...because I just read his autobiography. Overall, it's like watching seasons 1-3 of Bojack Horseman - so dark, but before it gets really dark - interspersed with the occasional clip from Friends to lighten the mood a bit. Also, Perry is very witty. It's possible that he paid a really good ghost writer and the jokes aren't actually his, but I personally don't believe that to be the case.
Matthew Perry's father left when he was 9 months old, and his mother was always busy and distracted. Which, he says multiple times, he understands and doesn't blame them for, but he can't deny the effect it had on him. It makes sense - he obviously doesn't remember his dad leaving, but when you're a baby and the adults caring for you leave or are distracted, it sets off an alarm inside you, because that's a matter of life and death for babies. In some people, the alarm just never gets switched off.
He felt like it was his job to keep his mother happy, to make her laugh, and doing that made him happy. She'd turn, and pay attention to him, and he'd feel safe, because, in that baby-alarm, attention=safety. So he kept chasing that. Never allowing a silence, always seeking a laugh (god, imagine being like that (the joke here is, I am exactly like that)).
The most interesting thing Matthew Perry says is that fame didn't solve any of the problems he thought it would. He was just famous, with all the same problems. It makes sense that he thought it would - he wanted attention, and to make people laugh, because he associated that with love and safety - but it also makes sense that it didn't work. The problem is, when you're an adult, you know that making people laugh actually doesn't mean they'll take care of your emotional needs or stick around. It only makes you feel better for a few seconds. Then the anxiety comes back. You want that security and you don't know how to get it and keep it. All you know is how to get attention. So you think you need to do it more, or better, and if you did it well enough, you would finally be happy.
Matthew Perry is arguably one of the most successful human beings ever, in terms of making people laugh. Friends had an audience of millions. He was paid over $1mil for a 25 minute episode of making people laugh. I think being so successful at it might be the only reason he figured out it wasn't working, because lots of people don’t. Every person in the world could line up to tell him they loved his work, and it wouldn't make him feel secure or happy, or like he deserved to exist as a human being. He achieved his lifelong goal of having the number one movie and the number one TV show in the country at the same time, and he couldn’t even enjoy it because he was in rehab.
My current theory is, trying to earn the right to exist – via laughter or anything else - doesn't work because it's the wrong question. It’s like asking how much you’d have to pay someone for them to truly love you. It’s the wrong currency. You can’t earn the right to exist. It’s intrinsically yours because you do exist. Like I think, therefore I am. I exist, therefore I deserve to exist.
The other problem is, when people did love him, he didn’t feel secure. I get that. Like the Savage Garden song, “If love was red then she was colour-blind. All her friends have been trialled for treason and crimes that were never defined.” You test your relationships and put your friends on trial because you want to prove they’re unbreakable, that the other person will always be there, that they’re safe, that they can fulfil you. It doesn’t work. The relationship will break if you try to break it. The only way it couldn’t is if that person loved you unconditionally, the way a parent loves a child. That isn’t how adults love each other, romantically or platonically. Love between adults is conditional. Who you are and how you treat each other matters. If it didn’t, you would just love everyone and anyone, equally, with no bias, and if someone loves you like that then it doesn’t matter who you are. You could be anyone.
The other problem is, when people did love him, he didn’t feel secure. I get that. Like the Savage Garden song, “If love was red then she was colour-blind. All her friends have been trialled for treason and crimes that were never defined.” You test your relationships and put your friends on trial because you want to prove they’re unbreakable, that the other person will always be there, that they’re safe, that they can fulfil you. It doesn’t work. The relationship will break if you try to break it. The only way it couldn’t is if that person loved you unconditionally, the way a parent loves a child. That isn’t how adults love each other, romantically or platonically. Love between adults is conditional. Who you are and how you treat each other matters. If it didn’t, you would just love everyone and anyone, equally, with no bias, and if someone loves you like that then it doesn’t matter who you are. You could be anyone.
So you want unconditional love, but unconditional love isn’t fulfilling. It isn’t being loved for you. The only way to win that game is not to play. Which is where the alcohol and drugs came in. They let him not think and not feel anxious for a while. Until he reached the point where ruining his life with drugs and alcohol was the thing he felt anxious about. Hopefully he figures that one out. He's been sober and drug free for 18 months as of last October, according to The Times, and I hope it sticks.
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