I went through a period of time recently where I would become convinced right before sleep that my heart had actually stopped beating and I was seconds away from death. I would patiently wait for hours thinking that death was imminent, while my husband slept soundly next to me. I’ve always had issues falling asleep. But I’m also afraid of dying from sleeping pills, so I would never take anything to alleviate my fears or help me. I recently started using medical CBD and THC (pot, y’all) to help with my sleep anxiety, and it’s legitimately the only thing that has ever helped and not made me feel like it would also kill me.
So, what I guess I’m getting at is that maybe my anxiety had to do with my volatile family. Or maybe I was just born with it. I used to think it was the former, before I had kids of my own. But now I’m not so sure. I see my daughter Birdie and her horrible sleep anxiety, which so closely mirrors my own, and I have no idea where it could have possibly come from for her. I think it must just be something she was born with. Or I somehow fucked her up when she was a baby. Either/or. Or maybe both.
My mom has one sister, who’s quite a bit younger than she is, about six years. To say their relationship has always been strained is an understatement. My mom and her sister have never gotten along, as far as I can tell. The comparisons between my sister and me and my mom and her own sister started as soon as I was born. Leigh Ann looks exactly like my mom and was always a little on the chubbier side. And like my aunt, I was tiny and blond and blue-eyed. There was a feeling, especially from my mom’s side of the family, that I was the cute one and Leigh Ann was the smart one. At my baby shower for Birdie, my mom actually said out loud, “Well, I know we’re all hoping the baby gets Busy’s looks and Marc’s wit and intellect!”
She somehow managed to insult both me and Marc at the same time. No easy feat. But of course, when I expressed that maybe that was hurtful, she just laughed and said, “Oh, Biz! You know I’m just kidding! Everyone knows how smart you are!”
Okay. I guess? But maybe I don’t? Because I’ve been jokingly told since I was a child that I wasn’t the smart one.
My aunt is an artist, and part of the rift between them, at least as far as my mom was concerned, came down to that very thing. Now I am going to tell you something that should not shock you: My mother wanted to be an actress. IT’S TRUE, GUYS. She was the star of the theater department at Oak Park High and after school was accepted to the Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York. But her parents didn’t think it was wise for her to go. So, instead, she went to college in the same town she grew up in, majored in English, married my dad, and eventually became a Realtor. Her sister, on the other hand, wanted to be a visual artist and ended up going to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which for some reason was fine with my grandparents. I don’t think I can overstate the importance of this imbalance to my mother.
Now look, of course we can say, “Well, fuck it, Barb, why didn’t you tell your parents where to put it and go to New York and follow your damn dream? Or do theater in Chicago? Or any number of things!”
But she didn’t. It was a different time. My mom graduated high school in 1961, which was basically still the ’50s. And I think that kids—especially “good” Catholic daughters—from that era kind of just did what their parents told them to do, no questions asked.
So when my sister and I came along, we were always encouraged to be and do whatever we wanted. But the irony isn’t lost on me that even though Leigh Ann and I were both very involved in theater, I was the only one who pursued it.
I look at my own girls now and it seems so clear to me. Birdie is my older daughter. Full of her own anxieties, she is constantly pushing, pushing, pushing to be smarter, funnier, better. Our little one, Cricket, just exists. I don’t know if maybe parents are in so over their heads with their first children that they project all this stuff onto them. I always thought a good book would be How to Raise Your Second Child First. Of course, I have no idea how one would actually do that.
I remember my mother saying to me once, “You know, Biz, I think you’re here to help me heal my relationship with my own sister.” Which for years I thought was really narcissistic. But weirdly, when Birdie was born, I kind of understood.
When I was in my early twenties, my sister wrote me a letter apologizing for our childhood and how she had treated me. I had very little interest in her at that point, to be honest. She wasn’t there for my teen years, which were really painful, and she was an asshole to me when we were kids. I had no idea what kind of relationship we were supposed to have as adults. And here was this letter and my feeling was, Okay. Whatever. It’s fine.
