Broken (in the best possible way)

by Jenny Lawson

Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. —LEONARD COHEN

What we really want is to know we’re not alone in our terribleness. We want to appreciate the failure that makes us perfectly us and wonderfully relatable to every other person out there who is also pretending that they have their shit together and didn’t just eat that onion ring that fell on the floor. Human foibles are what make us us, and the art of mortification is what brings us all together.

But we don’t get to pick who we are. I am still as broken as I was before, but with better stories and a little more insight into just how fucked up I am.

Be good. Be kind. Love each other. Fuck everything else. The only thing that matters is how you feel and how you’ve made others feel. And I feel okay (for the moment), and I make others feel okay by being a barometer of awkwardness and self-doubt.

It’s not all bad. There are some perks to having a poor memory. I am eternally telling Victor that I found a great documentary we should watch about serial killers, only for him to stare at me in disbelief and remind me that we just watched it six months ago. Then I’ll tell him he’s insane and I’ll watch it, angrily, as I’m certain he’s just saying that because he wants to watch NASCAR, but then halfway through something will seem familiar and I’ll realize he’s right. Then six months later I’ll tell him about a great documentary on serial killers I recorded for us and he’ll stare at me and tell me that not only have I seen it multiple times, we’ve argued about whether I’ve seen it, and then I look at him like he’s gone insane because I DEFINITELY have not seen this documentary and so I say, “YOU CAN JUST SAY YOU DON’T WANT TO WATCH IT. YOU DON’T HAVE TO GASLIGHT ME,”

Can you highlight entire chapters?? Jenny just gets me, in fact she might be me? Everything she describes opens me up and cracks me up because it’s so true and it’s exactly how I am.

It’s the same with books. Even the ones I’ve read over and over are new to me toward the end. I can never remember if the butler did it or if Alice will escape Wonderland. I thought I was a big fan of Agatha Christie but it turns out I just read Murder on the Orient Express over and over, and each time I was a little disappointed in her because I usually figured out who did it before the end, but probably just because I’d read the same story a thousand times. It’s worse when I use an e-reader because I try to buy books and my e-reader is like, “You already own that, dumbass,” and I’m like, “Nuh-uh,” and then it downloads and I see that I’ve highlighted parts of the book that I would totally highlight if it was me and read strange notes I’ve written in the pages. Some people might find this unsettling, and in some ways it is, but it’s also sort of nice to always have a new book that I discuss with my book club (who is basically all of the me’s who’ve read the book before and left weird notes in the edges). That sounds insane, but my book club is awesome and is possibly the largest group of people I encounter (even if all of them are me’s that I’ve forgotten). They’re very entertaining though, and when I read their notes I’ll cry out, “YES! I AGREE SO MUCH!… I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST ME.” And I guess that makes sense because it is just me, since I’m the one who wrote them, but still, it’s reassuring, and after I forget that I’ve read a book multiple times it provides a much-need...

Lmao, I can relate to the personal book club!!

I have a hole in my head where I fall through. It’s all in that hole, I suspect. It’s real. It’s true. It’s locked away in a treasure box. Just because I don’t remember, it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And if one day I look at you and don’t remember who you are or how much you mean to me, know that your importance is still as real then as it is now. Know that you are locked away someplace safe. Know that the me who loved you is still sitting on that beach, forever feeling the sunlight. And know that I’m okay with not having that memory right now, because the me that holds it tight is keeping it safe and uncorrupted and glorious. And she loves you. And I do too. Remember that. For me.

I considered it a sign that perhaps there is a path I’m supposed to be on. It’s not the same path that everyone else takes, and that can be hard and lonely, but I was reminded that there are amazing things I would never see with normal eyes and other paths.

I just realized that the order of the alphabet is completely random. It’s not in alphabetical order because that was invented after the randomness of the alphabet, so how did we decide that this was the order of the alphabet? Are other languages’ alphabets in the exact same order? WHO STARTED THIS?

Victor tried to make me feel bad because I never got Hailey a birth certificate, but in my defense I didn’t get one because they’re like baby receipts and I’m not gonna get a refund. Then Victor said that they’re not for returning babies, they’re to prove that you have a baby, but I already have proof that I have a baby and their name is Hailey and they live here.

People always say less is more, but it seems like more is more. If less is more, then less is possibly too much. Now my head hurts even more. Or less. Maybe both.

Apparently, I’m supposed to be kegeling all the time to “lift my pelvic floor,” and that’s ridiculous because now I’m supposed to be exercising a part of me that people don’t even see? This is an obvious scam. Next they’ll be telling you to make your pituitary gland do squats or flex your testicles.

Victor once said that his favorite quote was Marilyn Monroe’s: “If you can make a woman laugh you can make her do anything.” It’s true. Unless the thing you want her to do is put her cheese wrappers in the trash or stop touching the thermostat or not dress the cat up in baby clothes even though he looks amazing in them. Those are nonstarters. But you can make her forgive you. And love you. And forget about all the dumb shit you’ve done that she can’t remember now but totally existed. And she can do the same.

