In a way, I am heartened by the backlash against the oil spill. In another way, I find it completely hypocritical, at least in those who continue to act as if there is nothing wrong with the way they live their lives.

If you are an American, living as the average American does, then listen: there is already something wrong.

I mean, let’s face it. Being wrong is pretty much your human birthright anywhere.

“Hypocritical” is a loaded and accusatory word that some intelligent part of me is whispering to me that I should not be using, but I’ve endured far too much “fuck you, hippie” backlash from the very same people who are angry at BP right now to feel any other way about it.

For my own hurt feelings and my own frustration, I apologize. I am biased. This is personal. I am struggling emotionally as I write this, and if that causes me to speak too strongly to you, forgive me, because putting you on the defensive is the worst thing I could do. It’s not going to help my cause, and I know it.

I frequently stay silent on this issue, terrified I will be labeled the rude vegetarian, the one with no social skills, the one who compares a meat-eater to Hitler and is then surprised when the entire dinner table does not concede to her viewpoint immediately.

But I promise you that I am less angry than baffled, and less self-righteous than frustrated. Because deep down, I still believe that you would want to be better, if you understood. Deep down, I can’t believe that you really don’t care about what the right thing is or whether environmental issues matter. I don’t hate you. I just don’t understand you, or why we don’t agree. Who are these people who suddenly, in the face of this obvious and difficult-to-ignore oil spill, care so much about animals, about ecosystems, about what happens when greed and pollution infiltrate nature? How are we on the same side now, when they have they been so disrespectful or insulting of my views in the past?

How is it that they will join me in my sadness over the oil spill, yet mock my avoidance of meat–which, as we all have heard a million times, is “tasty, tasty murder”? (Oh, you hilariously original jokesters! So naughty and irreverent! You like animals, too … ON YOUR PLATE!!! Yes, yes, we know.) Are oil-coated birds, who die quickly and at least got to fly around a bit, sadder than cooped-up and languishing chickens with their beaks cut off? Is there really a big enough distinction between these two creatures to decide that the treatment of one is not worth caring about? When does it start to matter to you, what companies will do to animals or the environment to make money?

At least the oil spill was an accident. We throw plenty of pollution into the world on purpose, and some of what you eat was miserable by actual design.

Factory farming causes an unbelievable amount of pollution, among other issues. In fact, eating meat the way most Americans do it (though meat-eating really is not my sole focus here at all) is really, really bad for the environment. Look it up if you don’t believe me. It’s not just being spouted by PETA at this point, and trust me, I hear you on the habitual overenthusiasm of PETA, because I think the Sea-Kitten campaign is possibly one of the silliest things that has ever happened anywhere, apart from the fact that it became viral, which was possibly genius on their part.

The meat thing strikes closest to my heart. That’s obvious. But there are the other issues. Lots of them. Lots and lots of opportunities to be better, and a lot of people aren’t taking any of them, nor do they want to. In fact, they meet other people’s efforts with derision.

And that’s what really kills me. Anytime I reach these heights of frustration, I am not talking about the benignly ignorant, though I do hold people somewhat accountable for seeking out information once they are adults. I am talking about people who actually LOOK DOWN on people who have been trying to make things better. The people who feel so judged by what other people do that they will actually INSULT someone’s effort to live more responsibly, or brag about how little they care about such efforts.

If someone is trying to be vegan, or not drive, or whatever the case may be, they do not deserve your disrespect. If you cannot admire them in their efforts to be better people, at least appreciate that what they are doing is hard, and that they are doing it with good intentions. In other words, your bacon joke was terrifically rude, and your assertion that they are oversensitive blowhards who need to lighten up was completely inappropriate. It’s senseless to hate on them. It might even be a fine idea to contemplate joining them. At the least, I really don’t think it will hurt you to try.

BP, you might contend, is an awful company for ignoring the damage it was doing. But are you paying any attention to the damage you’re doing? Your life comes with it a running toll of waste and pollution. Do you care, or are you rolling your eyes right now, because that is like sooooo not the same?

Why isn’t it the same? Because you can’t see it as easily, or because everyone is guilty of it?

I don’t eat meat. I eschew dairy at home and would like to go completely vegan, and I take responsibility for the fact that I am not, yet, not when I’m eating out and am presented with a choice between a boring non-filling salad and something vegetabley with cheese on it. I use environmentally friendly products when I can. I’m researching bicycles and Zipcar in an effort to go carless in the future. I am not telling you this because I think I am singlehandedly saving the world or because I think I am some kind of saint for doing these things. The truth is quite the opposite: I still have so much blood on my hands that even contemplating it is an exercise in despair that I try to avoid. I could be better. I could be so much better. I know this. I’m not speaking as someone who has it all figured out, as someone who thinks she is good at this. I am not good at this. The air conditioner is running in my apartment right now, and there’s nothing necessary about that.

But I do care, and I struggle to be better, to keep turning that air-conditioning knob down another notch. Why be hateful about that or flat-out refuse to consider joining me in any way? Is it such a blow to your ego to admit that you could be better? Is it so hard to admit imperfection?

If you are angry that BP was cavalier about the oil spill, I can understand that. I absolutely can. What I cannot understand is why you fail to apply those same standards to yourself. What I cannot understand is why you think caring about this stuff makes me worthy of mocking as an overemotional and irrational blowhard. Hey, global warming scientists: lighten up, would you? Can’t you take a joke? And by joke we mean hole in the ozone layer.

I am not asking you to be perfect. I am not asking you to eat vegan at every meal or sell your car tomorrow. What I am asking you to do is try. To take a deep breath, release that instinctive desire to be stubborn, look around at your life, and make some effort, somewhere, to be better. I am asking you to care about all of the smaller things, the hidden things, the way you care about this oil spill that won’t allow you to pretend it doesn’t exist. I am just asking you to try. And if you cannot, I am asking you to, at the very least, shut up and let me try.

My hope, though, is that if you put down your defensive armor for a second, you will realize that you can do so much more than that.

I am not speaking because I am angry. Plenty of things that make me angry never make it to this blog, because, really: what’s it going to accomplish? No. The truth, the vulnerable and possibly pitiful truth, is that I am speaking because, deep down, I still believe, and I probably always will.

a) Like animals? I LOVE animals!

b) I’m an asshole.

***

2. Do you support yourself?

a) I like to think of myself as a professional live-with-my-mom-er. The pay sucks, but the fringe benefits include meatloaf and also never having to take any responsibility for myself ever.

b) Yes. Duh. I’m an adult.

c) I will be happy to support myself just as soon as I find a way to magically make work not suck. (This is not to say I’m not industrious–I have nine graduate degrees! So far!)

d) I do support myself, but it’s terrible. Like, we’re talking “coal mines” terrible, except more memos and less dying of black lung. My job is like being stuffed into an iron maiden that has been doused in lemon juice and then salted for maximum sting, and then having the door slammed on me again and again and again and again. The only silver lining to any of this is that it makes for absolutely fascinating dinner conversation. You’re welcome.

