Hi Sars,

I just finished my Bachelor of Arts degree at a very good university, and am about to start a graduate program at the same university.I maintained very good grades for the duration of my program and will graduate with honours, all while working up to 30 hours a week while attending university full-time.Given this information, one would think that I was a capable, well-adjusted, responsible person.

The problem is, I just narrowly escaped not graduating and losing my spot in my graduate program because I have absolutely no idea how to manage my time, and because I allow myself to get so busy and overworked that I become stressed out and anxious, which is starting to cripple me.I put things off because I’m afraid of starting them and not having the time to finish them, so I end up scrambling to do them at the last minute.

I avoid answering my email or checking my phone messages because I’m afraid they’ll contain bad news, or that a message will be about something I should have dealt with and didn’t.I finally cancelled the call-answer system on my phone because it stressed me out every time I heard the beep that meant I had a message.Over the past week, while trying to study for exams and leaving a long-time job, I got so anxious about the course that I was waiting to get my mark for (the one that almost preventing me from graduating on time) that I would cry and hyperventilate while various worst-case scenarios ran through my head.

At first this just happened when I was doing something directly related to the things that were stressing me out — when I was trying to finish an essay, for example — but for the past week or so it’s been happening when I’m walking down the street or lying in bed, and it’s been happening at least once a day.Even when I’m not completely freaking out about something, I have this low-level anxiety hovering over me all of the time.I’m not sleeping well.I feel like my stomach is eating itself.My boyfriend said that my eyes always look anxious and worried.Even his roommate commented that I looked terrified.

These are not things that a normal, well-adjusted person should be feeling, I don’t think.I feel like I’m nuts, not to mention like a fraud.I look at the good things that I’ve got in my life, and what I’ve managed to accomplish, and I don’t feel like I deserve any of it, since I can barely hold it all together.

What do I do about this?I realise that I can’t go on like this — even if it gets better now that this current crisis has passed, I’m not confident that it won’t return or stick around in a milder form.It’s not like nothing is ever going to stress me out again.I’ve felt like this before, but never for this long or to this degree.I’ve been depressed before, and I’ve dealt with food/weight issues as well.The food/weight issues are under control and have been for some time; I thought the depression was, but now I’m not so sure.

I’m absolutely miserable, and I’m scared that this will cripple me to the point that I can’t do well in my graduate program.My boyfriend has been supportive, more so after I told him that I am trying not to be like this all of the time, but I just can’t seem to control it very well right now.I understand that I’m kind of a drag, though, and he’s already got a lot on his plate — I don’t want to be a burden to him or make his problems worse.I don’t have many friends in town, because most of them have just graduated and moved away.My family is on the other side of the country.I don’t have a very big support system right now.I’m terrified of messing everything up, especially since I’ve had to work so hard for it, but I don’t know which steps to take to prevent that from happening.I’m trying to work on my time-management skills, so that I don’t get off on the wrong foot when I start my program next week, and I’m trying to keep myself busy and calm so that I don’t freak out as often, but I have a feeling that this goes a lot deeper than organizing my schedule and doing yoga.

Any advice, Sars?I’ve thrown a lot at you, I know.Anything you can offer would be really appreciated.I’m tearing my hair out here.

Thanks,
Getting Ulcers

Dear Ulcers,

It’s an anxiety disorder.Millions of people have them.You need therapy and possibly medication to manage yours, at least short-term, so that it stops interfering with your quality of life.One of the biggest problems with an anxiety disorder is that the anxiety tends to feed on itself, you get anxious about getting anxious, you develop all these weird paranoias and compulsive behaviors to manage it, and it’s just exhausting.

I would suggest going to whatever counseling service your program provides and asking for a recommendation for a behavioral therapist, who can help you manage both the anxiety and your time.

And give yourself a break.People get overwhelmed; people bite off more than they can chew.Don’t worry about burdening your boyfriend or flunking out of school.Focus on getting help, and on getting through single days at a time.Once you can go and talk to someone about your fears, someone who won’t judge you, and maybe get a chemical boost over the toughest spot, it’s going to get better.

