another man's poison
I have Keith to thank for the news that semen is an antidepressant.
In 1996, just after I turned 18, Stanford had me write a letter to my future self. I don't remember doing this at all, but they sent it back to me the other day. I had forgotten how much thought I used to devote to my own unhappiness, and the monitoring of that unhappiness—in the letter I give myself high marks because I haven't had a suicidal fit in months. The desire to be a writer saturates the whole thing, though I never come right out and say it—I guess that to admit this dream to anyone, even my future self, might have jinxed it. At the end, I give myself the benediction: "Here's hoping you don't fuck up."
Probably we've all played the game where you view your current life through the eyes of your previous self, and try to determine whether that self would approve. I think the naïve teenager drunk on his own misery would probably be amazed at how far I have come. But there is much farther to go.