***

3. What are your flaws?

a) The only flaw I can think of is that I am sometimes followed around my bathroom by a man who looks like me and mimics my every behavior. He even brushes his teeth at the same time that I do. It’s really weird. Anyway, other than that, I guess I hadn’t really given my flaws much thought before.

b) My biggest flaw is that I suffer from an all-consuming fetish for crazy cat ladies.

c) My main flaw is that I am very sensitive about my flaws, okay? Are you happy now?

d) My parole officer says it doesn’t count as a flaw anymore if you’re already paid your debt to society.

***

4. I’m extremely absentminded and forgetful. Can you cope with that?

a) That incident where you forgot something is already forgotten by me in turn, on account of you being so damned brilliant. Not to mention pretty. Let’s make out.

b) Not only can I cope with that, but I am full of helpful and very earnest suggestions. For instance, did you know that you could hang your keys on a hook? Or use a day planner to schedule your daily activities? Or, I know! I will just cheerfully supervise to make sure you don’t screw up. Does your pained expression mean that you are uncomfortably turned on right now? I suppose that patronization IS sexy, now that I stop and think about it. C’mere, you.

c) I can’t answer this question because I’m too busy seething with resentment about the fact that we are twenty minutes late to dinner because you managed to lose your left shoe while traversing the seven feet between your front door and the car–even though you were wearing it at the time. I mean what the FUCK.

***

5. What are your feelings on children?

a) I should have named my twin girls Lub and Dup, because when you have kids, your heart really does walk around outside of your body. I never knew love until I had those children. Nor did I do anything else of significance that I can remember.

b) I enjoy other people’s children … sort of. In theory. When we aren’t on an airplane. Or in the grocery store. Or on vacation. Or trying to accomplish anything. Actually, if that kid over there says “Mom? Mom? Mom? Mom?” one more time and receives no answer, I will pay you fifty dollars to give me a salad-tong vasectomy right here in this restaurant.

c) I owe the world my children; it would be downright cruel to deny humanity my genetic material. What kind of lazy, selfish slacker doesn’t reproduce?

d) I rarely even think about children unless I actually trip over one when I’m sprinting toward the ice-cream truck. Bomb Pops are the best.

***

6. How would you describe your political stance?

a) Coincidentally enough, I am single in the first place because the homosexual agenda destroyed my American family in particular.

b) I’m actually very well informed in politics and I know exactly what everyone in Washington is doing wrong. I’d be happy to outline all of it for you just as soon as I’ve finished telling you how terrible my job is. You aren’t in a hurry to get home or anything, are you?

c) I wish we would nuke almost everyone else in the world and then bring back the electric chair in case there are any survivors.

d) I find it baffling that both the rights of the individual and the will of the majority are cited as the logical basis of decisionmaking in our government, which doesn’t actually make that much sense, as the two become mutually exclusive quite frequently. For the most part it hurts my head, but I generally don’t feel the need to be the boss of everyone and wouldn’t have voted in favor of Prop 8, if that’s what you’re asking.

***

7. Is it important to you that we live together/get married?

a) This conversation is already hurting my feelings.

b) Yes, desperately important and all I have ever wanted, but the fact that you are the first girl I’ve met who doesn’t want me to buy her a diamond actually fuels my infatuation with you and is, in fact, the only reason I’ve kept you around this long. Whatever you do, don’t give in, no matter how much I beg. Speaking of which … can we move in together yet? God it’s so hot when you break my heart like this.

c) Not really, no.

***

8. Are you happy?

a) No, but I can tell from your whimsical manner and joie de vivre that you could help me get there by taking me by the hand and leading me on a journey of self-discovery that will ultimately reveal the magic of the world around me, just like Natalie Portman in Garden State. Good grief, it’s about TIME that sort of thing happened in real life.

b) We all have our days, but most of the time, yes, I am.

c) Yes, but then again, I’m on a lot of drugs. No … like … a lot of drugs.

d) No … but in my defense, I am cursed. Judging from a wealth of empirical evidence, my fate is to wade through an endless stream of petty inconveniences designed specifically to obliterate any chance I might have had at experiencing joy or contentment. My existence is one continuous Nerf dart to the face. Do not get me started on papercuts.

***

9. Has life humbled you yet?

a) Of course life has humbled me. Nobody does humble like I do humble. I’m probably the humblest person you’re ever going to meet. Just the other day, I was probably more aware of my flaws and my insignificance in the scheme of things than anyone else. I make a point of winning at humble because otherwise someone might get confused and mistake me for a raging egomaniac.

b) Is this hearty burst of rueful laughter enough of an answer for you?

c) No, but that makes sense when you take into account that I am really, really special. Would my mom have spent so much time cutting all the crusts off my sandwiches if I weren’t? EXACTLY. Anyway, don’t take my word for it–the quality of the novel I’m writing will speak for itself. It’s about an underappreciated protagonist whose above-average attributes are finally recognized and validated with fame and fortune.

***

10. Hmm … you actually seem pretty awesome so far. Uh oh … are you crazy?

a) Shhhh. They can hear you … they can ALWAYS hear you.

b) I’m crazy for you, baby–like the Madonna song, if the Madonna song had been about stalking. Are you even getting these answers? I’d better resend them fourteen times just in case your comment form was on the fritz or your computer screen had been smashed in a jealous rage.

c) Yes, but as soon as I get rich, I’ll just be “eccentric.” The good news is, I can still be “charming” in the meantime.

d) No … but I’m kind of boring, it turns out. Whoops.

***
YOUR SCORE
1-3: Don’t date anyone.
4-6: Don’t date me or my friends.
7-9: Don’t date me.
10: You’re such a liar.

I don’t know that I’ve ever been as overcome with deja vu as I was when we walked down the jetbridge together, toward our plane. I don’t know how to explain the certainty of that moment, the certainty I have always felt at that moment when we receive our boarding passes and fall into step together, our luggage rolling into alignment behind us to form a rumbling procession, but I will try: it felt less like what we used to do and more like who we had always been. It didn’t feel nostalgic, but it did feel profoundly true. It felt like that little bit of home that you recognize even more readily when you are exploring somewhere else entirely.

This isn’t to say that we don’t experience the occasional culture shock. “I feel like I’m on the wrong side of the bed,” Jeff joked from his side of the room as we were falling asleep; he had always slept on my right, and we had accidentally claimed our beds backward. Likewise, when he is at my elbow, I am embarrassed to admit that I sometimes forget to pay for little things that I’m buying, like my own latte; he was always the one who carried our money.

Mostly, though, we just laugh, because if you don’t insist on getting all schmaltzy about it, it really is sort of funny, the way everything is the same and yet not at all the same, in this foreign country we find ourselves navigating.

