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I will read any advice column. Slate’s slate, Ask a Fuck Up, Ask a Manager, Captain Awkward–I have read all of these for years, and their archives before that. I found Dear Prudence, at Slate, first, which led to Carolyn Hax and then Love Letters with Meredith Goldstein at the Boston Globe. I have spent literally hundreds of hours reading other people ask a stranger (and, thanks to comments sections, the entire internet) their most intimate, pressing questions.

These columns succeed because of a personality: The Captain, Prudence, Miss Manners. It seems like we need some imprimatur of authority writing these things, even as a rotating cast of writers take up the various names and mantles. They bring their own styles to the columns, but you can usually guess what each column’s response will be. You’ve got your pearl clutchers and your libertines. 

So, I’ve gathered it’s pretty weird that my appetite for these exchanges is so voracious. I’ll read anyone on anything, and over the years I realized I’m not really there for the advice. I was here for the questions.

When I started reading advice columns, like with most things, I got instantly addicted and read them for days straight. It was 2012, Hurricane Sandy had conveniently shut down New York and I didn’t have to go to work. Most of the things, at that time still in my early twenties, I hadn’t experienced (sisters “stealing” baby names, mothers-in-law, wedding drama, a parent’s will being contested). But I was fascinated by the patterns. Even acknowledging the exquisite specificity of people’s individual situations (one woman suspected her mother-in-law of literally poisoning her, slowly, over time), you can categorize most advice column letters in the above ways. Romantic questions are their own category, but even there you’ve got buckets (the boyfriend who won’t propose, “should I go back to my ex,” “I went back to my ex, help”). 

In noticing those patterns, reading these desperate strangers call out into a void (and imagine how truly desperate you have to be! Don’t you have friends?!), I felt so connected to other people. That’s something I’ve always struggled with–and here’s where I totally relate to why someone would write into an advice column!--because a lot of the time my feelings seem too complex to take to people in my life, who I don’t want to burden. So I take back my sarcastic parenthetical. Those column-writing weirdos are absolutely my people. Which means you might be my people. That’s part of the fun of anonymous advice columns!

My favorite question I’ve ever read was probably fake. It was purportedly written by one of a set of twin brothers, who were sleeping together, and their family wouldn’t accept their love. Obviously. The advice? “Er, keep doing that, I guess, if you want!” Which, yeah. Probably look into therapy as well.

But the advice isn’t what really stuck with me about that letter–it’s the letter itself (or should we say the creativity applied to a probably fake letter). What must it be like navigating a life where that was a central relationship? Do people start to talk the third work holiday party where your date is your brother? Or is this all so beyond the pale these guys live totally normal lives with people admiring their close family? Man, I think about those almost-certainly-not-extant brothers all the time.

Advice columns remind me that I’m not the only one with problems, in a far more profound way than the simplicity of the sentiment might suggest. Taking care of my mental health–for myself, but also anyone in my blast radius–has been and will be a lifelong project. It’s easy to get lost in yourself, if you spend so much time closely examining the inner goings on of your own head. Doing that, therapy and meditation, are some of the most important gifts I give to myself and those I love, but feeling self-indulgent and self-regarding makes me feel like shit sometimes. It feels selfish. It makes me feel, as Dear Sugar would say, “uniquely fucked.” 

But I’m not uniquely fucked, not even close. In fact I get less fucked every day, and I’m proud of the effort that’s gone into that. I’ll keep doing that work, of course. But I’m glad to have handy reminders in my favorite columns that, really, we’re all going through it. All the time. You know. It could be worse.