crushing me in the moment rather than stringing me along for God knows how long.

Why don’t depressed people just snap out of it?

by Shulamith Firestone

A recent conversation with a friend of mine who has been depressed for years made me think about how we treat friends with chronic mental health issues. If you have known and cared about a person for a long time, and they never seem any happier than the last time you saw them, what can you say or do to help? What is decidedly unhelpful?

It’s hard to be a depressed person. You are tired all the time, and sad all the time, and live in a perpetual state of hopelessness and anxiety, with little reprieve from either. Some depressed people I know self-medicate with drugs and alcohol; most take legal, prescribed medication as well. Some are, amazingly, able to be good friends to others while trapped in their own private hell. Others are incapable of fulfilling the basic duties of afriend: they’re profoundly self-absorbed, bad at staying in touch, and have trouble talking or thinking about anything other than their own mental state.

But if you know someone is unable to be a good friend because they’re struggling with something awful that’s beyond their control, you can’t just drop them. You’re their friend! You’re supposed to care about them, and accept their flaws, and help them get better. Maybe you feel like you’re trying. Maybe you feel like you can’t tell them, again, that you think they should find a therapist/find a better therapist/stop talking to their ex/take medication/stop taking drugs. Now what?

Of course everyone’s different and there’s no perfect solution. I’m lucky to have many friends who are brilliant, sensitive, and creative; not un-relatedly, some of them are also depressed. Through a painful process of trial and error, I’ve learned that some approaches work better than others.

It helps to listen. It’s not helpful to say, “I feel the exact same way” or “I feel that way all the time” (unless you really do). It might help, a little, to say, “That sounds really hard.” I learned from one good friend in college that “You’re not the only one who feels this way” may not be the right thing to say (I thought that saying it would make my friend feel less alone; she told me it made her feel less understood, as if I didn’t think she was a unique person with an individual, specific set of problems).

Ultimately, it’s good to remind yourself that true depression is not a self-indulgent pose; it’s a clinical diagnosis. No one would choose to feel the way someone who is clinically depressed feels. So telling someone to “snap out of it,” “stop dwelling,” or “focus on the positive” is not only patronizing; it completely misses the point. If you know someone who is depressed, stop feeling guilty that you haven’t fixed them, and start cultivating patience and humility.

Sorry I Asked

by P.N.

I haven’t been able to write lately.  Well, actually, I’ve been writing all the time, but not the kind of writing anyone else really wants to read. I just switched jobs, so I write to do lists, notes, emails to my new colleagues pleading for help.

But what to write for this blog? When I go digging in the archives of my brain for anything labelled “personal story” I come up empty-handed.  The previous 1,638 weeks of my life seem utterly eclipsed by the past four weeks’ chaotic transition from one job to the next. I feel like a newborn, like I sprang to life the moment I handed in my two weeks’ notice, and I have so few stories to tell.

So I asked my husband: “What should I write about for the blog?”

And he said, “Write about work.”

And I said, “I can’t write about work. All I think about is work. Give me something else, something interesting about me that’s not work-related.”

“You could write about how long you spent online shopping for a purse today.”

“Um, no. Why would anyone want to read that? I didn’t even buy anything.”

“Well, you could write about how you get dressed every morning in the laundry room because you never take your clothes out of the dryer.”

“How is that a story?”

But now he’s getting warmed up.

“You could write about why you do that weird thing, when you eat, where you tap your fork against the side of your plate before each bite.  Or about how you clench your fists when you’re anxious, but only when we’re riding in the car.”

“Okay, thanks. Never mind.”

“Or how you never clean out your pockets, so there’s always loose change on the ground by your dresser. Or how you sometimes pretend you’re listening to what I’m saying, but you’re really not. Or how you stare at your feet when you’re thinking.”

“Do you even know what a ‘personal story’ means?”

“Yeah, it’s what you do when you’re not at work.”

Leave Now or Hate Later

by Shulamith Firestone

I often characterize myself as an easy-going person, but in many ways I’m not. I like knowing what to expect. I’m not very spontaneous, and I resent spontaneity in others. In spite of what an old yoga teacher so wisely recommended, I rarely welcome change into my life.

