Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

by Maria Bamford

Joining cults and reading self-help books are both symptoms of a kind of desperation.

someone else might feel a little less isolated by knowing my own sad story (and have a few laughs)? And isn’t that a useful service to provide? (I ask? Needily?) I

have received so much help from others bravely sharing the pariah-ready deets of their lives:

I describe events and then add “elements” to make the narrative pop. This is called lying like a Ruggable.

once attempted a joke about eating my boogers (joyfully) and it split the room into part gag reflex, part rage, and so I dropped this hot-button issue from rotation. I hope a booger-eating memoir will be out on the market soon, but I don’t have that kind of courage, despite the savory, convenient, and budget-conscious snacking delights in my face that I dig into daily. PLEASE DON’T TELL ANYONE. HA-HA!

Our daily schedule includes ten hours of sleep and a two-hour afternoon nap.

It is hard to lose consciousness when you’re clenching your face and fists to prevent yourself from killing your family.

I thought that I must be an unfathomable outlier (as we all thought we were prior to the internet).

Do you ever check with friends after an evening out—whether you’ve killed them?

Do you give twenty-five dollars to charity every time a flash of the Hindu god Ganesh comes to mind (but he’s nude and giving you the finger) and you’ve now donated over 120 thousand dollars to Amnesty International?

that job change took a huge set of vag flaps.

my parents took us on a road trip to Wyoming.

Bamfords express their love through a constant assignment of chores. As soon as I get home, my dad hands me a shovel or a rag or sends me to the garage for pliers and then it’s time to do something well until completion. Consecutive urgent projects follow until bedtime. And because my parents are by turns anxious (Mom) and depressed (Dad), the list is never completed. There will also be a running commentary on how these assignments might be done better than in the way you are currently doing them.

Even bitches who live on pickles and cocaine have their limits.

I’m fun to watch from a distance in that I give you a sense of superiority.

Blossom’s greatest gift was a radical acceptance. Even if I had scary thoughts of OCD, even if I was smelly, even if I had weird black hairs on my chin, Blossom wanted to hang out with me. It’s true, she wasn’t particularly interested in comedy, but she would watch me perform for a good five seconds until she drifted off to sleep. She was the epitome of a Good Girl. If I stood too long in one place at the dog park, she would pee on me, as if to say, “This is mine.” I had never had anyone take that kind of proud ownership of me.

don’t want to be a part of a movement that is AT ALL popular.

But I will give most belief systems a solid attempt. Unitarianism, Marie Kondo, and anything that will get me going in a fresh way, put me on the email list.

Mitch gave me the wonderfully vague title of executive producer, which can literally mean anything or nothing; you can be a giant king-maker queen or a shadow.

the Screen Actors Guild–mandated minimum turnaround time—the period between set departure and set arrival—of twelve hours.

don’t know if you’ve been on antipsychotics, but they really knock you out. It’s like starting the day with an overdose of Benadryl, and then you’re given more Benadryl as the day progresses, along with Diet Cokes to keep you awake, and just when you feel like you’re going to pass out, you pop a cold brew and another Benadryl and keep going for eight more hours.

quality of care can be anywhere from okay to downright horrible. BRING A PAL FOR THIS SCARY ADVENTURE. During the quarantine, I drove a friend with psychosis to a psych-only ER in LA (outpatient only). The waiting area had a big-screen TV playing CNN. Therefore, the TV was replaying—in between commercials for walk-in tubs—video of George Floyd being murdered, over and over and over again for the two hours we were sitting there. My friend is Black. There were several other people in the ER who were also living, breathing human beings of various shades. And the emergency psych clinic’s only offering in the waiting room was repetitive play-by-play footage of an unarmed man being suffocated to death by law enforcement. We finally (after an overworked mental health worker had a minute) got the TV channel changed to the Cartoon Network, which, thankfully, was not A LIVE-ACTION SNUFF FILM. And my friend did get meds and an appointment with a doctor for the next day. THIS WAS THE WORST AND MAXIMUM SHITTY-ASS HELP THEY COULD HAVE RECEIVED. And my friend is still alive.

Please don’t hurt yourself or anyone else. Do something else instead. Even if it’s harmful! Suicide is a one-off. You can do meth at least twice without consequences! (I don’t know if that’s true.) Knock yourself out with a forty-ounce keg of Baileys Irish Cream and a Dairy Queen Blizzard. You do not want to miss any additions to the Dairy Queen product line! Did you know they have a FUDGE-STUFFED COOKIE now?

I’m not always trying to keep myself from cutting my own throat Deadwood style, but mental illness isn’t always preventable. There’s a powerlessness that takes hold, as in any other disease—a sense that when you get sick, you might not make it. When this happens, you may not remember that there is an official document in your junk drawer that you’ve signed promising everyone not to kill yourself. The unfathomable anguish in your brain is begging you 24-7 to immediately stop the madness.