But then the strangest thing happened. I had Birdie. My sister was in L.A. at the time, living on the west side, working for a production company (which, truthfully, she should have stayed at, ’cause I think she’d be running it by now). She’d been living in L.A. for about a year at this point, and we would see each other every few weeks and honestly, I always looked at meeting up with her as a chore, like I HAVE to invite my sister to that, right??
She showed up at the hospital while I was in labor and sat in the waiting room for seven hours waiting for Birdie to be born. I didn’t want her in the delivery room with me. I remember I was actually annoyed at the time that she had come.
“Why is she even here?” I asked Marc. “Why did she leave work?”
“Because, babe,” he said, “I think she’s excited and wants to be supportive of you.”
She brought Birdie a baby blanket—she had found one identical to the one she’d brought for me when I was born. And she cried when she saw Birdie. Then, for those next few months, those long new-baby months where I was a mess, she would drive an hour three times a week—most days after working a full day at her assistant job—to come see Birdie and sing to her and hold her and love her. And it cracked me open. Leigh Ann’s love for my daughter, who reminds me so much of my sister every day, allowed me to really love her too.
I cried for weeks when I found out I was pregnant with another girl.
“I can’t do it, Marc. Birdie is Leigh Ann and now we’re gonna have a me and I’m just gonna do the same shit my parents did and it’s the same thing over and over and over and I can’t do it.”
“Yes, you can,” he said patiently. “Birdie isn’t Leigh Ann. This baby isn’t you. You’re not your mom. Or your aunt or your grandmother. You’re you. And I’m me. I promise.”
The truth is, Birdie is very similar to my sister. She is smart and funny and weird and creative and so sweet to her little sister. She also has the rage. And if we’re being honest, Cricket is so much of me. But Marc is right. We’re not my parents.
I called my mom the other night, sobbing because Birdie tore everything off her bed, including her mattress and box springs, and was screaming at me and I couldn’t get her under control. She was hitting me and throwing things at me and I went into my bathroom and sat on the floor and cried and cried and cried. I told my mom that I didn’t know how to help her.
“What am I going to do?” I sobbed.
“You’re going to breathe, honey. And then go hug her. And you’re going to do better than we did.”
LIVE THROUGH THIS
(Hole)
The night before the last day of seventh grade, I slit my left wrist open with the Swiss Army knife my grandfather had given me as a gift the year before. Deep. Lengthwise. By accident.
My parents and I had gotten into some huge fight about who knows what. My sister wasn’t involved, but there was screaming and name-calling and hitting. I had had it with my family. Leigh Ann and I shared a bathroom with a door that led to the backyard. I knew it would be unlocked, so for dramatic effect, I ran out our front door, slamming it behind me. I then stealthily crept around the side of the house, where I snuck into my bathroom, then quietly tiptoed into my bedroom. Through the closed door, I could hear my parents yelling for me, not knowing where I’d gone. After a while, I heard my mom go into the garage and start the c
ar, and I sat back, so pleased with myself. She was gonna drive around our whole neighborhood looking for me! I imagined that just when they were about to call the police, I would emerge from my room triumphant and say, “DIDJA MISS ME??? I WAS HERE THE WHOLE TIME! SUCKERS!”
After a few minutes, though, I got bored and started to look around for something to do. I found a roll of clear packing tape that I had shoved a coin into—like in between the cardboard and the massive amount of tape—and for some reason thought, “Oh! It’d be a good idea to get that quarter out! That’s a good activity to kill some time!” So I grabbed the Swiss Army knife out of my little metal bank that had BUSY painted on top in bubble letters, and I opened it up. I started to cut the packing tape, toward me, of course, when the knife immediately slipped and sliced through my wrist.
You know when you’ve hurt yourself so badly you don’t even bleed for a few seconds? Or maybe you’ve seen that kind of thing in a movie? Like when Matt Damon smashes Jude Law’s face in The Talented Mr. Ripley? That injury delay? That’s what happened to my wrist. It didn’t even hurt, to be honest. But I knew I’d really done it. I screamed “FUCK!!!” and grabbed my wrist as blood started to pour out of it; then I ran into the living room, where my dad and my sister were watching a car race together.