For a long time, a romantic relationship was on a short list of changes I would welcome, and now, again, I have one. I immediately and gratefully readjusted to having a date most weekend nights and somebody to bring to dinner when my parents are in town. I have yet to adjust to sharing my bed, sleeping comfortably in someone else’s bed, and having to consider someone else’s feelings and needs. The older I get, the harder it is to pretend there’s no downside to having an “adult” relationship: people are difficult, and blending lives is hard. For the most part, I still want to try.
My boyfriend and I recently saw Louis CK. He did a bit about how happy he is to be divorced (“Each year is better than the last!”), but conceded that it wasn’t always so: “It takes adjusting to. The first couple of years [after a marriage ends] suck.” But now, he claimed, he’s happier than he’s been in a long time. Divorce can be refreshing when a marriage has gone sour.

Glancing at my boyfriend, with whom I’d quarreled seconds before the show began, I pictured our un-seeable future, unspooling before us like the dark tangle of a wrecked cassette. What if someday, in a fit of love, we decide to get married? We say we love each other now, but we also say we’re not ready to live together. Sometimes I feel that love fizzing through my blood like champagne. Other times, I think, “If I walk away now, no one gets hurt” (ridiculous, I know) or, “If I walk away now, I won’t end up hating him.”

Where do these thoughts come from? As a person who likes being in control, I was blindsided by my last breakup. Not by the final fight or the last word, and certainly not by the fact that the relationship ended (I’d have been surprised if it didn’t). What smashed into me one day like a concrete wall in the dark was the realization that I hated him. I despised myself too, of course, but I hated him. The man who I, a quasi-atheist, had literally prayed for, whose affections I’d wanted so badly to keep—I looked at him one day and thought, “I hate you.”

I stayed for months after that, because I also loved him. You don’t go from “love” to “hate” like a light switch; if you’re a person of extreme emotions, those two are mixed up together in an endless loop from the beginning. It’s only when the record’s scratched and the needle gets stuck on “hate” that you know it’s time to walk away.

Scenes From Married Life: Orgonite

by P.N.

Email from Me to Claire, December 15 at 9:43 a.m.:

I just uttered a sentence to my husband I never thought I’d have to ever construct, let alone say out loud: “Mike, promise you won’t microwave any more strange rocks that homeless people give you.”

Email from Claire, December 15 at 11:37 a.m.:

Wait, why can’t he microwave it?

Email from Me, December 15 at 12:31 p.m.:

Because (1) we don’t know what it’s made of. Yes, the homeless man did describe it as “organite, a substance not made by man or found in nature” but that doesn’t really tell us much, now does it? (2) If this non-manmade-but-also-not-natural substance had bits of metal in it (because it has to be made of SOMETHING) it could have fucked up the microwave. (3) Even though it turned out okay, I don’t like the smell it gave off. (4) Why would you microwave a rock?

Email from Claire, December 15 at 12:44 p.m.:

Why did the guy give Mike the rock?

Email from Me, December 15 at 12:56 p.m.:

It was kind of a convoluted story. I actually think it might have been given to John, his co-worker. I think John met and/or was kind to a mentally ill man who wanders around their shop’s neighborhood. And then one day the guy showed up, talked to John for an hour, and then gave him this rock. Since then, Mike and John have been taking turns hiding it in each other’s belongings so that it turns up unexpectedly in their backpacks, jacket pockets, etc. But lately they’ve started a series of experiments with it, most recently the microwave. Even if you aren’t sympathetic to my paranoid health concerns, I think it’s rude to microwave gifts. What it if had exploded or cracked, and the guy comes back and they’ve ruined his organite?

Email from Me: December 15 at 1:06 p.m.:

Also, I guess I should contextualize my hostile views on Mike and rocks/minerals/metals that he gets at work. In addition to the four magnets that had to be removed from his nose by an ER doctor, he also recently licked a rock that John found in the parking lot because they couldn’t tell if it was a geode or a piece of dried dog poop. It turned out to be a geode, which means best case scenario, Mike still licked a rock found in the parking lot. I argue he uses poor judgment in these situations.

Update: before sending this email, I Googled “organite,” which led to “orgonite.” Which led to this article about new developments in orgone generators that defies easy summary, but I think corroborates my theory that we shouldn’t be microwaving this thing or putting it near our brains:

http://www.sfgate.com/business/prweb/article/Radionics-Box-Announces-New-Radionic-Rate-4113651.php