Oh Grammar Queen,

I’ve been noticing a certain phrase that seems to come up very often in both speaking and writing, and I’m not sure about it.It goes like this: “Today I got my acceptance letter from Harvard!Being as that was my first choice, I’m ecstatic!”

“Being as”?For some reason this sets off my alarm; it just doesn’t make sense to me.I’ve also heard “seeing as.”Are either or both of these grammatically correct?Am I just finding errors where there aren’t any?I think it’s becoming more popular lately and I’d hate to be annoyed by it when I was wrong, after all.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Dear Unbearable,

Ew, I hate “being as.”It’s yet another one of those “look how fancy” locutions intended to dress up the diction, which fails because the user doesn’t really have an ear for the language.

In any case, without looking it up, I’ll just state that it’s wrong, not only because I hate it but also because it’s redundant.Simply saying “as that was my first choice” means the same thing; you don’t need the “being.”

I don’t have a problem with “seeing as,” but I’ve wondered for a while myself whether appending a “how” to the phrase is necessary, so let’s figure that out, shall we?

Hmm.No entry in Garner; no notation in the 11C.In fact, none of my resource books has a notation on that or on “being as,” so once again I have to go out on a limb…I think it’s fine for colloquial speech and writing.”Seeing as how the blah happened to the blah” isn’t, strictly speaking, incorrect, but it’s on the informal side.

You can get around either of these by substituting “since,” “given that,” and “because,” and in formal writing, you should.In casual correspondence, “seeing as (how)” is acceptable.”Being as” is wrong.

I think.

Sars,

Fervently hoping you’ll find it in your heart to answer this and help me
out, because I am just at a loss here.

The obligatory background info does include, of course, A Boy. Boy and I
have been together for about seven months now, and a couple of weeks ago I
moved in with him. It’s bliss, it’s wonder, I love him, he loves me; you’ve
heard all that before.

About four months before Boy and I met and started dating, he had just been
relieved of a four-year relationship with a girl whom all his friends and
family refer to as “The Hag.” According to friends and family, the Hag was
every vile thing you can find in a relationship: mean, overbearing,
controlling, jealous, the list goes on. She insisted he cut off contact with
the people in his life and focus only on her, because although they were the
people he loved, she hated them all and did not want them to be around him.

I’ve heard horrendous story after horrendous story: Hag jumping in between
Boy and a friend, demanding the friend leave at once; Hag screening his
phone calls; Hag forbidding Boy to speak with his mother; Hag ordering him
to get rid of certain books and movies she doesn’t approve of. Boy has told
me a story or two himself, of course, but the majority of what I’ve heard
has been from the friends and family. Many of them would not be opposed to
drop-kicking her down an open well if they were to see her again. True, Boy
didn’t have to go along with any of it, but in short, she was bad news.

Cue me. I come in a few months after they finally (angels rejoice!) break
up, we meet, sweep each other off our respective feet, and it’s all great.
Beautiful. Joyous. He says time and again how happy I make him, how
wonderful it is to be with someone who accepts him instead of trying to
change him and rule his life. She was a Hag. You understand, right?

But there’s always a “but.” A few days ago, he was lamenting the state of
our bedroom and all the papers he has scattered around in stacks (he had
recently tried to clean out his closet and then abandoned the process). I
offered to straighten things up (not throw anything away, just make it all
look neat) and he was happy to agree. He goes off with friends, I stay and
descend into Cleaning Mode.

All went well until I was scooping up some papers and caught a folded-up
note with Hag’s name on it. More specifically, scrawled in what apparently
was her handwriting, she had written Hag Middlename Boy’sLastName. Did that
make sense? She’d signed her name with his last name.

I didn’t really think anything of it. Every girl, at some point in her life,
has done that. He’s shown me things she’s written before, so I peeled it
open and prepared to amuse myself. Except, of course, I wasn’t amused at
all. It was dated a few years ago and in it she refers to him as her
husband. And I thought, “Okaaaaaay.”

