Leslie F*cking Jones

by Leslie Jones

When I think about how far I’ve come, I want to go back through my life and give my former self the love and respect she so often missed out on. I want to look after my younger me, tell her she’ll be alright—better than alright.

So many of us try to do our own emotional oil change, but we’re not mechanics.

A lot of stuff needs to be fixed between generations. Every generation thinks they have a new set of issues to deal with, when actually it’s just a different scene, different clothes, different mechanisms, but the same damage getting passed down.

The psychology of what I was doing is clear: When your power is taken away, you need to reassert it somehow, and what better way than dominating something less powerful than you? I found something more innocent than me and took my agony out on it, and I was trying to regain control because it had been taken away from me.

Quickly I realized that God and that congregation brought me a joy that I never thought I could ever have. I literally separated myself from everything that had been happening and concentrated on me.

I believe God knows you as you, and loves everything about you, imperfections and all. He is not surprised at who you are.

I had found my friend Jesus again, and though I would definitely lose him and find him again, I realized that he’s more interested in people who know they are not perfect than people who think they are. I was always thinking that I was supposed to be this perfect person, but he was like, “I’m not building you for that—I’m building you to reach people. You can reach people I can’t. You talk to people I can’t talk to. You can tell them that loving themselves is the way to love God. Because when you do that you can love others.”