by Jenny Lawson
And this was probably why I was feeling a little defensive at the CPA’s office. It was our first meeting and was filled with questions that made me immediately uncomfortable and sort of defensively stabby.
Maury asked if I had life insurance and I assured him that I didn’t because I didn’t want Victor to be arrested. There was a pause in the conversation.
“She thinks life insurance is only taken out on people about to be murdered,” Victor explained stoically.
“It’s true, though,” I continued. “Whenever someone ends up in the meat grinder the authorities are always quick to arrest whoever the beneficiary is on the insurance policy.”
Victor rolled his eyes.
“I’M TRYING TO HELP YOU WITH YOUR MURDER DEFENSE,” I yelled politely. Then Victor huffed a bit but probably because I’d accidentally said “meat grinder” instead of “chipper-shredder.” Victor would never murder me with our meat grinder. He’s such a germophobe that he can’t even handle it if I leave a used Kleenex on my desk, so there’s no way he’s going to be able to make his summer sausage after he knows I’ve been through our grinder. I mean, who knows where I’ve been?
Eventually Victor and Maury got back to discussing investment strategies and mathy stuff and I blanked out a bit until I noticed that they were both staring at me. Maury repeated himself. “Do you have any questions so far, or anything you’d like to add?”
I didn’t but I wanted to contribute to the conversation so I asked, “Why is there a gold standard?”
Victor and Maury looked at me because the question apparently had nothing to do with what they’d been discussing but I thought it was still a good question, so I continued:
“I just don’t get the gold standard. If America found a planet made of gold would that make us super rich, or would it make all gold worthless? And if it did make us super rich, what’s keeping all the other countries from being like, ‘We don’t like gold anymore because this isn’t fair. We like spiders now. Pay us in spiders.’ Would that make our economy collapse? Could you buy spiders with gold? What would the exchange rate be? Would it be in metric or imperial? I already can’t remember how to convert to metric and it’s going to get worse if I have to convert to metric spiders. And that’s why I don’t think we should go around mining on other planets and looking for trouble. Because I don’t want to carry a purse around filled with hordes of spiders. That’s why.”
“You’re blocking out all of our conversations because you’re too focused on how you’d pay for things with spiders?” Victor asked with disbelief.
“I guess so,” I said. “Having a purse full of spiders is actually less scary than having to think about finances. Wow. That’s sort of a breakthrough.” I let out a deep breath and looked at Maury. “I should totally come see you instead of my normal shrink.”
“Huh,” Maury replied.
“Would it be tax deductible if I came to see you for mental problems?” I asked. “Also, are you licensed to prescribe drugs? Because that’s sort of a deal breaker.”
Victor shook his head. “It’s like you’re allergic to making sense.” He seemed a bit snappish, but probably because of the spider thing. I’d be pissed too if I’d spent years trying to save money and suddenly realized it could all be replaced by spiders and I’d be fucked.
I placed a soothing hand on Victor’s sleeve and whispered, “I hear and acknowledge your pain.”
“This is not therapy,” he barked. “This is financial planning.” He looked slightly frazzled and I considered slipping some of my Xanax into his coffee, but then I thought that maybe my possible new therapist would see me as being a little too free with drugs and so instead I just said, “Well, it’s sort of both, isn’t it?”
Maury changed the subject to funeral planning and wills and I blanked out a little. Personally, I’ve always been a little bit icked out by wills. Mostly because of the math involved. I’m fine with funeral planning and dead bodies and all that stuff. In fact, I recently saw a coffin in a magazine that I wanted that had “Hi coffin. You look nice” written on the side and I thought that was very clever and would put everyone at ease while they were grieving me, and so I told Victor that he could buy me that one, or if it was too expensive he could just buy me a cheap casket and stencil that shit on the side himself, but then Victor got all yelly about my talking about funerals again, probably because he’s bad at arts and crafts. Or maybe because he knows that after going through the chipper-shredder I won’t need anything more than a small cocktail shaker to hold what’s left of me. In a way that would be nice though, because I’d finally get to go to an event where I was the thinnest person there.
Then I realized that Victor and Maury were staring at me and that they’d asked me a question about the will but I couldn’t remember what it was so I just said, “When I die I’d like all my stuff to be left to my cat.” Then Victor just rubbed his temples and I explained, “Not really though, because there’s no way Ferris Mewler is outliving me and Hunter S. Thomcat is way too irresponsible to take on that sort of money, but this way you can just tell everyone that I’m obviously insane if I’m leaving shit to a cat and then you can just handle all the will stuff yourself and I don’t have to do any of this paperwork. WE ALL WIN. Except Hunter S. Thomcat, I guess. He’d better find himself a sugar mama or something.”
Victor sighed, but frankly I’m not really sure what he’d expected. It was my job to accidentally make money and his job to make sure that I didn’t lose it when I was doing wobbly cartwheels in the parking lot after the bars closed. Our roles had been clearly defined.
Maury cleared his throat. “We can come back to wills later. How about retirement plans?”
Victor spent the next several minutes speaking in a combination of words and letters that I’m pretty sure meant “I have a retirement plan and it’s quite good.”
