Lately, I just cannot listen to Karen Carpenter sing. Thinking about her life and hearing the sadness in her voice, even after all these years, is just too overwhelming and when I think about what happened to her, no matter how long ago, it just makes me so sad and mad. I saw the letter below recently in a book about Sonic Youth and then I also saw this:

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/kim_gordons_open_letter_to_karen_carpenter

           Dear Karen,

Thru the years of The Carpenters TV specials I saw you change from the Innocent Oreo-cookie-and-milk-eyed girl next door to hollowed eyes and a lank body adrift on a candy-colored stage set. You and Richard, by the end, looked drugged—there’s so little energy. The words come out of yr mouth but yr eyes say other things, “Help me, please, I’m lost in my own passive resistance, something went wrong. I wanted to make myself disappear from their control. My parents, Richard, the writers who call me ‘hippie, fat.’ Since I was, like most girls, brought up to be polite and considerate, I figured no one would notice anything wrong—as long as, outwardly, I continued to do what was expected of me. Maybe they could control all the outward aspects of my life, but my body is all in my control. I can make myself smaller. I can disappear. I can starve myself to death and they won’t know it. My voice will never give me away. They’re not my words. No one will guess my pain. But I will make the words my own because I have to express myself somehow. Pain is not perfect so there is no place in Richard’s life for it. I have to be perfect too. I must be thin so I’m perfect. Was I a teenager once?... I forget. Now I look middle-aged, with a bad perm and country-western clothes.”

I must ask you, Karen, who were your role models? Was it yr mother? What kind of books did you like to read? Did anyone ever ask you that question—what’s it like being a girl in music? What were yr dreams? Did you have any female friends or was it just you and Richard, mom and dad, A&M? Did you ever go running along the sand, feeling the ocean rush up between yr legs? Who is Karen Carpenter, really, besides the sad girl with the extraordinarily beautiful, soulful voice?

your fan – love,
kim

Sometimes the sting of embarrassment with yourself is as sharp and cutting as any physical pain can ever be. Finding out something you believed to be true for a long time, discovering that it is not only not true, but was born completely out of your own wishing thinking and that the reality of it all is actually the complete opposite...well, that can hurt enough to make you want to crawl into a hole and never come back out again. 

You can take comfort in thinking (at least, pretty much so) that no one else knew how gullible your heart was, but still you wonder and you hide for a while and maybe even internally retreat a bit once you do make an appearance again. You know deep down inside that your silly little heart is to blame (and hoping for a friendship that you never deserved in the first place) but you also wish people knew that false kindness is far crueler than an obvious, honest dislike could ever be. There is a saying that goes something like "it is better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie" and I cannot help but agree one hundred percent.

And when you have been believing this falseness and this silly little hope was even one of the things keeping you going, you really, really have to re-think your coping skills and come up with a better way to survive. I think the secret to not being unhappy is simply just making peace with knowing the things you hope for the most are probably the things that are never going to happen. Some people, no matter how much you like them, just are not meant to be part of your life.

And, more than you might ever, think: books. When I was reading the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal earlier, I could not help but be drawn to this quote by writer Faith Sullivan: "Life could toss your sanity about like a glass ball; books were a cushion." Her longest-latesting relationships, the article goes on to say, have always been with books.


The link below is more for general embarrassment, not specific to any kind in particular, but I still find it helpful.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201412/the-best-way-deal-embarrassment