“...you should just accept who you are, flaws and all, because if you try to be someone you aren't, then eventually some turkey is going to shit all over your well-crafted facade, so you might as well save yourself the effort and enjoy your zombie books.”
—Jenny Lawson, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir
The Bloggess: John Green is a real bastard and I wish I could be more like him.
- (Jenny aka The Bloggess is AWESOME. Now that you know, you should go read her blog. The link is in the source.)
- (This is not my life; it's Jenny's)
- Conversation with my husband
- Victor: Oh my God, I could hear you sobbing all the way on the other side of the house. What’s wrong?
- me: This book. It’s so.incredibly. sad.
- Victor: Seriously? You’re crying over a book?
- me: It’s terrible and beautiful and perfect and I’m pretty sure I’m never going to stop crying.
- Victor: The Fault in Our Stars? What the shit, Jenny? It says it’s about terminal cancer patients in the very first sentence. Why would you even read that? You can’t watch Doctor Who without crying.
- me: No one with a soul can watch Doctor Who without occasionally crying. And besides, it’s a teen book. I thought it would be like Twilight, but with slightly less vampires.
- Victor: Seriously? It’s just a book. Calm down. These people are all imaginary.
- me: AND THEY’RE MY FRIENDS. ALL OF MY IMAGINARY FRIENDS ARE VERY SICK, VICTOR, AND I’D APPRECIATE IT IF YOU’D RESPECT THE GRAVITY OF THE SITUATION.
- Victor: You are so confusing.
- Conclusion: Victor doesn’t understand how books work.
“Right now there’s some minor drama on the Internet about a woman’s right to choose to have a child. You might think I’m talking about “choice vs. life” but that would be far too obvious and actually worthy of argument. Instead the kerfuffle is over the fact that some women are loudly choosing to be childfree. I actually have a pretty strong opinion about this. Who. The fuck. Cares? Choosing not to have kids is a lot like choosing not to wear a sweater. You may feel comfortable not wearing a sweater but most likely someone is going to say, “You need a sweater, you poor thing. You’re going to catch a cold.” Then you’ll explain that getting a cold from temperature is an old wives' tale but they’ll still insist you wear a sweater. Now you’ve got a sweater that you never wanted in the first place and you have to carry it around with you at the amusement park and it gets heavier and heavier and eventually you want to just throw it in the trash and when you finally let someone else hold your sweater you feel free and fabulous and like you could run a marathon if people would just stop throwing sweaters at you. And that’s what having a child is like. At least that’s what it feels like when one is thrust on you by society. People who have always wanted kids (myself included) sometimes have a hard time understanding why others wouldn’t want a sweater. Especially when it’s your favorite sweater. The one you searched for forever. Comfortable and snuggly and a little too baggy and probably not flattering at all, and all your sweater-free friends keep telling you to leave it at home but you know that later that night there will be a time when you’ll happily bundle yourself up in that sweater and feel like the whole world is right. You’ll look at your sweater-free friend and think, "She must be so cold. I wish she could feel as happy and content as I do right now." You might even be tempted to push a sweater on your friend but here's the deal. She doesn’t want your damn sweater. And that’s fine. Awesome even. There are already plenty of sweaters in the world and the last thing we need is a bunch of sweaters getting left at the bottom of duffel bags by people who never asked for your damn sweater to begin with. I guess my point is, sweaters make terrible analogies. And that it’s okay people to choose to be parents or to choose to be child-free. In fact, it’s more than okay. It’s the American way. Stop being so concerned about sweaters, you guys. It’s embarrassing all of us.”
—Jenny Lawson
The Bloggess