Maury looked at me expectantly.
“I have a drawer I put change into.”
Victor put his head in his hands.
“Not quarters though. I use those for gum.”
Then Victor and Maury talked about dividends and stipends and split ends and then Victor woke me up an hour later to sign things that looked far too important for me to sign. I agreed to sign them if he’d take me somewhere for lunch where I could have some booze and Maury recommended a place in the same building, which was convenient because I was so overwhelmed I didn’t think I could make it very far. In fact, when we got downstairs to the café the waiter asked what I’d like to drink and I said, “I would like booze, but I don’t have it in me to make any more decisions today so you just pick something for me, will you?” He did and it was very strong and I suspect that Maury sends all of his easily overwhelmed clients there and that’s probably “the Maury Special.” I laid my head down on the table and Victor wondered aloud how I would ever manage to live if he wasn’t there.
“Well, my life would be much simpler,” I explained with perfect honesty. “I don’t know how the eight remotes for the TV work so I’d never use it again, and when the lights burned out I’d just sort of leave them if I couldn’t reach them with a chair, and when the computers broke I’d just throw them in a ditch, and when my car stopped working I’d probably just buy a donkey to ride into town to buy provisions from the gas station. I suspect I’d become accidentally Amish within a year. In fact, I bet the Amish are just a whole tribe of people who didn’t have someone around to turn the TV on for them for several generations and finally said, ‘Fuck it. We’re just going to live life this way.’”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not even remotely accurate,” Victor replied.
“Well, I’d look it up online but I tried to update iTunes this morning and now my phone is frozen so I think I’m going to use it as a paperweight from now on.”
Victor stared at me.
“That was a joke,” I explained. “But, actually, I did manage to somehow delete half of my icons, so if you could help me out there I’d appreciate it
. No rush though. I know you’ve had a tough morning.”
“You have no idea,” he said.
“Actually, I do. I mean, I realize that I’m ridiculously inept when it comes to … you know … things. Stuff like money and planning and complicated television sets. But what you don’t think about is that I’m fantastic with people. Except when I’m hiding from them, obviously. And I’m there to make things lovely and good and to make sure that everyone is happy. Everyone except for maybe Maury, I mean. He seemed a bit flustered.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around,” Victor replied. But he said it in a way that made me think that he agreed, or that he just didn’t have a way to respond properly. “Just please do your best to be a little more financially responsible and we’ll be fine.”
I nodded, kissed him on the cheek, and then excused myself to powder my nose, but then when I was walking down the hall to go to the bathroom I saw it. The giant Zoltar fortune-telling machine from the movie Big.
The same one that turned Tom Hanks into a successful grown-up. And so I immediately decided that I needed to have my fortune told and I ran back to Victor and told him I needed some quarters to see what our fortune was.
“You want take our money and throw it away on a fortune-telling machine? Have you learned nothing today?”
“Well, I learned you’re pretty stingy with quarters. You know perfectly well I’ve spent all mine on gum. Plus, it’s only fifty cents for advisement on our fortune. Or for getting a fortune. Something like that. And that’s what this whole day has been about, right?”
Then he sighed and fished out a bunch of quarters.
The first fortune was for me and it was so perfect I ran back to the table to share it:
So basically Zoltar told me that I’m fiscally sound and that I’d wasted the whole day setting up retirement plans when I just needed to spend as much as I could out of my never-ending chest of money. Victor did not agree.
So I went to get his fortune so that I could prove how remarkably accurate it was. This was his fortune:
“See!” I said. “According to Zoltar, you’ve got tons of happiness in your future and it’s all caused by your perseverance and clever ways of handling your domestic problems.”
“I think you might be my domestic problems.”
“Well, either way, everything’s coming up roses, right?”
And then Victor laughed, in spite of himself. And that’s how you know that you’ve got a real fortune. Because money can’t buy the happiness of a good and understanding spouse. But it can buy a new phone when you accidentally drop it in the toilet after having too many Maury Specials.
PS: After dinner the waiter brought us fortune cookies and I was like, “FOUR FORTUNES IN ONE DAY! WHAT A BOON!” Victor said cookies weren’t really the same thing as actual fortune, but I think Victor’s underestimating the importance of cookies. But then we opened them and decided to just stick with Zoltar because mine said, “No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible,” and I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be insulting, although it also implies that I’m somehow “responsible” and I think that proves I’d gotten the wrong cookie. But then Victor opened his and said, “Mine says, ‘Never argue with a fool.’”
“What?” I said. “THAT’S WHAT OUR WHOLE MARRIAGE IS BASED ON.”
Victor shrugged. “This cookie is telling me not to talk to you.”
I crossed my arms. “Well, this cookie is making me feel guilty and I don’t even know what I’ve done.”
Victor nodded. “Well, the cookie has a point.”
“YOU CAN’T TELL US WHAT TO DO, COOKIES. YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW US,” I might have yelled.
