At least I hope not.
Today I stumbled upon one of the most unnerving coming-of-age moments in the lives of Western (Imperialistic Pig) Women: perusing the self-help section.
As I let my eyes glaze over in avoidance of "Men are from Mars..." and the likes of "Keeping the Love you Find" or "The Bad Girl's Guide to Sex", I wonder how I got to this place. I am really looking for something helpful. For myself. Does that have to make it Self-Help? Must I slog through so much psycho-babble to find a book on self-philosophical psychosynthesis, in other words: real psychology? I wish it weren't the case, but I doubt there'd be much of a book market for the genres of "Actually Helping Yourself the Hard Way" vs. "Trite Tripe to Make You Feel Incompetent/Accomplished Without Changing".
The best conversation I've had in several weeks was with a complete stranger, by email, based on his anonymous craigslist post lambasting Seattle's lack of social graces...well, I'd been thinking I was "doing fine" but that made me reconsider. I'm not doing fine. I'm just doing. Which makes me in no way different from most of this country, not to mention many others. The problem is, I've always felt and thought of myself as, at the least, a little different and, therefore, exempt from this frivilous, liminal-post-modernistic torment of Self. Or is it Selflessness? But that's why I was in the Self-Help section.
*shudder*
When support groups start sounding like the answer, what else do you do? Well, you go to a fucking support group, even if its with intentions no clearer or cleaner than Tyler Durden. Even he was, eventually and strangely, helped by that, yes? So I needed some new books to read and fiction is getting too painful--those perfectly scripted lives we live in our imaginations and yearn for but will never touch in reality--and non-fiction just feels like reading either old, very specific newspapers or being bragged at by people who will always remain if not more accomplished, at least more interesting than I. And if that assessment of why I read what I read doesn't scream "Get Help!" I don't know what does. The books are trying to make me feel bad.
I know I've got a lot of stuff together. Materially, I'm doing great! Hell, I have a job and, right now, that is a serendipitous and not-to-be-downplayed piece of luck. I live in a cute house that doesn't cost too much in a neighborhood that is probably it's most frightening only on Halloween when the midget sweet-mongers take over. But.... Like any reasonable over-educated West-coaster with a degree under my belt, each piece of luxury or sensible utensil of modern life makes me feel lacking, as though I become slightly emptier with each purchase, meaninglessness seeping in through the credit card bills.
Meditation escapes me, most times. The best I can manage is a few consecutive minutes of frivilous anxiety, replacing the disabling, destabalizing worry that most times leaks out my ears for want of a pressure valve. We'll see what books with worksheets in the back can do.
