I would say that if this is the way he’s parenting - threatening his children with a gun - he has trauma but his way of dealing with it is by not dealing at all. This is like the guy in class who says,”Hitler was a bad man, but he was so incredibly intelligent,” as if we need to make nice with the idea of a monster.…

There was a mom I used to see at the park who, whenever we talked, missed my jokes and thought I was being serious — and when I would see her in the supermarket and wave at her, she'd stare at me and not really know me, and for the longest time I've thought maybe she was an asshole, but now I'm like, nope, she must be…

See, I have dated (and married) the boyfriend she described and it’s incredibly difficult to explain how demoralizing, defeating and lonely it is to be with a person who is still emotionally intimate with exes. Of course, I never saw how pathetic it was for them, too - he kept them tied in just enough to keep them…

I have that bad feeling, too. I hope we’re incredibly, embarrassingly wrong and she’s living it up in some part of Illinois where nobody knows her. Part of me thinks she's part of the Prince cortège of otherworldly and ultra-talented beings.

This comment is way past the time of the original discussion, but can you explain your experience around this? Like, are your parents mentally ill?

I feel so dirty after reading this. Jesus.

As a sober person with treated mental illness, I'm giving you a big fuck no. That kind of shit should not be tolerated.