The author sounds like she suffers from crippling anxiety and possibly depression, and I am incredibly empathetic because I have lived through similar things. I can understand from personal experience how a person could come to the conclusions she does.
But I hope that she manages to find the solution that frees her of this burden. Whether it's meds, lifestyle changes, or moving to a place that gets more sun, I want to believe that there is a solution out there for her. For me it was quitting drinking -- I never had a drinking problem in the traditional sense, but what I didn't realize was that it was making me emotionally very unstable.
It's hell being the kind of person who spends weeks reacting to one mean comment. It is the worst thing ever. But living a life that's free of that is the best thing ever. It's worth doing whatever it takes to find out how to achieve it.
You might be projecting the putative "crippling anxiety" into her words. I think she was trying to write something worth reading, and so naturally dramatized her story a bit. I thought it was well-written, displaying a healthy level of self-observation and satisfying developmental progress for the length of the piece.
"But let me assure you, this conceptual poet was digging his nails into my heart—he knew it, and, five minutes later, I suddenly felt it too—which led to a week and a half of fuming in bed, unable to sleep, my declaring this man my enemy, the reconceiving of a magazine article I was writing in such a way as to include a subtextual layer that would annihilate conceptual poetics, a week and a half of going out every night and talking through the insult with each of my friends—what am I even saying? It took leaving the continent for the insult to finally recede into the background of my days, and for me to regain my equilibrium."
---
"And then . . . I destroyed it. I met someone and then another person and before I knew it, all the chaos of life came back, along with all my self-doubt and anxiety and fear."
I dunno, I read it as her just being dramatic for effect, but you could be right. I am skeptical that someone truly this anxious would willingly share such intimate thoughts with us.
You can say that about any piece though: "I dont think the author meant what he said". At some point we have to stop second guessing and discuss what was said, not what we think the author wanted to say. At the very least discussing the actual content is certainly not off-topic. :)
I think you are mistaking the dramatic flourishes of the essay for its true message. It's a well-written piece that has a twist ending (not entirely unexpected).
"Maybe we go out in order to fall short . . . because we want to learn how to be good at being people . . . and moreover, because we want to be people."
She's saying that addiction to people is not the same as addiction to cigarettes. This is a good kind of addiction because human beings are by nature social creatures and should interact with one another.
I agree with your assessment of the essay's conclusion. All I'm saying is that the essay's whole thought process began with the basic problem that social situations often backfire for the author in very negative ways. If these negative experiences didn't cut so deep, it might not have been necessary for her to spend 2500 words convincing herself that some socializing is better than completely cutting yourself off from the world.
I could be totally wrong about all this, and I really regret if my original comment comes off sounding at all presumptuous. My point is just that if indeed the author suffers in the way that the essay describes (which sounds totally believable to me), I have a lot of compassion, but also hope that things can be better for her.
FWIW, I think your comments DO some off a bit presumptuous, and a bit condescending, despite you saying that you have a lot of compassion and are incredibly empathetic.
Using language like "This is not normal" and "crippling anxiety" is really making a lot of assumptions about the author. It kind of presupposes that you know what's normal. Of course it's possible that you actually do, maybe you're a psychologist or therapist, and as an expert can assert that you do know what's normal, but I would argue you can't infer enough from this piece to know for sure.
There was a review of Sheila Heti's new book in this week's NYer, and from that I gleaned that her work draws from life but also involves a lot of dramatization and fictionalization of her life, and isn't entirely non-fiction.
That's fair. In retrospect I wish I had written my comment in more of the form: "If X, then Y", instead of presuming X. If the essay is fictionalized and she didn't actually move to a new city to avoid social interaction, or find herself totally consumed for weeks by one mean comment, then surely none of what I am saying applies.
Re: "this is not normal," if I sound like I'm claiming some kind of authority, it is only the authority of personal experience. I could have written those passages that I quoted, and not too long ago either. Those were my "normal." Once I experienced what it was like to feel secure and free of those unmanageable emotional responses, I found it incredibly liberating.
The strong belief I took from this experience is: no one should have to live that way. No one should have to structure their life around avoiding things that they emotionally can't handle. I can't say with certainty that this is her situation, but I know it was mine.
But I hope that she manages to find the solution that frees her of this burden. Whether it's meds, lifestyle changes, or moving to a place that gets more sun, I want to believe that there is a solution out there for her. For me it was quitting drinking -- I never had a drinking problem in the traditional sense, but what I didn't realize was that it was making me emotionally very unstable.
It's hell being the kind of person who spends weeks reacting to one mean comment. It is the worst thing ever. But living a life that's free of that is the best thing ever. It's worth doing whatever it takes to find out how to achieve it.