Here’s where I’m not so proud of myself. Eventually I came across a page
with Boy’s writing, in which he laments various problems he’s going through,
and refers to Hag as his wife. Not once, but three times. And then I find a
card from Hag to Boy, and inside she signs it again with her first name, his
last name, and this time she says, “I wish I could write that for everyone
to see.”

Um, what?

That’s not the worst part, though, at least not to me. The worst part is
that while this is all churning in my head, I find something else. A folder
with a printed-out email wherein Boy asks, “Hey, when can I come over
tonight?” and Hag replies, “Thursday in the evening would be good.” And its
date? About two months after he and I became an official item.

If you decide to answer this, please, please feel free to berate me for
sticking my nose in where it didn’t belong. It was an invasion of his
privacy and I had no right to read personal items. I would be livid if
someone had done the same to me.

But Sars, this is beginning to eat away at me. I know that the “husband and
wife” bit could be explained away as pet names, or as a private indication
of how they felt about each other; I know they didn’t necessarily get
married. But he refers to her as his wife in a note to himself? He had
so little contact with his friends and family while with her that it is
entirely possible they got married and didn’t tell anyone. Which sounds
bizarre and soap opera-ish, but you have to understand how my mind is trying
to conceive every possible angle.

Most troubling of all is the “when can I come over?” email, particularly
because he has mentioned in casual conversation — more than once — that he
hasn’t seen her since their break-up. Although he has plenty of time on his
own to run around on me, I don’t honestly think that he is still seeing her.
But it bothers me greatly that he did see her at some point, at her house,
alone, and never told me. I promise I have never hounded him about Hag at
all. I’ve asked questions because I’m curious, but I’ve never berated him
for being with her, or nagged him for details. If seeing her was about
closure, I would have understood. I may not have been happy, but I sincerely
would have understood. Maybe he met up with her and didn’t tell me because
he was afraid I would be upset, but it still doesn’t excuse it in my mind.
If I were going to meet up with my ex-boyfriend, just the two of us, I would
have told him, particularly due to the circumstances of their break-up.

I’ll try to close this instead of rambling on. Sars, how can I bring any
of this up to him? I’ve become paranoid. I know that they broke up because
she made the decision, not him, even though he was desperately unhappy. At
one point I told him I was afraid I was the rebound girlfriend, and he
insisted I wasn’t. I decided to believe him.

I believe he loves me; he’s never given any indication otherwise. But I’m
panicking over here. How do I broach the subject with him? How should I
feel with all this seeming evidence stacked up against me? Am I
overreacting?

Signed,
No Idea What The Hell To Do

Dear No,

Okay, I don’t condone snooping, but let’s distinguish between what you did and, like, using a letter opener to break into his desk and riffle through his things.You suggested helping him clean up; he agreed, knowing what the pile contained.For him to have an expectation of privacy regarding papers he left out for ages and ages, then allowed you to tidy up, is kind of silly.

But that very expectation, or lack of it, is what strikes me as hinky about this whole situation.Who prints out an email like that in the first place, never mind leaving it in a heap for his live-in girlfriend to find?I really don’t get that — why did he need a record of that information?Who needs to save an email about an appointment?It’s just weird.Either he has nothing to hide, he does but he wants to get caught, or he’s a damn fool.

I think it’s that second thing — and, based on that, a little of the third thing as well.Based on the sketchy evidence, I think that 1) he and Hag got married; 2) they didn’t tell anyone because everyone else he knew despised Hag; 3) they broke up; 4) the email about his coming over had to do with picking up some of his stuff, or signing some papers; 5) he would have told you, but he didn’t want anyone at all to know, so he felt like he couldn’t.

In any case, the whole thing is bizarre, and I think you have the right to ask for an explanation.If he has a big blow-up because you “went through” his stuff, stand your ground — you will accept responsibility for that, but later, after he’s explained what the hell the Hag Boy’sLastName thing and the email mean, because you feel fooled and lied to and he doesn’t get the change the subject.

