I have been watching a LOT of TV lately. Part of it I've described before: the need to hear human voices, mindless distraction while studying, unwinding tool. But a large part of it has been the result of depression. A large chunk of my TV watching comes from Bravo and VH1, but there are quite a few swatches of forensics-investigation, sketch comedy, hour long dramas, weight loss shows, cooking, and sitcoms that shouldn't be overlooked.

It isn't often that I find books or articles that manage to capture my soul in a bottle. Those halcyon moments where another writer manages to verbalize feelings you had but never knew: those are the sweet fruit of the marriage of like minds. This is such an article. Not only do I feel EXACTLY the same way about Millionaire Matchmaker, but I have the same feelings about watching TV in general. While the whole article is a masterpiece, allow me to quote the most salient parts:

* As a rule I avoid reality shows that aren’t Top Chef because I like to fight my inherent misanthropy, not diligently cultivate it like a dark psychological bonsai tree.

* On Millionaire Matchmaker there is a grotesque disconnect between the values Stanger professes to espouse and the ugly moral bankruptcy at the heart of her loathsome operation.

* Stanger states repeatedly that it’s really all about true love and deep, meaningful emotional connections. ... Yet Stanger spends much of each show haranguing aspiring [gold-diggers] to push out their tits, iron their hair (because in Stanger’s warped reasoning men hate curly hair and redheads almost as much as they hate assertive, business-minded women and smokers) and generally do everything in their power to look like a nineteen year-old stripper. Stanger pretends to facilitate fairy tale romances when all she’s doing is introducing socially retarded horndogs to their first ex-wives. In a million different ways these hapless jerks will never stop paying for sex.

* Yet it is part of the show’s dark genius that her cynicism and Hobbesian take on humanity always seems justified.

Part of my enjoyment probably stems from the fact that I'm so low at the moment that watching strippers compete for the affections of washed-up rock stars allows me to point at the screen in sweats as I clutch a bag of potato chips and shout things like "no one will ever love you, Daisy!" Not that the experience has been without its rewards. I have learned several things which, had I not had cable, would have been impossible:

(1) It is possible to exceed normal product placement so egregiously as to make one completely nauseated (The Biggest Loser: Couples, Top Chef, America's Next Top Model)
Top Chef is really the Chateau Neuf de Pape of reality TV. Everyone knows this. It's the only reality TV show that it's ok for the Williams-Sonoma set to like. As such, they have the heady responsibility of using their product placement more tastefully than most. And for a while, they did alright for themselves. But this season the "Glad family of products" and the "kenmore kitchen" aren't the only things being swallowed outside of gelees. Kraft and Nestle have been hitting pretty hard, and rather than just sitting in the background, I have to suffer as the dulcet voice of Padme is reduced to telling me about all the different flavors of creamy salad dressing Kraft has to offer. The worst offender, is by far, The Biggest Loser. This show has never been subtle, but this season, the Biggest Loser has truly taken product placement to a level not seen since the Truman Show. I would estimate a good 30 minutes of every 2 hour show is dedicated to explaining the fantastic prizes courtesy of Planet Hollywood or the various candy "temptation challenges." The truly grotesque moments, however, are when the trainers come by in order to teach "diet tips" or meal lessons. These ALWAYS seem to involve a Glad product (OMG Glad totally makes these special bags to microwave your vegetables how easy is that!!!), Quaker Oats, or whatever the bar/gum/drink of the day is. This week involved everyone "deciding" to curl up and watch a movie and there just happened to be 100 calorie bags of popcorn left for them by their trainers! what a coincidence! Insert awkward banter about how shockingly good said popcorn is here!

(2) Being a whore is infectious (Rock of Love II)
(3) If you are hot, any mental deficiancy will be forgiven (Rock of Love II)
Anyone who has seen 20 skanky girls compete for the love of Brett Michaels knows that these women are whores. It's all about cleavage and first-date blow jobs and drinking until you pass out. But what's amazing about it is what happens to you, as a woman, when you watch a marathon of this show. At first, you're horrified, then disgusted, then the misanthropy sets in. Show after show you see women who are crazy, stupid, perhaps legally insane, praised and fawned over as being "smart" or "old souls" or "exciting" because their bodies are incredibly hot. Their faces are anyone's guess--there's too much make up on to tell. But after you see this enough, as a woman, you began to feel like this is what you need to be--maybe if you were hotter and dumber, you would be happy, adored, successful. You begin to think crazy things like "maybe I should put on more eye makeup" or "I am really not taking advantage of my cleavage" that would never occur to you otherwise. When the show is over, of course, these thoughts vanish; but while you're there, the siren call of whoredom is strong.

