Dear Ryan:

I am interested in reading more about your “highs and lows” in the context of relationships with women and outside that context, if and when you have the time and willingness to share. What I am particularly curious about, at this point, is your subjective emotional experience of life.

Having read from you as much as I did, over time, I noticed some cautious, low-intensity optimism from time to time, and an ongoing, low-intensity distress, but I don’t remember ever noticing joy on one hand, or despair, on the other. I noticed that flat emotional experience (the word you used), an emotional monotone.

I know that you were diagnosed with recurrent major depressive disorder (MDD), and so have I, in the past, but I remember while depressed, often feeling acute, high-intensity distress and despair, and rarely, joy. Do you experience from time to time any of the following: (1) Acute distress and despair, when you don’t know if you can survive for the next hour or so, being desperate to be helped and desperately reaching out to others for help? (2) Joy, when you feel like a bird flying in a clear sky, or feeling the freshness of the air as if for the first time…?

anita