How Writing a ‘Depressing List’ Makes Me Feel Better
The ritual is strangely comforting
Co-authored by Jessica Pell
I’m visiting my friend Jessica for a couple of days at an airy, modern house she’s rented for the summer in a small seaside town in Long Island. Jessica and I have been friends for almost forty years, since we met in middle school — she, seeming a bit fancy, always dressed in the Ton Sur Ton clothes I coveted, was not amongst my closest friends. We had so many mutual friends that it only made sense we acknowledge each other; she was very funny, but sometimes cutting, and she became cooler than I was, hanging out with the more popular kids who knew how to blow smoke rings, while I joined the modern dance studio in our suburban high school and wore my hair in a French braid.
Years later, after college, Jessica had a falling out with our friend E, who was my closest friend and also hers. They stopped speaking entirely. We didn’t have enough of an independent relationship to comfortably keep going outside the net of our group dynamic, but we had enough of a history and connection that we didn't want to let each other go. We didn't discuss this — we didn’t discuss anything in fact — and time passed.
Months later, she called to invite me to a Virginia Slims women’s tennis match at Madison Square…