Here is the thing I feel strange admitting in a culture hellbent on convincing everyone that divorce is some kind of cultural poison: I love having an ex-husband. It’s a shame I don’t have several more of them, really, in case the first one is too busy to go out to dinner or one of them gets hit by a bus or something, or maybe we just decide we want to play a more complex round of Monopoly than two people can allow for.

(Though, I suppose if I had several, I would have to change my plans to get a “#1 Ex-Husband” mug made for Jeff for his birthday, which would be a shame, because I think he’s going to get a kick out of it.)

Sometimes I don’t see him for months, but when I do, he always knows what sorts of restaurants I will like and which movies I’ll want to see. Awhile ago, we stood out in the cold so he could teach me to change my car headlight, and I met him at the coffee shop a few weeks ago to help him write a letter. He kept borrowing my snowboard, so eventually I just gave it to him; we’ve passed our DLP projector back and forth a few times now, depending on which of us is less busy and more in the mood to watch movies. I’ve told him he can have my car when I get around to getting another one (he still has the keys, and has been known to re-park it in the event that he sees a space closer to my door, which is nice except when it makes me feel as if I am going senile), and if/when I sell my book, some of that money (all four dollars of it) will be his, for supporting me as avidly as he did, both emotionally and financially, while I wrote most of it.

I married very well, it turns out. I am even more sure of that now that it’s over.

People tell me that what we claim to be doing is impossible–that we either did not have big enough problems from the outset or that we have not yet moved on romantically. “Oh, just wait until one of you remarries,” they say, because God forbid we all avoid getting ahead of ourselves and just enjoy some good news for once. (He has a girlfriendish who has far more claim to him than I do at this point, and I would totally go to his next wedding, if he would have me. My love life is even more complicated; frankly, Jeff is the simplest and most platonic thing in it.) There must be some reason, they contend, that we have been spared from animosity or estrangement, and obviously it is through no effort of our own. They list all the reasons that most people could not do what we have done, and they question whether our divorce was even necessary in the first place, forcing me to either explain to them in detail all of the awful things that Jeff and I have done to each other or endure the destruction of my credibility.

And you know what? I think people need to stop it, for their own sake. I think they need to stop assuming that it isn’t possible and start finding ways to make it possible, because not only is divorce not going away, but divorce is not even the problem, or at least it doesn’t necessarily have to be. I am not the only one in the history of divorce to feel that way–nor are such positive outcomes reserved for the childless. Jeff’s parents, for instance, used to move in and out of the family home every six months so that their children wouldn’t have to, and they remain friendly to this day. I grew up living up the street from duplex families who had mommies on the first floor and daddies on the second floor.

Can it always be done? Of course not; it takes two (and sometimes more than two, if new girlfriends and boyfriends and wives and husbands are involved). But I do think that, as a society, we need to learn to divorce better, because staying married is sort of like staying abstinent: the best solution is not the best solution at all if it routinely fails to happen, so perhaps we should stop acting as if life has to be so goddamned ideal all the time and start working with what we have.

Should you ever find yourself ending your marriage, I encourage you to draw solace from the manner in which various people console you. Many married people reacted to my situation with horror; what was happening to me was their worst-case scenario, romantically speaking–their monster under the bed. The smartest and coolest divorced people I know, on the other hand, were both more sympathetic and much less alarmed on my behalf. They didn’t say it, because they didn’t want to patronize me or minimize my pain, but if I had paid attention, I would have seen that, deep down, they never had any doubt that I would be fine, if I wanted to be.

Who are you going to listen to: the well-intentioned but inexperienced people who have never been through it and are nearly panicking on your behalf regarding everything miserable you will surely be required to endure, according to their imagined version of how awful divorce must be, or the people who have been there–the ones who reassure you calmly, discuss the situation without theatrics, and treat your eventual healing as a foregone conclusion, as if you are merely suffering one really epic zinger of a scraped knee?

If you have decided to listen to the latter, and you need to hear it one more time, I am ready to pass along that message, because it’s true: divorce happens, and it can’t erase you, and you will be fine, if you want to be.

This whole thing, this entire trip, has been so us. This is us, this exchange of gleeful expressions while we strap ourselves in. This is us, this passing back and forth across the aisle of headphones, powerbars, sweatshirts, and everything else we share as communal property in an unconscious habit ten years in the making. This is us, this tandem head-scratching over coins and rail passes and signs lettered in a foreign language. We stop, we lean in, we contemplate, we figure it out, and we keep going.

“You Are Here,” the maps tell us, and it’s true: we still are.

ALMOST COMICALLY INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM ANY OTHER HUMAN BEING ALIVE
I like fun. I enjoy going out, staying in, and eating food that tastes good. I also enjoy snuggling and laughing. Sometimes I watch movies. I live in a house and have a job. The first thing people usually notice about me would have to be my smile, my eyes, or my unique inability to pick myself out of a lineup. (My friends could, though, and they claim I am attractive, with a great sense of humor.)

PRETTY OBVIOUSLY TRAUMATIZED
I’m looking for a girl who won’t use me as a sugar daddy, cheat on me, lie to me, steal from me, send me a breakup video of her peeing on my toothbrush, later reveal herself to actually be a tranny, or kill my cat and hang it from the light fixture for me to find when I come home. NO GAMES. Please reply with subject line “I’m real” or I will just assume you are a spam-bot.

NOT REALLY MAKING ANY SENSE
27/M/yourtown HWP DDfree LOL EOE sound good hit me up peace j/k

WILDLY AND ALMOST POIGNANTLY OPTIMISTIC
I am looking for a woman to come over to my house and give me a blowjob while I’m playing video games. Please arrive dressed in a trenchcoat with nothing underneath (garter belt will be provided). When you are finished, don an apron and high heels, bake me a cake, frost it with a personal message (just make it out to Jerry), and then leave immediately, leaving only several nude Polaroids of yourself behind, preferably ones of you making out with the optional stripper I am willing to hire for the occasion. I will consider all applicants but I am more likely to select you if you send me your phone number, a good picture of you, an in-depth essay on your merits (resume also acceptable), and $50. Good luck.

SHAMELESSLY WORKING SOME KIND OF POSSIBLY OCCASIONALLY EFFECTIVE MARKETING ANGLE
I can’t wait to find a woman to spoil. I’m looking for someone who likes to be showered with rose petals like the queen she is. I love buying expensive gifts, giving daylong massages, and making dinners from scratch to serve by candlelight. Compliments to you will stream endlessly out of my mouth, even when I am sleeping, because I will dream only of you. The only thing I ask in return is that you allow me to occasionally stop painting your toenails just long enough to bask in your glow like an ancient South American sun worshipper.

NOT PARTICULARLY FAMILIAR WITH THE THEORIES OF DR. FREUD
I’m just looking for a girl who is attractive enough to meet my standards. I work out constantly while simultaneously sitting on a motorcycle that I have attached to a parachute so that I will have something to rev loudly while skydiving. My hobbies are cars, muscles, protein, and shark-wrestling. I’m so virile that I have to use custom-made lead condoms, not that the regular ones would be big enough anyway. You can only see me kissing one bicep in the picture but I assure you that the other one is bigger. If you know how to handle a real man and you aren’t fat or ugly, hit me up.