When she saw the blood, Leigh Ann jumped up screaming, “OH MY GOD, BUSY, WHAT DID YOU DO???!!!” My dad got on the phone and called my mom (who had a giant cell phone, since she was a Realtor and needed it for her business). Leigh Ann tried to make me run my wrist under water, which seemed weird, but was also a good instinct. She wrapped a ton of paper towels around it and made me press it really hard, then put me in the car with my dad.
“KEEP IT OVER YOUR HEAD, BUSY. AND KEEP PRESSING REALLY HARD!!” she yelled as my dad peeled out for the hospital.
When we got to the ER, I was put in a room right away. My mom and sister showed up shortly thereafter. The ER doctor who had stitched me up was very kind, with a super soft, very soothing voice. I had to get two stitches internally and then around ten outside. There were a lot of questions from different doctors coming into my room, and I remember at one point a doctor shushing my mom and looking at me, like, This is a safe space, say what you need to. It literally didn’t occur to me that they thought I had done it on purpose. The doctors, I mean. My parents and sister just thought I was an idiot.
It didn’t help that I was so embarrassed by how I had injured myself that I initially lied and said the knife was open and fell off a shelf onto the inside of my wrist (COME ON, BUSY, I KNOW YOU’RE TWELVE BUT DO BETTER). After the truth came out, my parents were like, “Yeah. That’s a dumb thing that Busy would do.” Once the doctors were certain I was just stupid and not suicidal, they gave me some Tylenol and sent us on our way.
I ended the school year the next day, sitting in the final assembly with my hand all bandaged up and throbbing, too embarrassed to go to the school nurse to get more Tylenol. I was the girl who had dislocated her knee a few months earlier and now I had slit my own wrist open by accident.
So. Stupid.
I started eighth grade with a renewed sense of self. Over the summer, a couple weeks before school began, my parents finally let me get contact lenses. It was something I’d been begging for since I got glasses in the fourth grade (and had famously remarked, “Mom! The trees have leaves!”). I imagined that I would strut into eighth grade and that my classmates, most of whom I’d known since first grade, wouldn’t believe my transformation.
That can’t be Busy Philipps! She’s so beautiful and sophisticated without glasses!!!
I remember sitting in my new homeroom, just waiting for someone to recognize the new me, when Tyler Bloom, the kid I’d had a crush on since fourth grade, leaned over and said, “Did you get new shoes? You should have beat them up more.”
I had gotten new shoes over the summer. Brand-new kelly-green high-top Converse that my cool older cousin in Chicago had taken me to buy while we were visiting our family there. I loved them. I self-consciously rubbed one sole on top of the other shoe and said, “Oh yeah. I did. But also . . . I got rid of my glasses.”
He studied my face.
“You wore glasses?”
And that was it. It was probably the best response I got from anyone.
Eighth grade was the year that my group of friends began to expand and change. I started to hang out all the time with a girl named Lacey, who hadn’t gone to elementary school with us and whose parents had some unrealistic dream of their daughter being a cheerleader. Lacey introduced me to Kendra Cole, who was in Emily’s grade and therefore already in high school. The three of us became fast friends. On weekends, we would take the bus to Mill Avenue, where ASU is. We would wander around a bit before ending up in Trails, the local head shop. One of us would eventually get up the nerve to buy those bidi cigarettes, which weren’t even really cigarettes, and then we’d sit on a stoop and try to smoke them. Both Lacey and Kendra had parents who were very lax about things like rules and curfews. My mom was way tougher to fool, but this was before cell phones and the proliferation of being in CONSTANT CONTACT, and I think she just assumed we were generally not up to anything too terrible.
I had a few crushes on boys, but nothing had ever happened, like, physically with any of them. By the end of eighth grade, Lacey and Kendra couldn’t believe I’d never kissed a guy, and they became determined to make it happen for me. One Friday night, Lacey and I went to the bowling alley. There was a kid working there, probably sixteen or seventeen, tall and skinny with long hair. He kind of looked like an extra from the movie Singles and his name tag said ADAM. Lacey decided he should be my first kiss. He laughed at us as we kept coming over to the counter to flirt with him while he was spraying disinfectant into the bowling shoes.