And that’s when we decided not to take advice from cookies anymore and Victor also tried to make me not take advice from fortune-telling robots near bathrooms but I said that’s just throwing the baby out with the bathwater and that’s bad financial advice for everyone. Unless your baby is really spendy. But still, I think it’s a good idea to keep them even if they do end up costing you time and money because they’re worth all the fuss because of the joy they bring into your life.
And Victor smiled and held my hand and agreed.
I don’t think we were talking about the same thing, but it was nice to see him smile so I smiled back and we walked out of the restaurant to face the future together …
… unknown, uncertain, dangerously entertaining, and furiously happy.
It Might Be Easier. But It Wouldn’t Be Better.
I’m at the final part of a severe rheumatoid arthritis flare-up. I only get a few a year, but when they hit it’s simply a matter of surviving from day to day. That sounds ridiculous and overblown, since I at least know that eventually the pain will fade and I’ll be able to get out of bed and not bite back screams. The first few days seem like they should be the worst since they’re the most painful and always end with a trip to the emergency room. The next few days it hurts less, but you’re so brittle from a lack of sleep and unending pain that you still feel just as miserable. Your family members and friends understand and care, but after half a week of seeing you hobbling around the house and crying in the bathroom, even they can get worn-out by it all. Then comes two days of fatigue so intense that you feel drugged. You want to get up and work and clean and smile, but you find yourself falling asleep at your daughter’s first play, and you have to leave to get back to bed while everyone else celebrates.
Life passes. Then comes the depression. That feeling that you’ll never be right again. The fear that these outbreaks will become more familiar, or worse, never go away. You’re so tired from fighting that you start to listen to all the little lies your brain tells you. The ones that say that you’re a drain on your family. The ones that say that it’s all in your head. The ones that say that if you were stronger or better this wouldn’t be happening to you. The ones that say that there’s a reason why your body is trying to kill you, and that you should just stop all the injections and steroids and drugs and therapies.
Last month, as Victor drove me home so I could rest, I told him that sometimes I felt like his life would be easier without me. He paused a moment in thought and then said, “It might be easier. But it wouldn’t be better.”
I remind myself of that sentence on days when the darkness seems like it’ll never end. But I know it will pass. I know that tomorrow things will seem a little brighter. I know that next week I’ll look back on this sentence and think, “I should stop listening to my brain when it’s trying to kill me. Why did I even write this?” And that’s precisely why I’m writing this now. Because it’s so easy to forget that I’ve been here before and come out the other side, and perhaps if I have this to read I’ll remember it again next time and it will help me to keep on breathing until the medications take hold and I’m out of the hole again.
I used to feel a lot of guilt about having depression but then I realized that’s a lot like feeling guilty for having brown hair. Still, even though it’s unrealistic, it’s normal. I felt the same when Smokey the Bear was all, “ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES,” and I was like, “Shit. Only me? Because that really seems like it should be more of a team effort.” And also I don’t think I should take orders about forests from bears, because some bears use forests to hide in so that they can eat you. So basically I have some demanding bear shaming me into creating a less fiery dining room for him to devour me. And also, that doesn’t even make any sense because aren’t some forest fires caused by lightning? Because I can’t stop lightning, bears. I’m not God. I can’t stop lightning, or swamp gas, or spontaneous combustion, or depression. These are all things that just happen and shouldn’t be blamed on me.
Stop blaming the victim, bears.
In the years since I first came out about struggling with mental illness I’ve been asked if I regret it … if the stigma is too much to handle.
It’s not.
There are terrible sides to illness (mental and physical) but it’s strange
ly freeing that my personal struggle is obvious and has to be acknowledged. In a way I’m lucky. My depressions and periods of anxiety and paranoia were so extreme that I couldn’t keep them much of a secret. I felt like not writing about them was creating a false history, and honestly, when I first wrote about them I expected I’d lose readers. I expected that I’d scare people. I expected that some people would feel betrayed that someone they turned to for light and funny fluff was pulling them into serious and difficult dreck. I expected silence.
I did not expect what I was given.
What I got back in return for being honest about my struggle was an enormous wave of voices saying, “You aren’t alone,” and “We suspected you were crazy anyway. We’re still here.” “I’m proud of you.” And louder than all of that were the whispers that became stronger every day from thousands and thousands of people creeping to the edge and quietly admitting, “Me too. I thought it was just me.” And the whispers became a roar. And the roar became an anthem that carried me through some of my darkest moments. I did not ride that wave alone.
I have a folder that’s labeled “The Folder of 24.” Inside it are letters from twenty-four people who were actively in the process of planning their suicide, but who stopped and got help—not because of what I wrote on my blog, but because of the amazing response from the community of people who read it and said, “Me too.” They were saved by the people who wrote about losing their mother or father or child to suicide and how they’d do anything to go back and convince them not to believe the lies mental illness tells you. They were saved by the people who offered up encouragement and songs and lyrics and poems and talismans and mantras that worked for them and that might work for a stranger in need. There are twenty-four people alive today who are still here because people were brave enough to talk about their struggles, or compassionate enough to convince others of their worth, or who simply said, “I don’t understand your illness, but I know that the world is better with you in it.”