(4) A crazy hot cast and beautiful clothes can't make a confusing format watchable (Make Me a Supermodel)
You would imagine the formula would be instantly, insanely watachable:
America's Next Top Model + American Idol = Next Big Thing
But the weird waiting-while-America-votes thing that seems to work for American Idol (a show I can't bring myself to watch) doesn't seem to work here. You never can be sure when the show is ending or beginning, and it creates a weird lurching pace to the show that makes it hard to watch in any other format than the tried-and-true marathon.

(5) Every white woman woman that lives in California is a horror (Real Housewives of Orange County, Dr. 90210)
The Real Housewives, which I'm watching now, was ostensibly built as "Desperate Housewives, but for real!" But while Desperate Housewives is a sharply-written satire with enough fascinating characters to offset the awful ones, Real Housewives seems hell-bent on proving to all of us that the affluent women who live in southern Califormia really ARE as awful as we always imagined. Some of this could be chalked up to the editing, until you watch the "reunion specials" and realize that no, no, these women really are this oblivious, they really are this superficial, they really are awful mothers.

(6) Lost is still awesome
Dudes, it totally is

My exam finished Tuesday night. I spent all Wednesday in bed, watching TV and eating anything I could find. I intend to spend all day doing the same. I have classes, sure, but I can’t be bothered. I’m just going to let my fatigue wash over me and indulge in a way I won’t be able to much longer.

The exams went well. Part of it was the 6 months of studying, but a large part was also the morale-boosting efforts of visits from Adele, my parents, and my cousin Brook, as well as care packages, letters, and texts from Benji, Serge, Mary South, and Lakshmi, among others. I didn’t even respond to most of them, but they were hugely important in keeping me sane. I didn’t do spectacularly well, but I know I passed, so that’s a relief.

I wish that I could say I’m happy that the exams are over, but the truth is, I’m in a profound state of grief. Not over the exams, really, but over everything else that’s been happening to me in my life. I use the word “grief” because I am in a state that transcends depression—it’s a mourning, a sense of helplessness and loss that incapacitates me, as much as I’m trying to overcome it. It isn’t one thing, it’s dozens of things, each one so disarmingly awful that I have no idea how to even deal with them. I can’t go into all of them, because most aren’t my secrets to tell, and goodness knows others probably won’t even seem significant. But I feel a compulsive need to share them all, because I don’t know what else to do about it.

After graduating from college, my dad lost his job, and I had to move back home. The things that happened at home were so incomprehensibly awful that there aren’t really any blog entries dating from that time, because of legal issues and family breakdowns. But the saving grace for my family was my father successfully starting his own imaging center. It was a huge success—always full, never a lawsuit or a complaint. Then Texas passed a “health care reform” bill that said that any doctor who ordered more than 1 case would only be reimbursed by insurance company for 1 case. My father needs 35 cents to the dollar to pay his staff, rent, and bills. Ever since the reform bill, collections are near 20-30%. He can no longer make ends meet. He isn’t alone, imaging centers throughout Texas are closing—the only radiologists still making money are those who work in hospitals, who can browbeat for better rates. Still, my father will be without a job—again—in around 6 months.

What makes this so awful is that there’s nowhere for my dad to go. He can’t get a job anywhere else in Texas without having his income cut by 50%. It means he and my mother now have to take my already traumatized brother and sister and subject them to a new round of money worries. It means they get to be pulled out of school. It means we’ll have to sell the house. None of these things sound particularly bad, I know, until you take into consideration the fact that stability is the only thing allowing the family a chance to heal. I don’t know if my mother, my father, and my brother and sisters can do all this again. We haven’t had enough time to heal after the last disaster: if this truly ends up bad, if the house does have to be sold and if we do have to move, I don’t know if the kids will survive. My poor brother already sees a councilor for depression. He’s 10. We don’t know if the school will let him return because his grades are so low. He went from making A’s (6 years ago) to D’s. He’s incredibly sensitive, and the stress is causing him social anxiety, and he can’t study or concentrate. Things will be worse when he’s in a classroom with 35 kids. He’ll be lost. Jordan is acting out too. It’s becoming rather serious, as her grades are slipping, and she’s started lying. And with my parents working 12 hours a day trying to save the business, they feel helpless to be able to give these problems the attention they deserve.

