This fucking year, I swear to god. It’s too much. It’s too special, in the way that “a very special episode” of your favorite sitcom is special: You respect, even appreciate the gravity of what’s going down, but you desperately wish they’d get back to the laffs and lighthearted situations. Nobody wants to watch that shit. You don’t even want to watch it, and you’re one of the stars of the show.

I’ve spent most of 2024 fearful and sick with worry for the people I love. I spent too much time in hospital waiting rooms, from LA to Vegas to Orlando. And when I wasn’t doing that I busied myself with my job, which is to read/write about toxic politics, looming societal and/or environmental collapse, and the life and times of so many, too many assholes.

For the most part, I’ve been too busy to allow this stuff to completely unmake me. But this past Friday, thanks to an unbidden hangover (apparently I can’t have that third drink anymore, even when it’s the good stuff), the adrenaline finally ran out, and I woke up wobbly and sad. Not that it mattered. I still had to drive to the office, finish a feature story (not my best work) and face my colleagues with a severe paucity of give-able fucks.

Before I began a routine of therapy—briefly in 2012, earnestly in 2014—I couldn’t have done any of that. No: I probably wouldn’t have done it. I had a different emotional toolset then, mostly hammers and a few rusty wrenches of identical size and shape. Nothing for delicate adjustments; if I needed repair, even a minute repair, I’d just give myself a good metaphorical smack upside the head with one of those blunt objects and hope for a reset.

Though, sometimes, the blow wasn’t metaphorical at all. I used to get so angry at myself that I’d break things or simply beat myself around the face, all Fight Club-style. I haven’t done that in more than a decade, partially because of the therapy, partially because, at age 57, I’m not sure I can still stand up to myself in a fistfight. (Though I have been doing a lot of leg and cardio work recently. I suppose I could just run away.)

I grew up with rage and self-loathing knotted up inside me. If I were to guess what put it there, I’d credit the Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose central tenets are “nearly everything you enjoy is immoral and wrong” and “your only purpose on this planet is to minister and convert.” But I fed that rage myself, because I can’t remember a time in my life when I’ve fully felt worthiness or belonging. The anger, the cynicism, the apartness was more material than anything anyone could say to me.

(Not letting the Witnesses off the hook, oh no no no. They need to sit tight until I get to them. Not gonna waste a Sunday thinking about the Kingdom Hall.)

Truth to tell, I can’t tell you precisely where my self-loathing originated. I have theories, but it’s a bigger net than I care to spread out on a weekend afternoon. And I can’t tell you that I’ve beaten that stuff for good, because even now I’ll set fire to a hundred compliments to dwell on one insult. I can say, though, that I’m getting better at recognizing the dark thoughts when they manifest, and at keeping them contained.

My therapist and I meet every other week, and have been for something like eight years. (We used to meet weekly, but early last year I began to feel confident enough to skip one.) Without telling you what we talk about, I can say that we’ve been making steady progress on building a toolbox for me, a new and better toolbox than the one I used to stumble around with. I had a mistaken impression of therapy before I got into it. I thought it was triage, but it’s actually more like exercise.

My therapy isn’t about plucking the bad stuff out. I don’t think my therapist and I could remove that stuff, even if I wanted it plucked out. (It’s been in there long enough to have squatter’s rights.. And much of it is threaded through with things about myself that I’d like to keep.) Instead, we’re building up the parts of me that I’ve never thought to strengthen, or didn’t want to strengthen because it didn’t feel natural to do it. That process began with needle-and-thread work on my self-image, which I’d mistakenly assumed was based on what others thought of me; turns out it was predicated on what I thought they thought of me.

Anyway, our work is ongoing, and I’ll spare you further details since I ain’t paying you to read this shit. I’ll tie this off by saying that I’m very happy that I’m finally doing it. Should’ve started doing this in my early 30s, but I resisted therapy for a long time because there’s a weird, generational stink on it. When I tell my Gen X friends that I’m in therapy, there’s a bit of cringing involved; some stammer out an “Oh, I hope you’re OK.” (Sure am, ‘cos I’m in therapy.) When I tell my younger friends, they nod sagely: I love that for you. They get it.

Hey, here’s something I’ll share at my next appointment: I’m still on Twitter and have no fucking idea why. It sure doesn’t bode well for our threats to flee the country if Trump wins; I mean, Twitter is an ocean of sewage at this point and I’m still trying to row my way through it, like I’ll find a green and pleasant land on the other side. There is no other side, and there won’t be until most of the dudes on Twitter realize that they need to talk to somebody who can help them to sort their shit out. And it’s no fun for me to watch them punching themselves in the face.