Excerpt
Perfect Is Boring (And It Tastes Like Kale)
Lie #1: Today I’ll Be Perfect10/06/2019
Dear Diary,
I couldn’t find my keys again.
After looking for an eternity (okay, ten minutes . . .), I was about to give up and resign myself to a life of biking forever. It’s fine, I can pick up all four kids from school on my handlebars. Graham asked me if I threw them away, which was offensive.
They were in the trash.
Love,
Jess
The high school doors loomed ominously in front of me, and I felt sick. I glanced behind me. Should I make a run for it? But a river of students flooded into the entrance, pulling me with them. Laughter, shouting, and the clanging of lockers opening and shutting merged into an indecipherable cloud of noise.
I was the new kid again, and I wanted to be anywhere in the whole world but here. A group of gorgeous girls walked past me, their Abercrombie jeans hugging just below their hips, their long straight hair flowing behind them, and their perfume wafting over me like a secret they would never tell. I was suddenly hyperaware of my clothes and the way my hair frizzed instead of lying flat. I shifted the weight of my backpack on my bony shoulder, my T-shirt and pants still hanging off me, even though I was six months into recovery from a yearlong battle with anorexia. The bell rang and my soul left my body, the school spreading out in front of me like a maze. I couldn’t be late. It would just be one more thing to add to my list of screwups and things that were wrong with me.
Jessica Cushman:
Tall, but surprisingly bad at basketball (she blames her small feet). Five foot nine and size seven and a half shoe, in case you were wondering.
Tries to blend in, but kinda sticks out in a bad way, like you might trip over her (again, very tall).
Bad sense of direction and zero navigation skills (that’s why she is definitely going to be late to first period).
Face turns bright red after any and all physical exertion. You might think she needs a hospital, she does not, it’s just her face.
Organization style is “shove papers in bag, in drawer, in locker, and never throw anything away just in case.” Definitely doesn’t know where her class schedule is or where that sticky note with her locker combination went.
Person she identifies with the most from 1990s rom-coms: Josie Geller from
Never Been Kissed.
The whole day felt like one of those dreams where you’ve lost your voice. The only thing more terrifying than class were the snack breaks between periods, when other kids congregated and I took laps up and down the hall as if I had somewhere to go so I wouldn’t seem like the friendless loser that I was. At lunchtime I hid in a bathroom stall, tucked my feet up on the toilet lid in case they checked beneath the stalls, and cried. The only outlet for my pain was tossing the sandwich from home in the garbage. I couldn’t control a single thing in my life except that sandwich. I just knew that the world wouldn’t hurt so badly if I were more. More what? Um, everything.
Have you felt it? Do you know what I mean? I just wish I could hug you in the moment when you first experienced this, and I wish I could hug me, too. We were never meant to feel this way.
Our stories are all different, but over the last decade of writing, I’ve talked to hundreds of thousands of women who struggle to accept themselves as they are. They struggle with feeling that they lack something, that they’re not quite enough, and that somehow (at the exact same time) they are far too much.
It’s hard to be a woman.
If we’re organized and driven, we feel bad that we’re not more easygoing and spontaneous. We wrestle with shame because we’re human in our parenting, friendships, and marriages, not superheroes who never make mistakes. We question our value because we don’t look like fitness models—and if we are fitness models, we still question our value and have deep insecurities over our hair or skin. Speaking of hair, we wish we brushed it more and remembered to clean the receipts out of the side-door compartment of our car, or we wish we weren’t so uptight about keeping everything organized just right. We wish we slowed down more to enjoy the moment, or we wish we were more driven and had more purpose in our lives (sometimes we wish both at the same time, and that’s confusing). At a surface level, our hair is too flat, too curly, too stringy; our hips are too wide, too womanly, too narrow, too boyish. On a deeper level, we are too sensitive, too passive, too intense, too angry, too bossy.
We apologize constantly, for being human, or for being incapable of being seventeen places at once. We feel guilty for missing bake sales and volunteer hours because we’re working full-time, or not joining that family vacation because we can’t afford it. There is no winning. There is only trying and trying until we’re sick, tired, and disillusioned.
About a decade ago, I made a friend named Aubree (you’re going to hear a lot about her). Aubree changed my life. From day one, she was frighteningly real. “How’s it going?” I’d ask her if I ran into her in town. “It’s pretty horrible today, actually,” she’d say. “I’m struggling with some things and just not feeling great.”
Her authenticity terrified me, but it also intrigued me. I was busy channeling my best Pollyanna. I’m happy! Maybe the happiest! Marriage is great, thanks for asking. Motherhood is great, too. I love not sleeping, smelling like sour milk, and losing every shred of my identity. It’s my favorite.
When I was around Aubree, I felt at ease in my own skin, and I began opening up about my struggles. It was a learning process, though. She’d ask how I was doing (in a way that was sincere, like she really wanted to know), and I’d feel like I’d just been delivered a pop quiz from my high school chemistry teacher. Good? Is that the right answer? I mean maybe I’m not good. I haven’t cried in years, and I feel disconnected from my heart. This is hard. How much of my grade does this count for, because if it’s not a lot, can we go to the next question?
One morning, Aubree texted me when I was in the middle of household chaos. So far, I’d broken up five different sibling rivalries, fished a Tonka truck out of the toilet, and begged my kids to just eat their breakfast (and then cleaned most of said breakfast out of the rug). Hey want to meet at the beach? she asked. I started to text Sounds great! and stopped myself. Instead, I wrote: Hi, everything is a crapshoot today. I’m tired and grumpy and my kids are crazy. I can come, but I’m probably not going to be much fun.
Her response changed my life:
I don’t care if you’re fun or not fun. I like you both ways.It was one text out of the thousands we’ve now sent, but I’ve never forgotten it. Aubree’s graciousness and acceptance of me (in all my sweaty, dirty-messy-bun, under-caffeinated, uptight glory) caused shame I didn’t even realize I was feeling to almost physically lift off me. The stress of that particular morning was just a sampling of the pressure I felt most days. It wasn’t simply about the Tonka truck or the rug; it was deeper than that. It was the invisible mental load that really weighed me down: the weight of expectation I felt as a woman.
There’s a post I see sometimes on Instagram: “I don’t know who needs to hear this, but unclench your jaw.” (It’s me. I’m the one who needs to hear it.) If you just thought, It’s me, too, I was totally clenching, let’s take a second.
Unclench your jaw.
Soften your forehead.
Drop your shoulders.
Roll your head gently to the right and to the left.
Wiggle your toes.
Breathe deep.
You’re not alone.
According to a recent poll, 71 percent of millennial women said it’s their job to be the chief worry officer (CWO) in their household (I felt that). Eighty-two percent felt that although it’s well known that women are overburdened, no one is doing anything about it. For that reason, 74 percent are worried about the mental state of their friends. The study also asked them to describe their current mental state. The top words used were stressed, anxious, tired, depressed, and confused. I don’t care if you’re millennial, Xennial, or Generation X, it affects us all.
What words would you use to describe your current mental state? I’d like to add frazzled to the mix, or maybe juggling feral cats. It’s not until someone like Aubree gives us permission to be human that we realize how heavy our load is and how tired we are.
What are you stressed about today? Maybe this morning you had a fight with your teenager and you feel terrible. Maybe you just checked your bank account and realized it’s been a full year that you’ve been paying for that gym membership (and not going). Maybe you put your foot in your mouth really badly the other day and you can’t stop thinking about it. Maybe your list of to-dos is longer than your actual life span. Maybe you’re just bone-tired and you don’t know why.
