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

Granted, some of that is because I have avoidant personality disorder and imposter syndrome, which automatically makes me think everyone in the world is better than me, and

Truly. I have managed to fuck shit up in shockingly impressive ways and still be considered a fairly acceptable person.

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.

Fuck the people who make you feel bad for glorifying the odd behavior and questionable decisions that make you who you are. Those things are perfectly acceptable.

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.

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 was running through the mall parking lot during a thunderstorm and I stepped into an ankle-deep stream of water and one shoe filled with water and flopped off and was whisked into the storm drain and now it lives with the alligators and clowns.

have struggled with anxiety for as long as I can remember. When I was young I thought it would pass as I got older, and when I was older I thought it would pass when I was successful, and when I was successful I thought that it was hopeless because even when everything was going right I was still wrong.

Eventually she quit and got a job at my school as a cafeteria lady so that she would have the same hours I had.

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 wonder if crabs think humans walk weird.

The problem is that depression is my forever side dish to any period of convalescence and illness, and depression lies. It tells you that you are worthless. That life was never good. That you are a drain on the world and that it will only get worse.

I bet if male dogs had thumbs they’d send us dick pics all the time. My phone tried to correct that to “duck pics.” But honestly the phone is probably right. They’d probably send us duck pics too. Dogs fucking love ducks.

LIFE IS LIKE RIDING A BICYCLE … It’s hard and sweaty and surprisingly tough on your genitals. Also, you’re going to fall a lot.

Surviving mortification makes you stronger and more resilient because you have no other choice but to move on. Either you can let it eat at you, or you can celebrate it and bring joy to someone else who will cringe and giggle like mad along with you. Accidentally making shit awkward is such a familiar, vulnerable, and underrated accomplishment.

When “Stacy’s Mom” song first came out, asked friend’s roommate Stacy if her mom had it going on. She had recently died. So no. ~BEEGIBS

“Why can’t you clean the gutters?” And the answer is, “Gutters are scary as shit and that’s why I didn’t want them in the first place. You know who lives in gutters? Clown murderers. We bought tubes to catch clown murderers. GREAT CHOICE.”

If I look closer at these stories that make up my life, a strange theme emerges. It’s the idea that something is only real if it’s damaged.

suppose it makes sense in a terrible sort of way. After all, we are changed by life … it puts its teeth in us, it leaves its handprints and marks and scars on us. And as much as we try to ignore those things, in the end they make us who we are. For good or for bad, we are changed and touched and broken and mended and scarred. And those marks (inside and out) tell a story. They tell our story.

The world feels safer somehow if we share our pain. It becomes more manageable. And by sharing our pain, we inspire others to share theirs. We are so much less alone if we learn to wear our imperfections proudly, like tarnished jewelry that still shines just as brightly.

“NO I’M NOT, BECAUSE THERE ARE DICKS STUCK IN MY CAR HOLES AND EVERYONE AT THE POST OFFICE THINKS I BUY TINY DILDOS IN BULK.”

Later I discovered that when Victor said to paddle left, he meant I should paddle on the right so that we could go left, and that is the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard and it made me really glad that he wasn’t with Sandra Bullock during her Bird Box years because she’d probably be dead now.

My mom was the cafeteria lady at my school, so she volunteered to help.

Life is full of these moments that are supposed to be amazing but end up being questionable at best. I often wonder if it’s because we build them up as being so important and so they can never measure up.

My point is, don’t let other people set your expectations for what is or isn’t important in life, because so often the best moments are the ridiculous laughter at funerals or the mundane but lovely conversations with family or the unexpected friends you make in prison.

“SO THEN YOU HAVE TOILET RATS? WHAT THE FUCK, DENISE? YOU JUST DESCRIBED A PHOBIA I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE UNTIL NOW.”

I called animal control and asked if they could come pick up a trapped skunk and they were all, “I mean, maybe? Where are you?” and I explained that it was a hypothetical skunk and that I wasn’t even trying to catch it but I was looking for lawn gerbils and I needed a backup plan if the skunk tried to cockblock me, and the technician was like, “Wait. Start over. Are you high right now?” and I wasn’t and was a little insulted but I explained it again more slowly and he was like, “First of all, your lawn gerbils sound a lot like rats. People don’t ‘live-trap’ rats. Because they’re rats.

Seriously, glitter is way harder to get rid of than crabs. Not that I’d know. I don’t have glitter.

The Shining was maybe less of a horror film and more of a cautionary tale of how things can go when forced to spend months in isolation with your family, and I’ve come to the conclusion that if you and your housemates did not chase each other with axes into icy labyrinths, then you won the pandemic. Two