Go if you are happy and go if you are not. If you're stuck in the mud or the shit or you've just climbed out and don't know what to do with all the lightness you've found. Go to celebrate yourself. Go to be held. Go to meet Jen and hear the way her voice wraps around the soft part of your tummy and makes you feel safe. Go to meet friends and eat good food and laugh really hard and maybe scream FUCK just because you can. Just go.
When I still found myself in tears and banging my head on the wall at the prospect of facing another day, I knew it was time to return to medication. I’d gotten off of antidepressants with the help of my psychiatrist and therapist last winter, but I had to reconsider that decision.
I was too sensitive, always told to stop crying so much, or to settle down because I expressed so much excitement and emotion. From the emotional neglect, I began to feel isolated and unworthy.
Walking naked into our room, no need for the cover of darkness, Feast your eyes on me, I’m finally eager to say. I am that girl in front of the mirror again, reveling in her own body, inviting my husband to be equally seduced. I’ve shed my youthful need to look perfect.
I came home with a pile of photographs feeling unsettled and depressed. Life had called. We had children to meet after school and dinners to prepare. In the end, we divided the pictures haphazardly, each of us taking hundreds and promising to copy the good ones for one another.
Sarah Silverman says depression is feeling homesick except you’re already home. Losing the home inside myself will never ever be something I choose. That is mine and if a tiny white pill needs to remind me of that, then praise that glorious silver angel and the holy water that helps her sing.
Why do we pluck and staple our skin, why do we smear $80 gels on our cellulite, why do we suck in our bellies when people snap our picture? Why do we want to be beautiful? Is it to be a little hated? Or is it to be so very much loved, by total strangers
In a culture where strength and stoicism were everything, somehow in that moment I had failed. What was it I did? I hadn’t cried. I never cried. But did I let my face show the pain? Had I furrowed my eyebrows? I shouldn’t have squeezed my own hand.
25 years later, our roles had reversed. I sat packed into his car, surrounded by his boxed belongings, clutching my own padding for comfort. This time, while there were still plenty of giggles, it was his game. This time, against all my controlling instincts, I was merely along for the 900-mile ride.
That is what I am here to talk to you about. Whoever that boy in your head is, and I know there is one, he does not matter. The next five won’t matter either. I know that sounds crazy because you are supposed to date as you grow up and it is supposed to be fun and it is. It is fun until you realize you did not do it out of love. You dated to say you could have.
