Dear James: Do I Need to Share My Diagnosis?

Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.

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Dear James,

After a series of unsettling events, including what I (falsely) believed was a hit-and-run—a belief that had me Googling “hit and run” and sent me into a tailspin, convinced that the police were after me—I was diagnosed with a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder characterized by mostly mental (rather than physical) compulsions.

Now, with medication and therapy, I’ve started revisiting the neurotic behaviors I’ve lived with for most of my life, like the year I was convinced I had HIV until a friend, tired of hearing about it, dragged me to get tested, or the time I was sure a swollen lymph node was cancer but my doctor refused to biopsy it.

Now that I have some clarity, I wonder: Do I need to explain all of this to my friends, family, and colleagues? Or should I just keep moving forward armed with my new sense of understanding?

Dear Reader,

First of all: congratulations. I, too, have committed crimes that never happened and almost died of illnesses I didn’t have. Once, in a bar in London, I groped in my pocket for some cash, felt a lump in my thigh, and immediately blacked out. Clang, onto the floor, full length. I came around gazing into the neutrally concerned face of an EMT. As Morrissey says: “Oh, I can smile about it now, but at the time it was terrible.”

And it’s not like I can’t still feel it, right next to me, right under me, that whipping, lashing realm of contingency, all the ghastly possibilities blah blah. But somehow, it’s no longer at the center of my awareness. I’m not sure what happened—maybe I displaced it with alcohol and pro wrestling. Or maybe it was the 10 years of therapy. Or maybe I finally figured out what D. H. Lawrence meant when he wrote “If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed / By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world.”

The point is: We made it. We can look back on these crises with rue and wonderment. I don’t think you need to explain anything to anybody. To those who accompanied you through it (like your friend who insisted you get tested), the change in you, the strengthening in you, will be self-evident. The time to use your new understanding will come when you encounter someone in similar difficulties. At that moment, you’ll be able to plug right into the regenerative power of the universe—the countercurrent to all of the fear and destruction—and help somebody out.

On the mend,

James

Dear James,

I’m 61, and I retired from full-time work four years ago—not to move toward anything in particular but to find relief from a lifestyle that was no longer physically or mentally healthy. I was well compensated for work, but the toll it was taking on my body, mind, and psyche resulted in a risk-benefit imbalance.

Four years later, I’m still figuring out how to live in retirement. Mental-health professionals and well-meaning advice dispensers all seem to encourage a retired life filled with service to others, and devoted to maintaining or strengthening social contacts. I’m all for those activities, and some of them are and will be part of my retired life.

However, I’m on the far end of introvert on the introvert-extrovert continuum. And I’m perfectly happy in my little corner of the world, minding my own business, enjoying the sights and sounds of my environment, and appreciating still being alive. I’m never bored and rarely lonely. Do you see anything wrong with a small, quiet, do-no-harm existence, or must I force myself out into the world more often than I wish to?

Dear Reader,

Bollocks to service, and bollocks to strengthening social contacts. Be untroubled by these buzzwords. By cultivating so exquisitely your own portion of consciousness, you’re doing more for the collective than any number of noisy humanitarians. Relish your solitary days!

Strewing petals,

James

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