It’s horribly uncomfortable to confront people with information that you think you “shouldn’t” have, but you can’t un-have it.Tell him what you found and ask him as calmly as you can to explain it.If he can’t, or won’t, well…yeah.

Dear Sars,

I read Tomato Nation and the Vine regularly and I think that your advice is spot-on. So, I was hoping you could help me out by answering the following question: Why do people suck?

More specifically: I’m a 25-year old girl living in southern California. My girlfriend of two and a half years is finishing up the final few weeks of a joint-degree program in which she will receive law and master’s degrees. She’s also holding down our household while I toil away in my first year of legal practice, in case you thought she didn’t have enough to do. On top of all of this, she remembers everybody’s birthday, is unfailingly generous, and saves kittens in her spare time (seriously). She’s beautiful, kind, considerate, and thoughtful, and I consider myself unbelievably lucky to be with her.

My problem, as you may have guessed, is not with her. It’s with her family, and the fact that they suck like a jet-propelled Hoover. When GF’s birthday rolled around about a month ago, most of her family just forgot about it. One brother and his wife (who forgot her birthday LAST year) sent her a birthday card that asked if she was enjoying the Christmas present they’d given her (presumably, this was their way of justifying their failure to get her a birthday gift). GF and I, even on student budgets, have always been generous with them and their two children, while the brother and sister-in-law have done little more over the past year than yammer about the multi-million-dollar house they’re having custom built.

When my GF participated in the law school commencement ceremony a few weeks ago, no one from her family (they live about a two-hour plane ride away) bothered to show. Even MY family, despite having their own set of issues with their little girl having a girlfriend, made a two-hour drive to L.A., took us out to breakfast, brought her a nice present, and sat through the three-hour ceremony. No one from her family, however, called, sent a card, or even emailed to say “congratulations.” When she called her mom after the ceremony, her mom had to be reminded — TWICE — that that day had been GF’s graduation.

To make a long story even longer, in three weeks, we’ll be paying for plane tickets and hotel rooms for GF’s mom and one of her brothers so that they can attend GF’s master’s graduation ceremony.For this, we have not received so much as a “thank you.” While GF was working 14-hour days to finish her thesis, her brother and sister-in-law (they of the tacky birthday card) called every day for a week, vacillating as to whether they’d fly down for the master’s ceremony, and when they’d mind-fucked GF enough, they decided against it.

The day after her law school graduation, GF and I talked about how she felt about her family’s appalling self-centeredness, and she said that, though it was hurtful, it was what she had come to expect, and that she didn’t think confronting them would solve anything.The whole thing seemed to upset her, so I agreed to let it drop.

So far, Sars, I’ve respected her wishes and haven’t called her family out on their assy behavior. But I’d like your advice as to how to deal with them in the future, especially since she’s up for a job (in her very specialized field) in her hometown and we may be moving there. I know she doesn’t want confrontation, but I don’t want to condone this crap by keeping silent and welcoming these fuckwits into my home.

So, to come to the point (finally), what do I do? Confront them? Confront GF and tell her she needs to take a stand? Push the asshats into traffic? Or just continue to grit my teeth and hope that if we move to her hometown they develop a little bit of common sense?

Sincerely,
Leaning Toward The Traffic Option

Dear Traffic,

Stay out of it.GF’s family’s jerkitude pre-dates you, and unless a member of the family behaves rudely to you or takes advantage of you, or unless their behavior affects your relationship adversely, it’s not something you should interfere with.It’ll only make things more difficult for GF.

Support GF, sure — sympathize with her, tell her she deserves better, whatever.But don’t confront her family.

And on the flip side of that, don’t enable them, either.Why do voting adults need your help with travel accommodations?If they can’t budget for an important trip, they shouldn’t come; it shouldn’t require a bribe to get them to show up for her graduation, and if it does, you won’t pay for it again.I wouldn’t get into it with them, but I would tell GF that you won’t subsidize them anymore.

