If you approached me for advice on overcoming writer’s block, I would tell you to sit down and brainstorm a list of low-point events, brief incidents that uncovered weaknesses in you that cut you so deep that to mention them causes you to do more than blush. They cause you to cringe with shame and embarrassment and, in extreme cases, fall to your knees, and be resolved to reinvent yourself. I have one such incident on my mind. This would be 1989. I had not quite turned 28 and I had broken up with my girlfriend JP after an agonizing 16 months. She saw earlier in our courtship than I did that we were not a good couple. I was fearful, needy, suffocating, depressive, pessimistic, and incapable of spontaneity. Exasperated, she would often call me out on my weaknesses and I would become defensive and not admit my shortcomings to her or to myself. When after 16 months she told me that being my girlfriend had made her dead inside, I knew that she was right--that I was bad for her, and to my relief, I let go of her and set her free. Even though I lost 20 pounds after the breakup and sunk into a deep depression, I was a good sport afterward and about once a month JP and I would talk on the phone to catch up. We seemed to like each other as friends and I was relieved that I no longer had to make her happy or, more precisely, I no longer had to observe myself make her unhappy.
At this time, I had moved to the California desert to teach at a university in a relatively small town while she was living with her mother in the San Francisco Bay Area. One afternoon when I called, her mother answered the phone to tell me that JP wasn’t home but the mother politely asked me how I was doing, and here is where I hit my low point: I complained that I was isolated and lacked a circle of friends. JP’s mom resisted my self-pity and told me it was my responsibility to make an effort to make friends: to join bike, camping, and reading clubs. In other words, it was my choice to be lonely or not. I thanked her for her advice and felt sick afterward. I was sick with humiliation for having JP’s mom essentially mother me because I was acting like a helpless child. Receiving friendship advice from my ex-girlfriend’s mother remains one of the most salient low points of my existence and regardless of my achievements, I am always humbled and abased by that chapter of my life.