SHOULD MAYBE NOT EVEN BE HERE RIGHT NOW
I am looking for someone to restore my belief in love and teach me about the power of second chances now that my marriage has fallen apart. Or at least it will probably fall apart, because she not only told me it’s over and walked out of the room a few minutes ago, but I can also hear her packing a suitcase right now and rounding up the kids to take them to her mother’s house. My ideal woman will be patient, forgiving, and willing to help me put the pieces of my heart back together right after we mop them up off the floor they are currently splattering onto.

PROBABLY BLUFFING SO DON’T EVEN WORRY ABOUT IT
Hey, you. Yeah, you. I can see you. Are you her? Are you the one? I’ve been looking all over for you, and I know you must be out there. It isn’t creepy that I’m addressing you directly, is it? Because I feel as if I have known you all our lives, and I know that you must be looking for me too. Message me, and let’s see where this goes! I can’t wait to meet you, and I do mean YOU, the one sitting right there, looking at her computer screen.

ACTUALLY PRETTY DECENT
I find a creative way to demonstrate that I am smart and funny, rather than requiring you to take my word for it. While I know what I want, I’m happy to demonstrate my reasonable expectations by avoiding gagworthy phrases like “the one” and “soulmate.” My picture is larger than four pixels and also from this decade, I trust you to get my jokes, and I don’t mind poking fun at myself. I am rare, and I’m pretty sure you’ll be smart enough to pick up on that without me begging you to believe me. I don’t take any of this too seriously, and I’m aware that the odds of this working out aren’t great, but I do not consider myself too good to put forth a reasonable effort, nor do I demonstrate a pathological fear of wasting my time, so I’m happy to give it a go. I am clearly okay with it not working out anyhow, seeing as there is obviously a lot more to me than my love life. Unfortunately, this amazing impression of me you’re getting has more to do with my innate writing ability and shrewd approach to representing myself well than any of my actual attributes as a person, but … well … it’s a start. Isn’t it?

Recently, you may have noticed that many book-lovers online have been tweeting or blogging through a process of Kindle acceptance. For your convenience, I have outlined these stages below.

Please note that my description of these stages is in no way exaggerated. I have never exaggerated anything in my life. True story.

—–

STAGE ONE
I hate the Kindle. The Kindle is going to ruin everything good that has ever happened to anyone ever. The Kindle is the manufactured cancellation of the human childhood. The Kindle will give everyone headaches with the backlit screen it does not actually have. I have never used the Kindle, but I still know that I hate it, because I do not require actual firsthand experience to draw ardent conclusions about the world and then broadcast them angrily to anyone who will listen. It makes me downright despondent that the Kindle lacks many features so prominent in my fond memories of reading (i.e., highlighting), even though it does not actually lack these features at all, which I would know if I had ever used one for five minutes. RAAAAR! I HATE YOU, KINDLE!

STAGE TWO
I grudgingly admit that having a Kindle would be useful in some situations, not that I will ever get a Kindle, because I am the sort of quality person who keeps it real even in very adverse conditions. It is not easy being me, but the most important thing is that I fall asleep at night clutching my collection of principles to my bosom while I enjoy the warm feeling of knowing that I have not yet surrendered to my growing doubt that I actually have no idea what I am talking about, on account of never having used that thing I hate a lot. But I still hate it. A lot. Just so you know.

STAGE THREE
I will maybe get a Kindle but only because someone got me some Amazon gift cards or something. Or maybe my husband will get me one for my birthday. I can’t control what other people buy me. It’s not like I paid for the Kindle myself, so it’s almost like not getting a Kindle at all. I am sort of getting this Kindle ironically, in a way. I practically stole it. The joke is on you, Amazon!

STAGE FOUR (Kindle arrives)
I am going to name my next child Kindle. If I wasn’t planning on having a child, I am now, for the sole purpose of naming it Kindle. I am willing to explore alternate avenues, such as adoption, if necessary.

—–

Should you find yourself in any the first stages, feeling hesitant to progress to the next one, allow me to tell you what I personally enjoy about the Kindle.

But first: a discussion on why everyone hates the Kindle so much in the first place.

Some people, like me, love to READ. The reading itself is the appeal. I switched to the Kindle with no effort whatsoever and have been acting as if anyone who insults the Kindle is insulting a member of my family ever since, because I am rational like that.

Other people love BOOKS. Obviously, loving books includes the reading part, but they like the books themselves. They enjoy the medium. Those people will sometimes decide that they also hate the Kindle, because loving something automatically means hating something else, if you are a human being, which means that you suffer from a bilateral reasoning system that defaults to an “us versus them” mentality whether it’s necessary or not.

Why just love something when you can hate something, too? TWO FOR ONE SALE!

Until the Kindle came out, the books people and the reading people had no idea we were two groups of people. And now … whoa, Nelly. People will actually SNEER at my Kindle sometimes, because what fun would it be to acknowledge our mutual love of the written word and all the other stuff we have in common when we can find something to argue about, I guess. It’s fun, like with the Protestants and the Catholics!

Basically, there is the idea floating around that people who read books are keeping it real, just like all the vinyl record people and the 35mm-film people and whoever else shares in the honorable task of keeping it real, and people who read the Kindle are soulless robot communists.

Okay, so I’m paraphrasing. It’s just that you kind of hurt my feelings, is all.

I do think the negativity is unnecessary a lot of the time, and sometimes even irresponsible. I’m glad I’m not an inventor, because watching people hate on my product without even having used it would probably give me an aneurysm.

Also, book people? You seem to be forgetting something: you stole storytelling.

Many Kindle-haters cite fond memories of growing up turning pages. They seem oblivious to the fact that had they grown up with Kindles (or some other e-reader) instead, they would likely be quite emotionally attached to the notion of curling up with a Kindle, a hot chocolate, and maybe a purring cat or two. They also seem oblivious to the fact that once upon a time, books were not a part of anyone’s childhood, and had everyone chosen to keep it real back then, books still wouldn’t be.

Storytelling used to be a group activity, a social endeavor. Then movable type came out, and suddenly storytelling belonged to the introverts, who locked their doors and skulked about their homes, isolating themselves under reading lamps.

Sometimes, if you tried to talk to them, they would shush you. Where was the sense of community?

Books, believe it or not, are an excellent example of the very “technology” that people seem to consider cold and sterile, and they changed the game completely, undoubtedly while the oral tradition people grumbled about papercuts and ink smudges.

“We all used to gather around the fire,” they would say sadly to anyone who would listen. “There’s no sense of community anymore. Parents just throw a book at their kids to shut them up instead of telling them stories themselves. Books have become the babysitter. It’s so sad.”