There are other problems going on with my family, more serious, that I can’t get into. My grandma fell, and had to have part of her leg amputated as a result. My dad is becoming increasingly depressed, and his Alzheimer’s is worsening. Margaret can’t seem to figure out how to make the right choices in her life—she covers up her mistakes by lying, which makes my parents even more depressed. Julia’s boyfriend cheated on her.

With my family life so awful, you would think I could turn to either my personal life, or my professional life for distraction, but no such luck. As far as my professional life, ever since the fed cut interest rates around January, I’ve been losing a long stream of money ever day. I had to stop trading: the market was too volatile, and my account was too small. It was an overwhelmingly mortifying experience to see a job I’ve trained for since I was 20 disintegrate because Wall Street is running around with its head cut off. I need to look for a new job, but in order to stay in my apartment (my childhood has caused me to equate moving with death, pathetically), I need to earn at least $30,000. It sounds easy enough, only I’ve always been either self-employed, or worked as an intern or for family and friends. I have no idea what jobs are available in publishing, where to start, what to do. I want to do something related to writing, but I also want to produce books and magazines—layout, selection, design. I don’t know what to do or who to talk to or what to say. I’m scared out of my mind looking for a job, but I’m even more terrified of not doing something, because with my dad soon to be out of work and my fellowship ending in a few months, I don’t have the money to take my time.

Then there’s my personal life. As I think back on it, the only two things I wanted in my life growing up were financial security and to fall in love. I’m 26 years old and I haven’t had either of those things. I feel stupid for wasting so much time on trading only to have the economy screw me over. I feel like there is something deeply wrong with me that I’ve been in new york for 2 years and have virtually no friends or love interests here. Of the dozen or so men I’ve met since I moved here, all of them describe me—to my face or behind me back—as intimidating. I make them feel stupid, I make them feel small, I make them feel interrogated. Most of the comments have happened over the last few months. What’s sad about that is the last few months have been my studying time—the time where my mental energy has been its most vibrant. I’ve been reading books, studying art and philosophy, and yet the more I know, the less anyone—male or female—wants to speak with me. I seem to live in a culture where the better or stronger I am, the less appealing I am. Take for example my adorable film teacher. Around my age, a bit chubby, super cute, shares a Brooklyn apartment with his girlfriend. When he asks us about our weekends, he goes around the classroom, and asks everyone but me. Same thing when he asks about paper topics: he’ll ask each person on the row to share their topic, but he’ll skip me. He rarely calls on me unless he has to. He jumps when I say hi outside of class, and gets a panicked look on his face when I talk to him. He never answers my emails. This is my experience with nearly everyone I meet. Though intellectually I know that I’m smart, cultured, and even perversely funny at times, I have ceased emotionally to feel that way about myself. I’ve just had too many people “forget” to invite me places or walk the other way if I approach them to feel anything other than shame. I feel, for the first time in my life, like a boring person. I feel like I should be grateful if someone asks me a question about myself. When did that happen?

All of my friends live far away, and many of them are so depressed and overwhelmed with their own lives that I wouldn’t feel right about calling and crying about mine. But I am so totally, overwhelmingly lonely, that I don’t know what to do. In many ways going online and talking on the phone makes it worse—it makes me realize what I’m missing. And I suppose, on top of that, I’m scared because I don’t see it getting better. My life in New York has been unerringly uniform—I can’t imagine where or when I would meet somebody that would make me feel better, secure, connected. I feel cut loose and adrift, with no way of getting back to shore.

The thing that makes depression tolerable for me is the ability to shift my attention from the arena in my life which is going poorly to the arena of my life which is doing well. But I really don’t have any particular area that is going well, and as a result, I feel overwhelming grief. I am scared of everything—scared I won’t get a job, scared I will have to move, scared I’ll never make new york friends or boyfriends. These fears aren’t unique, everyone has them, but for me, a lot of my issues behind them are childhood issues, the product of moving ever year and having to make a new set of friends every time. And I’m beginning to worry that it’s finally happened—I’ve finally moved one time too often, and now I can’t make a fresh start. All my chances are used up. I am used up.

today and tomorrow are my final exams. wish me luck

The 4 a.m. editing sessions paid off -- my moot court team won third best brief out of 46 law schools. We made it to the octofinals for oral arguments, but an unlucky coin toss put us at a disadvantage and we ended up getting eliminated. (Our fake client was a giant jerk.) It was a lot of fun.

Here is a picture of my team and our coach at a restaurant in Little Italy. (Notice the racy painting on the left.) We weren't the most polished team, but we were scrappy. And we had the best cheering section. During one round, my mom, my brother, my uncle, Mark, Mary and our coach all squeezed into the fake courtroom to watch.

