Things you don’t want to hear your psychiatrist say when you tell her you have the flu:
“Wow. You get sick more than anyone I know.”
(Continuation of Doctors Love Me)
After diagnosing me with the flu, doctor leaves room to get prescription pad, comes back to see me sobbing.
Doctor: “Why are you crying?”
Me: “I don’t know. It’s just something that happens.”
Doctor: “It’s just the flu. You thought you had cancer. This is good news!”
Me: “I know” (crying harder).
Doctor: “Ok, go home and get some rest.” (hands me Tamiflu script)
Me: “Can you prescribe anything for the crying?”
Doctor: (checking my chart) “Looks like you’re already taking it.”
Well, fuck.
I was reading an article about Parks and Rec writer/producer Harry Wittles, a hilarious comedic genius who recently died of an overdose. It got me thinking about the natural link between comedy and darkness, which then made me think, with great sadness, of Robin Williams, and other great comedic minds we have lost to mental illness and addiction. I’m pretty sure anyone would have had similar thoughts while reading an article about a comedian’s life cut tragically short at age 30.
So it made perfect sense that at the end of the article about death and despair, the internet suggested THIS:
Really, Internet?! You never cease to amaze me.
Because you’re always right. I liked it very much.
Thanks!
The following sibling email exchange took place in 2006. Steph and I were living in an apartment together in NYC– she was in law school, I was in graduate school. Jeremy was a senior at Penn. Zack was a freshman at Wisconsin. The whole chain was started as an attempt to improve communication skills in our family. It failed.
But what did happen is that Steph contributed one solid, ridiculous email that made the rest of us genuinely laugh out loud.
To this day, it has never happened again.
I already posted that email (here), most of which she forced me to redact. So it’s not included below. The rest of the emails in the chain are, including Steph’s only other contribution (at the very end), which is much more in line with her character.
The emails themselves are not all that hilarious, but as a chain they create a pretty clear picture of the family dynamic, with some classic throw-back references.
**Note: any blurred-out content has been done so to protect the innocent– most importantly those who made the regretful decision to canoodle with Jeremy.
While most reviews have been positive, I have read an overwhelming amount of critical commentary regarding Graham Moore’s Oscar acceptance speech, most saying that while it’s wonderful that he survived a suicide attempt and is now thriving, the Oscars stage was not the right time or place to talk about it.
Why? Because the whole world was listening?
Kudos to you, Graham Moore. There’s never a wrong time or place to fight stigma, celebrate strength, and instill hope.
I promise to stay weird. For you, for me, and for all the others out there who have seen the dark side.
Watch the speech here, in case you missed it.
The NBC evening news just did a segment recommending activities for people who are looking to escape the miserable cold. Their top suggestion? An open-oven pizza place in Hoboken.
Cool idea! Let me drag myself out from under these blankets, pile on 7 layers of clothing (including a separate coat JUST FOR MY HEAD), acquire some frostbite in the city wind tunnels, feel the wind-and-sadness-induced tears turn to ice as I wait for delayed subways, ride 3 different lines of public transportation filled with unbathed homeless men looking to escape mother nature’s most recent bout of PMS, all so that I can go grab a slice of pizza IN NEW JERSEY.
It’s official. I’m not getting off this couch until spring.
My screaming “But HOW?!?? Just please, sir, tell me HOW!!!” to the perfectly friendly cab driver who dropped me off at the West Palm Airport and told me to “stay warm in New York!”
It’s important to leave Florida and go back to NYC in the dead of winter because waking up every morning and thinking “Life is good!” is really no way to live. And honestly, my brain just gets tired from being so positive. It was truly exhausting being that happy for 5 days. I don’t know how people down here do it all the time.
Also, my Seasonal Affective Disorder makes me an interesting, dynamic person of substance. Winter misery and despair is part of who I am and I am proud.
*typed from the West Palm Beach Airport while clutching a duty-free wine and sobbing into a bag of Combos.
It’s 53 degrees. The hedge-trimmer just offered me his fleece.
Emily's Posts 