Sad Janet: A Novel

by Lucie Britsch

The existentialists made it a whole thing—literally made the emptiness of life into a movement—but you have to embrace the sadness to be in their club. I might consider it, if Sartre hadn’t been such a misogynist.

Despite all that, I loved Christmas so damn hard, right up to the moment I didn’t anymore. Still, like with all relationships, I kept letting it screw me because I didn’t know how to tell it I wasn’t really into it anymore.

I work at a dog shelter, so I know a thing or two about sadness. It’s like the exact opposite of Disney World.

can’t believe people eat this shit, I said to Melissa. Melissa and I are both vegans—working with animals will do that—but we’re nonpracticing. You want to be better, but it’s so hard all the time.

I’d always wanted to be a vegetarian, but someone told me once that most wine isn’t vegetarian. I don’t even really like the taste of wine, it’s just that when I was a kid, I thought that when I grew up I’d be one of those women who drinks wine alone at night, and I wanted at least one of my dreams to come true.

You motherfucker, I want to say so badly, but I rein it in. Most of my life is reining shit in. When I finally let it all go, have my breakdown in the grocery store, it will be spectacular.

We are all Google’s bitch.

Only I was never really sure there were girls like me. At school it was always, No one wants to start a coven, Janet! We’re tormenting boys and kissing them, and if you’re not into that, then you better fuck off to the library. Only I was already there, looking for books that would tell me how to hex them all.

The first time my brother brought his new wife home for Christmas, he asked me if I was medicated yet. I said, You might have a wife now, but your sneakers are still shit. He cared about stuff like that, so it hurt.

The only thing it doesn’t work for is Christmas, because that comes whether you want it to or not, like most men.

I didn’t go to my graduation. I don’t like organized activities. Or having to wear a cape that isn’t for being a witch.

their mum

Sometimes when people look at me with pity I want to shout, I was a teenage girl once! so they know I can survive anything.

But this guy has books I like, love even, old Stephen King novels, Philip K. Dick, a fucking Margaret Atwood even, and there is no Hemingway or Kerouac, no red flags. There is a Screenwriting for Dummies book, and I like that he knows what he is.