“What time do you get off work?” Lacey asked him, and I rolled my eyes at her. I couldn’t believe she was doing this to me, even though I did think he was cute.
“Uhhhh, like eleven.”
Lacey’s parents were supposed to pick us up at ten. We walked away, dejected.
“Wait. I have an idea,” she said. “I’ll just call my parents and tell them that your mom is picking us up and we’re sleeping at your house. And then when we’re done hanging out with him, we can call my parents and tell them there was a mix-up!”
I wasn’t so sure about it, but I did want to make out with someone. Lacey handled the phone call and gave me a thumbs-up. And then we spent the next four hours doing nothing, waiting for this kid to get off work. Finally, he was ready to take off. The three of us wandered around the parking lot, which was emptying out by this point, and then decided to keep walking, over to a darkened office park. After what felt like forever, Lacey said, oh so casually, “I’m gonna be over here! You guys have fun!!!”
And she raced away. I sat down on a curb and Adam sat next to me. And then his mouth was on my mouth and there was so much spit and tongue that I was slightly horrified. I tried my best to figure my way into it, but it was just so weird.
As we leaned back, I saw Lacey running over to us.
“Busy!!!” she yelled, breathing hard. “YOUR MOM IS HERE! SHE’S ACROSS THE STREET AT THE BOWLING—!”
Before she could even finish her sentence, my mom’s Audi screeched into the empty lot, her windows down.
“GODDAMMIT, ELIZABETH, WHERE IN GOD’S NAME HAVE YOU TWO BEEN?! I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR YOU FOR AN HOUR! WE WERE ABOUT TO CALL THE POLICE!!!”
“JESUS! MOM!” I said, mortified. “WE WERE JUST HANGING OUT!!!!”
I glanced at my would-be suitor, my disgusting make-out partner, my first kiss, whose name wasn’t even Adam, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t remember his name. He shrugged and half waved before walking away.
“GET IN THE CAR!” my mom yelled. “NOW! YOU, TOO, LACEY. YOU CAN CALL YOUR PARENTS FROM MY PHONE.”
After dropping Lacey off, we rode home in silence.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” I said eventually. And I truly was.
That kiss wasn’t worth it. (By the way, so few are.)
“I don’t want to hear it, Elizabeth. What is wrong with you??”
I don’t know if anything was “wrong” with me. But I knew that if I wanted things to happen, I needed to make them happen for myself. A few weeks later, in humanities, Julie Morgan—who everyone knew smoked pot and had probably already had sex—looked at me after I said something and wryly noted, “You’re funny.”
It felt unbelievably validating. But I didn’t know how to repeat it. I was too self-conscious to actually be funny. She asked me if I wanted to come over that weekend and hang out.
My mom dropped me off and commented about the size of Julie’s house in Paradise Valley.
“Well, these people sure have money.”
We hung out in “her wing,” as she called it. She had her own entrance to her room that went to an outside courtyard. There were a few kids hanging out, and Julie asked if we all wanted to walk to the Paradise Valley Mall and go to the Vans store. But first, she said—as it if were obvious—we should get high.
I had never smoked pot and was freaked out but also very excited and curious. I would occasionally steal the little airplane bottles of alcohol my parents kept above the refrigerator and take little sips with my friends at sleepovers, but I don’t think we ever got anywhere near drunk. And Emily BB and I once tried to smoke oregano when I was in seventh grade.
But this was different. It clearly wasn’t Julie’s first rodeo, and her parents obviously didn’t mind, because we did it right there in her room. I took a few hits off the joint as they talked me through it. I didn’t want to overdo it. I thought I was stoned, but who knows now? We walked to the mall and hung out at the Vans store. I was trying so hard to feel this pot, you know? I grabbed a Baja pullover in the requisite red, green, and yellow and was feeling the fabric, really trying to focus in on my stonedness, when Julie came over and yanked the sleeve out of my hand, rolling her eyes. “Maybe, like, don’t try so hard.”
This Will Only Hurt a Little Page 4