But other than that, don’t ask for trouble.Your relationship sounds harmonious and well-adjusted, and while it’s good of you to want to champion GF’s cause, she didn’t ask you to, and you shouldn’t.You’ve made your feelings about their bullshit plain; your work is done.Leave it.

Hey Sars —

My beautiful boyfriend is nuts — there’s no nice way to put it. I have no idea how to categorize his illness, but it’s like an extreme form of social anxiety and severe depression, combined with borderline psychosis and OCD. This is the way he described it to me — he’s convinced that all of society is playing a game, but no one will tell him the rules, so he’s got to figure them out for himself. He’s also convinced that we won’t tell him the rules because we don’t like him, and on top of that, we’re constantly “throwing shit at [him] from the sides” (his words, again), insulting his actions and words, constantly belittling him because he “can’t play the game.”

I know I haven’t explained this well, but I don’t understand it myself. I love him dearly, but it is beyond frustrating to have him attacking my friends or me for insulting him when we weren’t even talking about him. He went from being a sweet, caring, clever, wonderful man to a paranoid, withdrawn, antisocial shell of what he once was. Every once in a while, he’ll break out of his haze and be himself again, but it doesn’t last long. One day he’ll be proposing marriage, and the next he’ll accuse me of cheating on him.

I’m twenty and in my second year of college, and after a bumpy ride (can you say antidepressants? ‘Cause I sure can), things have smoothed out — career choices, family relations, what have you, it’s all finally coming together for me like it never has before, I’ve-got-my-whole-life-ahead-of-me-cakes.But what do I do with him?

We don’t go to college in the same state, and while I’m home I can take all the time he needs to talk to him and listen to him and try to figure things out with him, but I won’t be there all the time. My workload at college is strenuous at best, hellish at worst, and I won’t have the time to call him daily and spend hours listening to him and playing mommy. That sounds horrible, I know, but I’m constantly trying to soothe him and convince him that no one hates him and he’s just thinking too hard about this whole social-interaction thing.

Do I stay with him and try to help him through this, or do I cut ties now for my own sake? When I talk to him, I’m forced to think like he does (always looking for the hidden meaning, always listening for the insults I know are coming from him), and it’s taking its toll on me — other friendships are suffering because of it, and I hate to think what might happen to my grades if I’m on the phone with him instead of in class or in the library studying.

I’m so lost, and it’s looking like someone’s gonna get hurt, no matter what route I take. Let me know what you think of this, and thanks for your time in reading this.

Zelda

Dear Zelda,

With the caveat that I don’t have an MD…I think your boyfriend is going through the onset of schizophrenia, or a disorder of that ilk.It’s not uncommon for symptoms to begin manifesting in the sufferer’s early twenties; it acts kind of like a time bomb, and a previously “normal” (read: asymptomatic) person begins having auditory hallucinations, paranoid delusions, and so on.From what you’ve told me, your boyfriend’s bomb has detonated.

It isn’t a problem you can, or should try to, handle on your own.You need to call his family.You need to tell them what you just told me — all of it.You need to suggest as strongly as you can that they intercede somehow — find him a psychiatrist, have him committed for an evaluation, whatever it takes.It doesn’t sound like he’s a danger to himself or others at the moment, but it does sound like he’s 1) miserable and 2) losing his grip on the difference between perception and reality.He needs professional help, and he needs it now.

It’s going to suck.The best-case scenario is that the family believes you and steps in, and he gets the help he needs, but even that is going to involve crying and awkwardness and feelings of betrayal; the calibration of medications alone can take years to sort out, and if he’s resistant to treatment, well, you get the idea.The relationship, realistically speaking, is probably not going to survive.

But it’s not your fault, and it’s still the right thing to do to alert the family.You may not wind up marrying this guy, but if you call his parents in and he is as sick as I suspect he is, maybe he’ll get on the road to managing the disease early and live a happy life where he knows the rules, and he’ll thank you for that.

Take a deep breath, pick up the phone, and call his parents — and good luck.It’s an awful situation, but you really don’t have a choice.Let us know how it goes.

[11/13/03]

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