It is happening again
Twin Peaks is a good show to revisit in the middle of a global public health crisis — if only because its audiovisual iconography perfectly reflects the dark, absurd time that we are living in....
Category: Mental health
Goodbye, Grandma. Mourning over Viber during a pandemic
Margarita Mikhailovna, or Babusia, as we all called her, was my last remaining grandparent. She passed away last week at the age of 90. My cousin was supposed to help Babusia video chat with me from...
To sleep and dream in a pandemic
Whenever I wake up from a good dream these days, there is that moment of lag. The birds will be singing, there will be sunlight in the window, or else rain whispering against the glass. I will...
The touch of your hand behind a closed door
The last time I was kissed by a man, it felt like the end of a chapter, the kind you pause over, time thickening around you, feeling the story settle in your bones like radiation. I knew it would be...
The bonds we forge in isolation
“I want to live alone in the desert I want to be like Georgia O'Keefe I want to live on the Upper East Side And never go down in the street” — Warren Zevon It’s bizarre to be writing a...
Love in the time of Coronavirus
Well, the world is ending — again — and we are being told to hoard our medicine. This is not going to work out very well now, is it? This is what author Andrea Phillips had to point out on...
Being a survivor of suicide when suicide is in the news
The death of Caroline Flack this past weekend has again brought discussions about suicide to the forefront. Every time someone with a high profile makes the sad decision to take their own life, it...
The tumblrification of mental anguish
One of the reasons why progressives frequently irk me — besides the quite natural situation in which familiarity breeds contempt — has to do with how mental anguish and even victimhood can be...
The embarrassment and joy of crowdsourcing empathy
Writing about mental health in the United States means having to write about growing social atomization, aided by technology. Technology impacts our efforts to reach out to one another. We interact...
Waiting for Godot
I spent an hour and a half at the pharmacy the other day. First, there was a “hold” on my prescription. Then the pharmacist needed to help other customers. Then the insurance needed to be...