Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

by Jenny Lawson

This book is totally true, except for the parts that aren’t. It’s basically like Little House on the Prairie but with more cursing.

somewhere in here you’ll read one random thing that you’re sensitive about, and everyone else will think it’s hysterical, but you’ll think, “Oh, that is way over the line.” I apologize for that one thing. Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking.

But really, what else are you going to talk about in line at the liquor store? Childhood trauma seems like the natural choice, since it’s the reason why most of us are in line there to begin with.

“Eleven Things Most People Have Never Experienced or Could Have Even Possibly Imagined, but That Totally Happened to Me, Because Apparently I Did Something Awful in a Former Life That I’m Still Being Punished For.”

#1. Most people have never stood inside a dead animal,

I could write a whole book on the five-second rule. That should totally be the follow-up book to this one: The Five Second Rule As It Applies to Various Foodstuffs. Brilliant. But now I’ve forgotten what I was writing about.

Did you notice how I just skipped right to having a husband even though this paragraph is supposed to be about my childhood? My God, this is going to be a terrible book.

My dad was always rescuing animals, and by “rescuing animals” I mean “killing the mother, and then discovering she had babies, and bringing the babies home to raise them in the bathtub.”

“THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!” (which is both weird and inappropriate)

pretending to be a rattlesnake in front of an armed mother is basically like waving a fake gun in front of a cop. Either way, you’re totally going to get shot.

He tempered these limitations by driving about thirty miles under the speed limit at all times.

the night would turn full-force into the type of self-harm affair that only imaginative children with limited supervision can ever fully achieve.

By age seven I realized that there was something wrong with me, and that most children didn’t hyperventilate and throw up when asked to leave the house.

The bed of my father’s pickup truck was like something that would have ended up in Dante’s Inferno, if Dante had ever spent any time in rural Texas.

my father insisted on naming the turkeys and treating them like pets. Pets who would angrily run at you in a full-out attack, nipping at your tiny ankles as you ran in circles around the yard, screaming for someone to open the door to the house and let you in.

High school is life’s way of giving you a record low to judge the rest of your life by.

I’d been really focused on my anorexia, which is one of the best mental illnesses to have, because at least you look hot while you’re starving yourself to death.

wanted to cheer him up, but it felt weird wanting to cheer up someone who was possibly depressed because they didn’t murder you correctly, and that’s when I thought, “This must be what love is.

he assured me that he understood that some people liked exotic pets. And it was nice that we had this thing in common to bring us together, but the difference was that his father owned helicopters, Porsches, and pet cougars because he was wealthy and ostentatious, and my father kept wild bobcats for their urine.

“Promise me you’ll never ask me if it’s ‘that time of the month’ in the middle of a totally rational argument when what you really need to do is just apologize and stop being such an asshole.”

Hilarious that she wanted this to be part of her wedding vows.

the school playground I’d lived in each summer had been ripped out and demolished.

Sad, but I can relate to this one, too.

Now when I pass by the school I look away and remember it the way it was, with the dangerous metal seesaws and merry-go-rounds that eventually disappeared all over America.

This is absolutely true.

I just wanted to go back to my life from my childhood, just to visit it, and to touch it, and to convince myself that yes, it had been real.

I get this.

Have you ever been homesick for someplace that doesn’t actually exist anymore? Someplace that exists only in your mind?”

Yup. Does that make me crazy?

Anyway, having a kid is an excellent exercise in perspective. Because it teaches you to embrace the horror and indignity of life. You simply have no other choice.

paranoia is a common side effect of anxiety disorder. Personally, I always labeled myself as “socially awkward” and reassured myself that there are lots of perfectly normal people who don’t like to talk in public. And that’s true. Unfortunately it’s also true that my fear pushes slightly past the land of “perfectly normal” and lands well into the desert of “paralyzing pathological handicap.”

I wasn’t really paying attention to her talking about anxiety disorders because I was too busy wondering whether she’d consider it a step back in my therapy if I hid under the couch while we had our sessions.

instead of being “weird,” my inability to carry on an appropriate conversation was suddenly labeled a “painfully devastating and incurable medical disability that torments both the victim and those around her.”

It is exhausting being me. Pretending to be normal is draining and requires amazing amounts of energy and Xanax.

It’s like I have a censor in my head, but she works on a seven-second delay…well-meaning, but perpetually about seven seconds too late to actually do anything to stop the horrific avalanche of shit-you-shouldn’t-say-out-loud-but-I-just-did.

Every wild-eyed glance of mine screams, “MENTAL ILLNESS.”

know there’s nothing to panic about. And that’s exactly what makes it so much worse.

They may have all had suitcases three times as big as mine, but I realized that the emotional baggage I’d brought with me was big enough to put theirs to shame.

“Ah,” said my doctor. “I think maybe you just don’t understand what ‘degenerative’ means.” Awesome. I was not getting cured and my vocabulary skills were being questioned.

My neighbor came over to tell me she’d seen me digging a grave in the meadow yesterday, and thought she’d stop by to see if everything was okay. I was touched, both because she’d come to check on me and also because she’d assumed I was digging a grave but hadn’t called the police. “This,” I thought to myself, “is exactly why I love the country.

I went to go look at the snakeskin, and I was all, “This is a used paper towel.” Then Victor said, “Dude. That’s totally a snakeskin that’s been shed. Look at the diamond scale pattern,” and I was all, “That’s a textured diamond weave to absorb more wetness. You can tell it’s a paper towel because snakeskins aren’t square. Or perforated.” And I spread it out on the ground and then he was all, “Huh. That is a fucking paper towel. I think we need a new exterminator.”

I wonder how much an exorcism costs, and whether it’s more expensive if I’m not Catholic. Is there a coupon code I can use? This is probably exactly the sort of thing they teach you in catechism.

She told me how to disconnect the fire alarms, but it seemed very complicated, so I just nodded until she stopped talking and then got a broom and hit it like a piñata until it stopped,

I frequently use this method myself!