She found a lady on Facebook who claimed to have a tool to eradicate cellulite, while at the same time claiming that cellulite does not actually exist. This is a terrible business plan, I thought to myself, but then I thought that maybe what the anti-cellulite lady was saying is that we should all just buy into the idea that cellulite isn’t real. If someone says, “Ew, you have cellulite,” we all look at them as if they’ve gone mad and gaslight the world into thinking that seeing cellulite is some sort of mass hallucination that is totally their problem and not ours. Then we can all wear bathing suits freely while making judgy assholes question their eyesight and sanity. I was all in. Unfortunately the real story isn’t nearly so rational.

I could drink to numb the pain of being numb but it’s not a long-term solution and I’m too tired for it. Does that even make sense? Numbing the pain of numbness? It does if you’ve been here before.

There is beauty in the brokenness, and even though I’d rather have her whole and perfect again, I can still recognize that she’s turned into something else in her breaking. She is art. At least to some eyes. Trash to others. It’s all in the seeing, after all.

Tell your partner what you like and don’t like, because communication is key. “Don’t touch me there. Or there. Nope. Okay, I feel fat now. You know what? You can touch my ankles and the skin on the back of my hands.”

It’s raining. I sigh. It’s a relief in more ways than you can imagine. My swollen parts will return to normal soon. The dam has broken. The worry of feeling insane passes a little. Not entirely, though. Because who can hold rain in their bones? Rain that hasn’t even come? I know who. The same person who holds fog in her head. Who is undone by the pull of full moons. Who is far too sensitive to the strange whims of a body and mind that listen too much to the world.

“Words should go here. I haven’t figured them out but basically just a variation of twenty-seven letters I haven’t decided how to organize yet.”

“No, ‘stet’ is the passive subjunctive, deriving from the active-voiced third-party subjunctive singular present, used to indicate that a marked change should be disregarded,” and I was like, “No one knows your made-up language here, wizard,” and she laughed but I was totally serious. So I looked it up and found out that basically if someone notes something on your page that’s wrong you can just write “STET!” and it means “LET IT STAND.” In my head it’s always being shouted with authority by someone like Moses or Dumbledore, but in most situations in this book it just means “Yeah. I realize this part is fucked up. But it’s fucked up on purpose. Artistically.” Usually it’s a run-on sentence that would make an English teacher cut herself, or a word I made up just to see if I could get it in the dictionary on a bet, or a purposeful choice to use incorrect grammar because sometimes shit is funnier that way. “Stet” is my favorite verb, and it is the dryer setting I live my life in. Stet = Yes, it’s fucked up but I like it that way.

Editor: You used the phrase “Charlie horse” but it should be “charley horse.” Me: But that’s not how you spell “Charlie.” Why is it spelled that way? Editor: No one knows. Me: THEN HOW DO YOU KNOW I’M WRONG? Someone spelled Charlie wrong in the 1800s and now I’m getting yelled at for it. Editor: We can spell it wrong if you want. Me: I just spilled all my tater tots on the floor. I can’t make decisions right now. Go with your gut.

Editor: You wrote, “You spend an hour talking about yourself and someone has to fake being fascinated by the minutia that is you.” To be grammatically correct we should change “someone has to fake being fascinated by the minutia that is you” to “someone has to fake being fascinated by the minutiae that are you.” Me: That can’t possibly be right.

Me: I need help with this sentence because I think it needs a semicolon but I don’t know exactly how to place it. Editor: You don’t really need a semicolon in that sentence. I’ll send a helpful link that shows you when and how semicolons work. Me: Things I still don’t understand; SEMICOLONS. Editor: Wow.

Me: I know I spelled “weird” correctly here but it looks strange. All the other words with “ei” in them are pronounced like a hard A. “Vein.” “Neigh.” “Eight.” So why isn’t “weird” pronounced “wayrd”? Because the more I look at it the wronger it looks. Editor: Now isn’t a good time to point out that “wronger” isn’t a real word, is it?

Editor: We need to capitalize “Pegasus” throughout the book. Me: They’re awesome, but worthy of capitalization? You don’t capitalize the word “unicorns” so why do we capitalize “Pegasus”? Editor: There aren’t Pegasuses. There’s only one mythical creature whose formal name was “Pegasus.” All the rest are just winged horses. Me: There’s only one Pegasus? Like the Highlander? My whole life feels like a lie.

I went to the hardware store and realized that the only thing more embarrassing than buying tampons is buying rattraps. Probably the only thing worse than that would be buying rat tampons. Meaning tampons for rats, obviously. Not tampons made out of rats. That would be insane and probably something that one of those wilderness-survival-show guys would come up with. “Bleeding out your vagina? No problem! Stick an absorbent rat up there!” You’re definitely getting toxic shock from that.

Idea 18: Create a show called Science Fair Crashers. Break into science fairs and see if people will fall for terrible science projects that we make. Episode ideas: “Is this acid or water?” “Taste test. Which is better? You chose human baby. Don’t get mad at me. You ate the baby. It’s not even grass-fed or local.” “Antifreeze or Kool-Aid?” “Does anthrax have a smell?” “Can people identify semen just by taste?”