(You would know this, if anyone had ever written about it, but they all chose to express their complaints via oral tradition, which of course ultimately proved to be utterly unreliable by comparison, so this information was tragically lost.)

So, yes, things change, and the more sentimental among us are never going to enjoy it.

I of course consider someone who loves the actual words themselves to be as authentic a reader as anyone. I have wiped away tears after reading on my Kindle. I have skipped down the street, lighthearted over some darling turn of phrase or uplifting sentiment. I’m not overly concerned with how ideas get into my brain, as long as they get there.

And, truthfully, I’m already sentimental about my Kindle. Her name is Paige, and I drag her everywhere, even when I have no intention of reading anything. I put her in her waterproof pouch, and we climb into the bathtub together to deep-condition my hair. I am not even kidding when I tell you that I considered the addition of googly eyes at one point, but was concerned that the sound of the plastic irises sliding around in their domes might annoy the hell out of me. The day I accidentally stepped on Paige and broke her glass face, I flipped out and placed a call to Amazon that would have made more sense as a 9-1-1 call. Such was the urgency. (She was quickly replaced for a fee.)

So, without further ado, this is why Paige the Kindle kicks the ass of any paper book I’ve ever read. Sorry, but it’s true. For a while, I tried to lie and say, “Oh, but I still love paper books, too!”

But you know what? I never did. I honestly thought I did, but it turns out that I just loved reading, and I don’t miss paper at all.

If you don’t feel the same way, keep buying books. That’s all you have to do, guys. It’s that simple.

WHY I LOVE PAIGE THE KINDLE

–My eyes are often too tired for small print. With Paige the Kindle, every book is a large-print book. This is a feature I didn’t even realize I needed, and it’s wonderfully helpful.

–I can scratch the cat and read at the same time. This is yet another one of those thing I didn’t know I wanted, but am enjoying. He sees the Kindle come out and is immediately like, here, let me flop across your lap so you can scratch my belly absentmindedly for hours. As a crazy cat lady, I give this two paws up. I mean, two thumbs up! Because I don’t have paws! What a silly thing to say! Ha! Ha ha!

–I can search within books. I used to drive myself crazy trying to find certain passages, especially in very large books, like Infinite Jest.

–I can highlight text, and, depending on copyright restrictions individual to the books, view those highlights online. (Regardless, the highlights are always viewable on the Kindle itself or on my computer with the free Kindle for PC.) I would be too lazy to highlight a paper book; besides, I always felt as if I were somehow ruining the pages.

–It saves my spot in as many books as I want.

–I have access to my entire library at any given time. Every book I own on the Kindle is available to me, even if I have deleted it off the device (I can just download it again, anytime, using just the Kindle itself).

–Because the Kindle is so easy to take along, I scrounge up reading time where I never would: waiting in lines, et cetera. Got seven minutes? That’s enough time to read something.

–I can always buy a new book when I finish the last one. I’m not a planner, so this is really a nice feature.

–It’s easy to travel with.

–I can get Newsweek autodelivered on it, and it’s cheaper than the paper edition (less than $2 a month). Yay for saving trees!

–I can read in the tub with Kindle’s waterproof pouch. I have even finished one book and shopped for another, without even getting out of the water. I have also used it lounging in the pool.

–I can read the first chapter of (or at least a short sample of) a book for free.

–Kindle for PC, while not something I read on, is great for looking up stuff in books I own, as it’s more maneuverable and lets me navigate all of my highlights in a book quickly. Kindle for PC lets me quickly scroll through my favorite parts of any book I own, omitting the rest. This is a freaking amazing ability that makes me feel as if I have the software version of a photographic memory. I am continually digging up stuff in the middle of a discussion on some topic or another, just to share it.

–I use the built-in dictionary CONSTANTLY, which really surprises me, but I tend to read challenging material. I have looked a ton of words up in Infinite Jest, which is as easy as just putting the cursor in front of a word. The Kindle will automatically display the definition at the bottom of the screen. I don’t have to stop reading and go online to look it up, which I absolutely would, because I am sick like that.

–I am big on paying the author his or her due; I think it’s important. A big complaint against the Kindle is that you can’t get used books on it, but I like that I can now buy new books without wasting trees. I used to see used books as the environmental/consumerist choice and new books as the “reward the author” choice. Now, I can pay royalties without increasing the production of “stuff” that is already overabundant.

–I’m a total minimalist and enjoy that my book collection takes up almost no space at all.

Overall, because of these features, I read more. I interact with the words more. I’m more likely to e-mail a paragraph or two to someone else. I take more risks in my reading, reassured by the quality of the sample I’ve already downloaded. The text is now something I can interact with, save, and carry along with me anywhere. No amazing sentence or paragraph or idea I stumble across is lost; I only have to remember a small part of it to find it again. I can honestly say that I relate to text differently now, more clearly.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike the Kindle still–complaints over proprietary formats and so forth. The fact that I could break my Kindle in the first place would be a dealbreaker for some, so I don’t mean to act as if there aren’t any drawbacks. There certainly are, and if you feel that they’re dealbreakers, you won’t be the only one. The e-ink vs. paper discussion is far from over, as is obvious from a lot of the publishing blogs out there.

Loving books, though, doesn’t seem to me to be a great reason to dislike the Kindle. It’s a great reason to keep buying books, and that, you are free to do … at least until your Kindle shows up and you sell out like the rest of us.

You might want to consider going with Kindle as the middle name, though. Take it from a girl named Jen: some names wind up being more common than anyone could have predicted.

And then I go out into the world and fuck it all up again, and how.

I write them out because it helps me, because it makes them more solid and strings them all together. I write them out because I am moving to a new place that offers a new chance to lean on them a little harder, to have a little more faith.

It’s not technically spiritual, I guess, but it’s the best I can do. I invite you to take what helps you and leave the rest.

******

With the occasional exception of your close friends, no one wants to hear you complain. If they do, I will bet you ten dollars that it’s usually just to make themselves feel better about how much THEY complain.

There is no point in following through with a goal if it is no longer what you want. What are you trying to prove, and to whom? If some people were more fickle, they might not spend their lives painted into a corner. You are rarely truly painted into a corner as long as you don’t mind getting a little dirty on your way out.

The more you have, the harder any of it is to appreciate. Make your lavish purchases carefully, rarely, and relatively sensibly, and you will discover that “everyday treasure” is not an oxymoron.

It is pointless to sit around and feel appalled at the state of the world. If you have no intention of taking action, you might as well have spent that time enjoying yourself. At least then someone would have benefited. Unless, of course, you are the sort of person who simply enjoys the superior feeling you get from being appalled about everything, in which case, fine, but in that event, any feeling of charitability you’re enjoying is probably unfounded.

Don’t expect anyone else to be nearly as invested in your trials and tribulations as you are. You’re a grownup now. Your dance-recital days are long over.

