Hello, Molly!: A Memoir

by Molly Shannon

IN SCHOOL I MISBEHAVED around female teachers—out of fear that I’d disappoint them the way I must’ve disappointed my mom. And I must have disappointed her. I must be defective. Otherwise, why would she have left? All I could think was I did something bad to make her leave. So I acted bad around teachers to keep from getting close to them. That way I’d never get hurt again. I’ll be bad first. I’ll leave you first. I could be in control and they wouldn’t surprise me by leaving. I would disappoint them first.

The principal called my dad about the incident. That night my dad asked me if I wanted to talk about my feelings. I mumbled something like “No, that’s okay.” Because I was tough. When you lose a parent, you don’t want anybody to treat you differently. You want to blend in. At that point I didn’t want anybody to bring it up. I was just embarrassed about the whole thing. But it made me realize how vulnerable I really was.

SO I EITHER ADORED my dad or was frustrated and at the end of my rope. There was a lot of back-and-forth. I never knew which dad I would get, the one who met my needs or the one who couldn’t. I’d be frustrated by him. I’d be angry with him. And then he would understand me and we would be so simpatico and so in sync and have so much fun till along came another moment of total disconnect, and I felt so alone and abandoned.

There was always so much drama. A lot of my childhood was spent listening to my dad talking about how he had lost his wife. Not how we had lost our mom! How he had lost his wife.

I didn’t bother asking my dad, “Oh, could you write a check for me to take this test?” because I knew it would just stress him out. By then I had learned to not ask for too much: if he did give me something, he would hold it over me. There would be all these strings attached. It made me very independent. I just wanted to make my own money.

The sketch is a story of somebody who against all odds succeeds. The character is a survivor. She struggles to rise above the wreckage. A girl who trips. Who breaks things. Who’s nervous. Who’s in her head. Who obsesses. Gets crushes. Fucks up. But gets back up. It’s an emotional character. I wrote from my heart.

When you are living in a house where guilt is alive, it leaves a mark. My dad was coping with guilt as an adult, but we were coping with it as children. And when you are living in an atmosphere of daily, ever-present guilt, what does that do to children? It changes their souls.

Before I met Fritz I longed for guys who were unavailable. Who couldn’t quite do it. Who weren’t really ready. I grieved my mom through men. It’s easy to blame the guy—What an asshole, etc. But I always felt less victimized if I asked myself, What is your part, Molly? What does it say about you that you picked him? And what it says about me is that, before Fritz, I picked men who couldn’t really do it because I was scared shitless myself. I wasn’t really ready, either. It wasn’t just the guys’ fault. I was scared of intimacy, too. It meant I might get swallowed up if it was someone who was ready to go. I picked men who were less available for a reason. And when I was ready and more available myself, I chose Fritz.