October 28th, 2022
Like the handful of other Americans who still sit down to watch broadcast TV live in the evening, we watched the Matthew Perry interview with Diane Sawyer tonight.
I don’t think I can properly express my gratitude for him or my feelings over what he spoke about. It was mostly about addiction, and like most addicts, he seemed intimately familar with mine.
I talk about it here all the time, obviously; I’m both a big believer in talking and in listening.
But I’m a nobody, globally speaking. The spotlight that shines on me is an exhausted firefly’s glow; I can’t imagine how it must feel to have everybody’s eyes on me and have to keep the kinds of secrets I became adept (and then not-so-adept) at keeping.
Secrets make us sick, and the intensity of that sickness is proportional to our guilt.
I feel that guilt as though it was this morning’s.
I felt that guilt as Matthew Perry spoke.
But the beautiful thing about guilt and regret is that it reveals to you that you do have a conscience; if you, in fact, have a conscience, you can change.
And the responsibility of everybody who makes it to the other side of change is to let other people know how they did it.
It’s why I do it. And it is why I am so grateful to Matthew for doing it.
If you have an hour to learn, please take that time to watch his conversation. It is very true to my experience (minus the fame, obvs), and I hope somebody finds what they need from it.
He clearly got the same kind of help I did, which I am forever thankful for.
As always, if you need help, you know where I exist in the void. All my love, squirrels.
The Den 