It was really nice to spend a week in NY and see a lot of my family and the fantastic Ms. Jones. Despite her impending masters exams, Mary not only showed up to watch our competition, but also bought me lunch and cooked a meal for Mark and I the next day. That's a friend. (COME VISIT SO I CAN RETURN THE FAVOR).

Now I am back at the grind, living on toast and candy, bullshitting everything and somehow getting away with it all. Oh law school, what will I do without you?

"The lead singer of Nickelback has admitted to once putting his own penis in his mouth as a dare. Yes, you just read that correctly. Kroeger said that he was fourteen years old at the time and "much more flexible." He revealed this fact to Playboy recently, saying, "It was soft and required a lot of pulling. I really wanted that case of beer." "

This anecdote illustrates to me that no matter how hard I try, I will never fully understand men. And I also think it explains a lot about his music and why he thinks it's good.

I actually laughed out loud when I read this on "A Socialite's Life." And with the week I've had, that isn't easy to do:

“Besure don’t let People’s telling you you are pretty, puff you up: for you did not make yourself, and so can have no praise due to you for it. It is Virtue and Goodness only, that make the true Beauty.”
--Pamela

For Mark, who asked--

I have for the last 6 months stopped listening to music. It was a gradually decreasing process—first, I cut out any music of real substance, leaving myself a playlist of Paris Hilton and Sum 41, then I started reading on the subway instead of listening to headphones. Finally, a few months ago, one of my sister’s stole my wall charger (my ipod is more than 6 years old), and so I stopped listening all together. When I am alone in my apartment, I prefer having the TV on for ambient noise: it makes me feel like I have people here with me.

A life without music has been strangely settling. I find I am calmer, I am more reasonable, I’m less prone to moodswings—in short, more normal. Though I am loathe to admit it, a huge part of me is incredibly sensitive. Whether it be a snarky criticism, money trouble, a personal failure, or simply too much alone time, I am easily pushed to depression, and it is often a 24-hour job keeping myself optimistic, rational, and sociable. Not that I’m complaining—it’s a statement of fact. I am just as easily moved to general sensibility. Under normal circumstances, such sensitivity is usually dulled with social distraction, people coming in and out, dinners and pressures to attend parties or dumb movies. The more I’m alone, the more I’m forced to confront my ridiculous emotionality. As a result, since moving to New York, I have slowly cut out movies, art, live music, recorded music, clubs, plays—really anything that will make me feel intensely. And while it has been a success, it has been a mundane success; every day feels mundane.

I have been trying to integrate art back into my life, and I must admit: it isn’t going well. I have cried during the following over the last 2 months alone: 1 play, 4 movies, 6 TV shows, 3 phone conversations, 10 work days, 2 emails, 1 church talk, 2 paintings, 5 books/poems. Not all of the crying has been sad crying—I wept at the end of Bergman’s “Wild Strawberries” (yes, literally weeping—silent tears down the cheeks and everything) because the emotion was so pure, so adult and complex, that it took a 2 hour movie to bring me to understanding it. Each month the sensitivity gets worse. I have cut back on going to galleries, art movies, phone and IM conversations, but (as was to be expected) the increased isolation led to increased emotions.
I got an ipod for Christmas, and decided this weekend to use it. I listened to a mix of pop-punk and garage rock on 9th avenue between 54th and 20th street. It made me very, very sad, then ecstatic, then energetic, then lonely, then joyful. Here’s why:

(I don’t know why—I’ve never told anyone this. I find it highly humiliating)
When I listen to music, I imagine I’m in a club. I’ve come to that club with everyone that is mean to me or makes me insecure. Once inside, the club is miraculously full of my friends—everyone, everyone from high school, college, everyone who disappeared or who moved away, friends I have yet to meet, they are all there, and they are all happy. Not just happy—jubilant, as if they all have something to celebrate, as if they are so full of love they must move or they will burst. They cheer when I come in, and I’m taken onto the dance floor, where all the cool, mean people I’m with watch as I dance. And in this dream, I am an amazing dancer, and my friends are amazing dancers: swing, tango, hip hop, break dancing. We’re laughing and beautiful, our fiancés and boyfriends are there, and we are so happy the cool kids melt a bit, and we take them by the hand and lead them onto the floor. When I imagine the dancing, these people are always there. I am always surrounded by people who love me and who won’t ever go away, people who are always completely happy, I am completely happy.

But when the headphones come off, and I realize I’m completely alone, and I literally can’t bear it.

I need a friend who isn’t 1000 miles away.