Those who wrong you are your best teachers. They are walking, talking opportunities for you to become a better person. Also, sometimes? They’re right. (I am paraphrasing wisdom stolen from the Dalai Lama himself. I don’t think he would mind.)

Unless the person in question is a child, you can’t care about someone’s welfare more than they do. I mean, really. That’s just silly.

No one else is responsible for your happiness. If you expect them to be, they will deeply disappoint you eventually, if not frequently.

It could always be worse. It could always be better. But only allow those facts to be relevant to the extent that it actually helps you to make things better, because they are true for everyone.

Talking about this awesome thing that you are going to do is not an accomplishment in and of itself. Save your breath and just do something awesome. Then you can talk about it. You’ll look like less of an idiot that way, all while neatly reserving the right to change your mind about writing a book or running a marathon or giving up sugar. If you need accountability, skip the showboating and just tell your good friends of your intentions and ask for their support. (If you do change your mind, good friends can generally be trusted to gauge whether you’re wussing out or simply returning to reality.)

Don’t assume, and don’t take it personally.

Your love for someone does not imply an obligation on their part to do what you want. Nor are you obligated to humor those who love you. You exist in a tribe of passionate people; you could lose your every waking moment to their concern for you if you let yourself.

It’s not okay to spend all of your money now and save nothing for the future. It’s really not. Carrying a balance on your credit card while you continue to spend money on non-necessities is not cute, and it’s not something you can laugh ruefully about as if you are Bridget Jones or Carrie Bradshaw. Both of those characters are fictional for a reason: reality eats people like them alive, the filmed portrayal of which would be considerably less charming or endearing. You? You’re debilitatingly, inescapably nonfictional, so please don’t sell shares of your future welfare in order to buy a new pair of rollerskates. You’re smarter than that. Finance is not rocket science; it’s addition and subtraction, for God’s sake. If you can’t master that, it’s because you prefer not to, and that is some seriously weak shit right there.

Speak on what you care about, without aggression but also without apology. It can be hard, when you know how to be funny, to stop being funny, sometimes, but if you fail to be sincere when it’s warranted, you are selling yourself short. Let them think you’re an uncool blowhard. Maybe you even ARE an uncool blowhard. But caring fiercely is not so terrible, and not much would happen if no one ever did.

Make a bucket list if you like. Want things in life if you like. But understand that the best moments will come unbidden and unexpected; after all, their exciting novelty and breathtaking revelation will be what makes them the best. Don’t plan to the point that you cheat yourself out of genuine discovery.

Do something. Anything. You’ll feel better.

Feedback is one of the most valuable accomplishment tools in the universe. Check your bank balance. Use a stopwatch. Count your words. Feedback is neutral and objective. If you’re afraid of feedback, you’re hiding something.

Practice is the other most valuable accomplishment tool in the universe.

It all comes down to who you know, yes. It all comes down to golden opportunity, yes. So become known to the right people by deserving recognition, and take advantage of golden opportunities by rising to the occasion. I don’t know why you’re complaining that you don’t have a literary agent for a best friend when you wouldn’t have a thing to show them even if you did.

If you love it, tell everyone about it. If you hate it, try to shut up about it. Use your buying/communicating power to promote the things that are good, rather than telling everyone about that awful book they should forget about immediately and not buy. Not only are you promoting it whether you mean to or not, but you have also left the reader no better off, and you have shortchanged the person who DID write a good book or make a good movie. Plus, you aren’t such hot shit yourself, and who’s to say you could have done any better? As the saying goes, “Criticism is like showing up on the battlefield and shooting the wounded.” Criticism is also one of the easiest writing prompts; it requires less talent than almost anything else. Challenge yourself.

It’s great that you consider honesty to be such a virtue, but your secrets belong to you; keep them if you like. If you find yourself forced to lie in order to do so, forgive yourself; you are probably doing it either to allow yourself to speak of another truth or because people are asking questions they had no right to ask. Either way, it was never any of their business.

Having a wild array of options in your life can be overwhelming, but it is also a privilege that relatively few members of the human species have been so lucky to enjoy. Try not to whine about it too much. It makes you sound like an asshole.

It is later than you think—or it will be, faster than you think. And really, what’s the difference? Go.

Say it with me: “I don’t know.” Respect people enough to say it to them, too, when it’s true, which is often. It will not affect their opinion of you the way your overacademic inner child expects. (P.S. Tell your inner child that “gifted” is just an adjective that someone just totally made up in like, the 1600s. It’s not, you know, a blood type. Good grief.)

When in doubt, wait a while. When in yet more doubt, just flip a damn coin or something. It’s not that likely that there is only one right option. (If you’re convinced that one option is your happy ending and one equals CERTAIN DEATH, you’re probably wrong, no matter what the Choose Your Own Adventure books taught you.) In contrast, it is VERY likely that if you don’t learn to simply make a decision and commit to it for the time being, you will probably lose your mind.

Keep your eyes on your own work. You have plenty to do.

I’ve enjoyed more social activity this year than … well, ever, honestly. And you guys, it’s FASCINATING. Some women are flat-out rejected. Some blend in effortlessly. Most are somewhere in between. But the driving forces behind the outcome are always the same, and not even really that difficult to grasp … OR SO YOU WOULD THINK. But no, the same mistakes happen over and over again, and the longer I observe all of it, the more I marvel at the human capacity to make everything a hell of a lot more difficult than it has to be.

And … well, I really hate to throw gender stereotypes out there, so forgive me for the next sentence: social difficulty may be a human tendency, but it often takes a group of women to turn it into a real art form. I’m not saying that to bash women. My group of friends is full of the most amazing people I have ever encountered, regardless of gender. Not every woman is the limping emotional mess I’m about to describe. In fact, I dearly hope NO woman is the limping emotional mess I’m about to describe.

But I think that a lot of us will recognize a glimmer of ourselves in the contents of this post, here and there. I know that a few of these items hit painfully close to home for me, or at least they used to. I’m better now, mainly because it’s been hard to observe and learn from these women without feeling a strong desire to stop making a total jackass out of myself.

This manifesto, and oh Lord is it ever a manifesto and four billion words and counting (YOU WERE WARNED), has been a long time coming. I like doing a “hey, please stop being such a social moron” post around BlogHer season, just because it’s … you know … TIMELY. But I’m not really writing about BlogHer, which only makes up a few days out of a much, much longer year—a year that is hopefully a happy one that offers a lot of love and joy. (Of course, it’s hard to experience love and joy when your insecurities are eating you alive, but I’ll get to that.) I’m writing about general principles that play out everywhere, including in a roller derby league.

All the same, I’m going to present this in the BlogHer context. Mainly because I’ve seen posts lately bashing BlogHer, as always seems to be obligatory for some reason. In these posts, bloggers announce that they are SO NOT GOING to BlogHer because BlogHer is SO HIGH SCHOOL (now there’s a dead horsey of a cliche that everyone could really stand to stop beating with a crowbar, eh?) and who needs THOSE PEOPLE, and you know what? That’s total bullshit.

