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

by Maria Bamford

Memorize only this page inside your local independent bookstore while sitting on the floor. Put it back in the sports section and buy Shoe Dog by Phil Knight instead. Then, quickly trade Shoe Dog for the trashed Gideon Bible in the Little Free Library right outside of the bookstore. Next, toss God’s Word in your backyard compost heap. Remember how much you like podcasts.

Diagnos-YES!

RECIPE FOR CHIP OFF THE FLOOR There’s a corn chip on the floor! Somebody must have dropped it. Pick it up. It is now yours. Pop it in your mouth. Savor and delight in the chip. EAT IT OPENLY. This is a gift from an exciting and mysterious universe. You are its Minor God.

My dad—and this was common—faded away in the crowd and hid from us. My dad loves to do this: to vanish for ten to fifteen minutes and then suddenly reappear. It’s a slow-moving peekaboo or immersion exercise in abandonment. In a bad father, this could be the sign of having a secret second family, but my dad always came back from these short lessons in object impermanence with some sort of hard candy. We were okay, but now—as a person who knows people who have kids—I think, “Huh.” I like to dissolve into the distance—a few lengths from loved ones—myself. Scott and I will be at the airport and I will weed off, melting into the seething humanity that is LAX. I won’t say anything, I just leave and keep my eye on him. I test my freedom. I see how far and wide I can roam while still retaining the company of my husband in a chaotic international hub. He finds this unnerving. “Where are you?” he’ll text me. I’m 6 feet behind you, watching you from behind this potted palm. And now he doesn’t worry as much, because he knows that when I return from my brief ghosting, I’ll have purchased myself a stuffed big-eyed comfort animal and a bag of Cheez-Its to share.

Lol I do this to Tom regularly XD

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Imagine something you can do well but that you have no passion for. Let’s say, parenting.

You’re not good at things. Even if you practice them for hours. IT IS OKAY NOT TO BE GOOD AT THINGS DESPITE ONGOING, TREMENDOUS AMOUNTS OF EFFORT AND DESIRE TO IMPROVE.

My biggest practical problem was that I didn’t earn enough money to live on, but I found a budget-conscious lifestyle renting from hippies and then not paying rent for a year while occasionally working at a pizza restaurant and begging my codependent parents for money.

lol basically me post-college

I’d eventually come to the conclusion that “God” could very possibly be a combination of privileged luck of the draw and an overuse of caffeine.

RECIPE FOR THE ARTIST’S WAY Find something that might be edible. There’s that block of tofu you never did anything with. Put it in the oven. Set the oven for 475 degrees. Do not watch it. When the smoke alarm goes off, take a look. See what’s happened. YOU ARE NOW IN FLOW.

I got a job waitressing poorly at the one Mexican restaurant in town, Hacienda del Sol.

Oh hey my uncle's restaurant (RIP Hacienda Del Sol) is in Maria Bamford's book!

COFFEE FOR TWO Get one of those “concentrated” jugs of cold brew coffee. Pour a “shot” of concentrated cold brew. It’s just coffee. Drink it like a tequila shot. Go to the gym. Get on a StairMaster. Unable to stand, legs wobbling, fall off the machine. From the gym floor, text your spouse for help. Make your way outside, crawling, holding on to the wall. Your spouse arrives, looking amused. Your loved one shakes their head, helping you into the car, calling you a monkey.

I hope that a new medication regimen comes along and sweeps me off my feet and once again I am able to produce and perform well for hours like I did pre–mental breakdown. But until that happens, I’ll be over here writing myself to sleep.

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