All we wish for is peace on earth and good will toward all people. And a decent bagel. As many of you know, I am Catholic. As many of you also know, C., my best friend, who also lives with my husband, daughter, and me, is Jewish. And we're not talking secular Jew. Oh hell, no. This woman read from the Torah in Hebrew for her bat mitzvah. She knows when Tu Bishvat, AKA Jewish Arbor Day, is. C. knows that Maimonides is more than a hospital in Brooklyn. Maidel is hard-core, yo. This (and so, so many other things) have led us to many sit-com-like situations. Like the time my father was the head of the RCIA at his and my mother's church, and, since the Last Supper was a Passover meal, wanted to have a kind of Passover for Goyim Dummies thing for his class. So of course, he hands this off to my mother. My mother, for those of you who don't know her, is an angel and a saint (shut up, she might read this), but this sort of thing was not really up her alley. So Mom calls m
This post is in response to an essay I read earlier today by an internet acquaintance and very popular author and blogger Ferrett Steinmetz , entitled, " How to Be a Good Depressive Citizen ." In his essay, Ferrett makes a very good point about the unwritten yet strangely compulsory stoicism required of writers who grapple with depression. We hold ourselves to this impossible standard we would never require of anyone else. At least I hope to G-d we would never require of anyone else--that would be monstrous. But, for me, what he says boils down to this: You do not discuss your depression until you can be an inspiration, or you are just fucking crazy. Nobody likes crazy. Hi. My name is Lyn, and I am fucking crazy. Really. Mentally ill, as they say. Liking me is optional, but, I'm told, entertaining as all hell. Case in point: I'm kind of done with being publicly stoic about how big a mess my life is at the moment, and feel like flinging my crazy around like pa