Your attitude, quite frankly, sucks. No one is asking you to go, no one is asking you to care, and the fact that you feel it’s necessary to publicly shun that conference, along with an entire population of women you have never met, tells me a lot more about you than it does about the conference—most notably, that you’re insecure and scared and apparently very comfortable with the habit of rejecting people before they could dare do the same.

I have said this so many times, but I don’t at all mind saying it again: Life is only like high school if you act like you are in high school. This includes taking everything personally, interpreting a lack of attention as outright rejection, carefully adhering to the very fashion and beauty standards that you claim to find shallow, and seeking the friendship of the very sort of people you claim to despise. For someone who thinks popularity is a farce, you certainly seem to crave it; for someone who thinks looks shouldn’t matter, you’re eyeing your shoe collection pretty carefully.

I see you all the time, and you never make it in my group—or clique, as you so scathingly might prefer to call it. (For some reason, groups of friends are verboten these days, apparently.) You stagger away, stung and confused, convinced that we’re all just a big bunch of meanies who didn’t think your hair looked nice enough. Because believing that is easier than taking responsibility for the way you act. Believing that is easier than forgiving yourself for letting your feelings dictate your actions. Believing that is easier than taking a hard look around and realizing that maybe it’s your own damned fault.

If you are that person or have ever even kind of resembled that person, this list is for you.

Reasons that you think people do not like you:

Your shoes are from Payless.

You don’t network with the right people.

You haven’t had a BMI in the supposed “normal” range since Clinton was president.

You have bad teeth.

Your hair is a frizzy mess.

You don’t come from the right family.

Your eyebrows aren’t waxed.

You aren’t popular enough to interest anyone.

Everything in your wardrobe came from Target.

They think they’re too good for you.

Actual reasons that people do not like you:

You are invisible. Simply put, you cannot make new friends when you are hiding behind a potted plant and refusing to speak to anyone. This seems obvious … but, well, you would be surprised. New girl shows up! New girl lurks in corner and never speaks to anyone! New girl disappears, making sure to condemn everyone on her way out! At which point everyone has the same thought: “Who is this angry stranger?”

You require an engraved invitation to go to any event or join any conversation. At an event like BlogHer or anywhere else, you’re going to need to empower yourself as a grown woman who decides where she wants to go and when, because no one has that kind of time. I’ve even extended ACTUAL “hey, you should come along with us!” invitations and later found out that I didn’t seem to really MEAN it. Look, it’s an invitation, not a reading from Shakespeare, so it’s time to better acquaint yourself with a handy tool I like to call “face value.”

You refuse to be treated like an equal because you do not believe that you are an equal. I can’t treat you as an equal when you keep insisting that I am so much better than you are. Modesty is charming, yes, but you’ve been on that “aw shucks!” theme for about forty-five minutes, and I was really hoping we could move on to actually getting to know each other better at some point. Lavish flattery sounds nice but is actually pretty awkward, and I would hope that you don’t think so little of me that you imagine I would ever require you to suck up that hard just to gain my friendship.

You make them work so hard to prove that they really and truly like you that they ultimately stop liking you … seeing as you are displaying the dreaded needy-stubborn combination. So difficult to convince, yet so WILLING to let me try again anyway! No thanks. I’d rather not be negated into exhaustion every time I attempt to offer you a compliment. “Thank you” works much better. We’ve all flubbed that one a time or two, but if you’re especially, uh, PERSISTENT about deflecting any sort of praise or positive attention, I will get tired and I will give up on you.

You cannot stop pointing out the very thing that you think no one should care about. Welcome to backwardsville, where the woman who thinks no one should care that she looks fat in those pants cannot stop talking about how fat she looks in her pants. Even if you do look fat in those pants (METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING), it would likely be a nonissue if you could somehow stop insisting on making it into one.

You harp on all the ways that you have been shortchanged socially and offer no one the benefit of the doubt, giving another blogger the evil eye while you explain that she TOTALLY, like, ignored you at dinner even though you were looking right at her, scaring people away with your frightening cocktail of paranoia and grudgery. I am quite frankly terrified to be friends with you, lest I someday suffer from an eyelid twitch that is somehow translated into the world’s most heartless put-down. I routinely find myself nothing less than astonished at the drama you can manufacture from a four-second interaction in which someone failed to fully acknowledge how fantastic you are.

Your feelings of rejection and unpopularity turn into overaggression regarding who you are and what you stand for. You’re like a one-person gay pride parade over there, except without the fun and the Mardi Gras beads. You’re here to let EVERYONE know that you are YOU, and you are a CHRISTIAN who is also LIBERAL and VEGETARIAN but then again also PRO-LIFE and that is great except we were actually not talking about any of that before you puffed out your chest and blurted it out and used your body language to dare anyone to have a problem with it. We were, in fact, talking about stuffed mushrooms. Can’t you just talk about stuffed mushrooms? They’re quite delicious, and also, must you be so combative? It’s spoiling my appetite and that’s a terrible shame, what with the aforementioned mushrooms.

Your insecurity about yourself has driven you to insult them or make them uncomfortable with backhanded compliments: “Whatever, someone as pretty as you has no right to complain! HA! HA!” “You always look so perfect—do you have stock in J. Crew or something? HA! HA!” “You’re SOOO skinny! I hate you! Eat a sandwich already! HA! HA!” Um, yeah. You stop that right this INSTANT. If you cannot trust yourself to deliver a sincere compliment without serving up a side of thinly veiled bile along with it, just don’t discuss physical appearance at all.

You do not have a Reset button. Oh, we have all been that person, the one who cannot seem to shut up, the one who must press onward even when it is painfully clear that everyone is uncomfortable. Insecurity can make you say odd things. It can make you tell someone that you hate her because she is so pretty, or babble on and on about the size of someone’s butt until she is slowly backing away. It can make you tease someone about something in a way that really falls flat. We’ve all been there, and everyone is pretty forgiving, as long as you don’t make the tragic mistake of grimly REDOUBLING your efforts just to prove that you aren’t doing anything weird. You ARE doing something weird and the best possible strategy would be to take a few sips of your drink and let someone else talk until the urge passes or you’ve thought of a better subject. I know the pain of being the Girl Who Could Not Reset and it is a bad place to be about six hours later, when your brain will force you to relive the scene in excruciating detail. When you catch yourself in the moment, forgive yourself, correct your trajectory, and MOVE ON, for all our sakes. Preferably to a topic that doesn’t make you sound so envious or shallow.

