You wanna know the truth? My best friend just dropped me for no discernable reason in December when I was going through an unrelated mental breakdown (started in October) that required new treatment. To this day I have no clue what happened.

This has, without a doubt, been the most traumatic event that has ever happened to me. I had felt that maybe there was distance there, but I was trying to take care of myself. He reassured me he loved me just 1 week prior. Then, he said he was going to quit working with me.
He had been my business partner and literally helped me co-own my business. He requested his name be dropped from the company completely and that he needed to "put my family first" and find a different job. I don't know what that family first comment meant at all...
Then, he stopped communicating with me as frequently. This lasted a few days. He started acting extremely squirrelly and dodging direct questions. Very innocent questions like, "are you doing okay?" Again, this whole time I'm dealing with a genuine mental breakdown.
Last, he sent me a bizarre vague message, telling me that he didn't want to talk to me "in the foreseeable future" and cited some of the - honestly - most paranoid reasons for this. We live literally across the globe from one another. One of the things he accused me of was ...
video and audio surveillance of his home. He said he believed that I could murder him or maybe his family. He accused me of wanting to break up him and his wife. He told me I gaslighted him, that I "made him sick", that I was stalking him online, etc ...
Another thing he accused me of was sending him emails from my partner's email account. I have no idea where any of this came from. I was not being hostile with him in any way and I was dealing with a crippling mental breakdown that made it literally impossible for me ...
to carry out the sorts of tasks that he said I was doing. Remember, as he quit, the business, he also left me doing double work on top of the mental breakdown. I didn't know what to do, so I filed a police report to leave a paper trail if he tried to move against my business.
I don't think I could overstate enough that I genuinely loved this man. I wanted to be nothing but a positive force in his life. He was the closest person in my life aside from my partner and family. I was in a brain fog when this happened and I didn't know how to cope.
A few days ago, I made the mistake of reaching out to him. Just basically saying that I shouldn't have taken the action I did and that I was open to hearing from him. Honestly, I was lonely. I'm afraid I'll never make another friend again after this.
Thankfully, he didn't respond. That wouldn't have been healthy. I got spooked and cried about making such a huge mistake. I'm left feeling like I'm completely broken, like there's something very very wrong with me. I wonder, how could a person who was so close misread me?
How could someone who should have known better misread me to the extent that he did? His words have left me feeling terrified of human connection. I'm afraid that if I find something out about someone - say through their profile - then I'm some sort of horrible stalker.
I'm afraid that maybe I did the things he said I did but I don't remember or that I'm so messed up in the head that I literally repel people from me. I feel that I have to protect people from getting to know me. But see, there's this part of me that *knows* that is wrong.
I'm fighting REALLY hard through this mental breakdown with a team of professionals. I'm working on my health which has completely tanked. I'm trying to put one foot in front of the other each day. But I don't know how to reclaim my power.

I thought telling my story might help.
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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x