You are a coward, a liar, or both. A joke should just a be joke. As in, not at all true. If you think making a joke about how someone is acting like a camera whore is really the best way to tell your friend that she’s embarrassing herself, you need to learn to either address the situation directly or live and let live (may I recommend the latter? It’s just less work, is all). If I do not feel I can trust you to know your jokes from your insults, and if I cannot tell whether to believe you when you say something is not a problem, I am not interested. I can’t tell you how many times in the last year I’ve heard some misguided soul say something like, “Oh, it’s really no big deal, BUT …” If it’s no big deal, why have you mentioned it eight times to six different people? Step up or let it go, and if you’re going to talk about it, talk about it to the one person who should have been allowed the courtesy of hearing about it first. If you aren’t sorry, don’t say you are. If it isn’t over, don’t say that it is. I will respect you for saying that you need time to think. I will not respect you for apologizing when you don’t mean it, then bringing the incident up again at every opportunity or sulking about it to anyone who will listen. It teaches me that you cannot be trusted to mean what you say. No thanks.

Conversely, if someone insults you in that wussy “This actually is not a joke, unless you realize it’s not a joke and call me on it, in which case I intend to backpedal and blame YOU for overreacting to some good old-fashioned teasing!” sort of way that we’re all so very familiar with, be smart enough not to get dragged down with them. Just look at them and say, “That sounded like one of those jokes that isn’t really a joke.” They will shut up or the two of you will argue, but either way, it’s vastly preferable to taking little bitch slaps at each other all day. (Unless you enjoy that sort of thing, and I guess some people do.)

You like to ride the escalator all the way to the nuclear level. If someone is mad at you, why, you’re even MADDER at them, so there! I’ve met women who respond to a tap on the shoulder with a bazooka blast and then seem confused about why no one wants to go anywhere near them. (Hint: It’s because they’re nuts.) If someone approaches you with a problem, appreciate their courage and at least try to listen to them. Because, hey, they could have handled the way you would have instead, which is even worse. You don’t have to be a doormat, but if they say they’re a little concerned with something, there’s absolutely no reason to take it up a notch. I know it’s an instinct, and we’ve all been there, but if you decide to fight fire with plutonium, it’s not going to end well for anyone. Which is fine, I guess, if you would rather win than have any friends.

Simply put, you fight dirty. Believe it or not, “Well, you’re UGLY and everyone has been making fun of your stupid new piercing behind your back for WEEKS!” is really not the most useful discussion tool. Also, I’m going to hazard a guess and say that it has nothing to do with the actual issue that had been under discussion before you decided to deploy Operation Heart Stab. I am very sad to say that I’ve met fifty-year-olds who still have not grasped this.

Other reasons people do not like you:

They simply have no idea who you are, and all of those pointed glances in your direction were actually aimed at the broken coffee machine. I wonder how often this has happened. Judging from how often some people have mistaken some blank, distracted glance of mine for utter distaste, I imagine the Insecure Misunderstanding Index (IMI) is pretty heartbreaking.

They’re busy. Or perhaps they just missed the “Everyone In The Whole World Must Be Friends With Each Other” memo. While such a system sounds nice at first, you have to admit it would be a little exhausting, following the entire blogosphere on Twitter, even if you believe that each and every person is deserving of such acknowledgment.

They are nursing their own rampant insecurities and wondering why YOU haven’t talked to THEM yet, you big conceited jerk. (Again: so pitifully and unnecessarily common.)

They are unfair, judgmental assholes. Not only are you crazy to be interested in a friendship with someone like that, but you’re also irrational to care what they think, as the opinion of an unfair, judgmental asshole should not logically be worth much.

The two of you simply aren’t a good match. Earth-shattering, I know, but not a personal insult unless you choose to make it into one. Also, I hate to have to point it out, but perhaps one reason they do not feel that they are a good match for you is that you are acting as if you are thirteen and they are in fact thirty-five. Even your best behavior may not magically bridge the gap between the two of you, but pouting most certainly isn’t going to. Besides, I’ll never understand why someone who is VERY into parenting so desperately wants acceptance from someone who is very NOT into parenting, and so on. You don’t have the same interests. You don’t want to talk about the same things. It’s okay.

Well, it’s okay unless you’re actually deeply insecure about how much you talk about your kids, at which point you will get angry every time someone validates those deep-rooted feelings by not acting interested. My advice is to find someone who actually would logically be interested in the first place, then talk to them. You might be thinking “duh,” but people miss that first step all the time, then get hurt feelings because the white supremacist they just met doesn’t feel like discussing civil rights. What on earth did you expect?

So, basically, the real reason people do not like you is that

your insecurity is so toxic and wearisome that they flee your very presence. Simply put, you’re the one who can’t escape high school, and damnedest part is that you think it’s everyone else.

At its best, friendship is Darwinian: natural selection, baby. And it really would be, if people would stop sabotaging the process by wearing clothes they never wear, saying things they never say, and doing things they never do. RELAX, would you? If you weren’t so afraid of rejection, you would likely encounter it a lot less often … seeing as you would seem much more SANE without all the insecurity.

Your feelings are not an excuse; you are an adult, and you should and must know better, or you deserve what you get. So, hey, maybe natural selection has been working just fine all along.

Last year, I went to BlogHer in my Aeropostale polo shirts and my years-old Gap pants, and I didn’t have any trouble. Mostly because I no doubt managed to ward off anyone lame enough to care what I was wearing. I made all kinds of new friends that I cherish to this day, none of whom gave two shits whether I had, in fact, accidentally worn the same polo shirt I’d worn the year before. (Oops.) Really, the only times I felt stressed or upset were the times when I decided to be a total douchebag over whether my hair was frizzing. I got over it, of course, and just yanked it up in a bun. You will be surprised to learn that this sloppy, unfashionable hairstyle did not prompt anyone to throw eggs at me or beat me up in gym class. I have some theories on how I managed to escape such a fate, and all of them involve NO ONE GIVING A CRAP.

This year, I plan to do it all again, and frankly, the only reason the twin polos, Gap pants, and Croc shoes won’t be making an appearance is that San Francisco is kind of cold in July. Instead, I’ll be runway-ready in exciting ensembles that include $10 tees from Threadless and anything long-sleeved that was on the sale rack at Delia’s. I’m packing the one nice black shirt I own and even a few $7 sweaters I got two years ago at Famous Barr, so it’s going to be like Milan all over again, and quite frankly I’m not even sure you can keep up.

Sure, I’ll wear makeup and do my hair, because I always wear makeup and do my hair. That, too, is just who I am, mostly because I have my own insecurities just like anyone else, and it has nothing to do with you unless you decide it does. You may think some people are prettier or thinner or smarter or more fashionable than you. Certain self-esteem programs will patiently explain to you that this is all in your head, but because I respect you enough to tell you the truth, I am here to tell you that some people ARE in fact prettier or thinner or smarter or more fashionable than you. In fact, now that you mention it, entire ARMIES of people are prettier and thinner and smarter and more fashionable than you! If this keeps you awake at night, I would suggest that, ten or twenty years after you received your high-school diploma, you finally teach your ego to cope with this fact—which, incidentally, is true for damn near everyone.

Of course, if you’d rather stay in high school forever instead, I have no doubt that there’s a shallow, whiny table in that cafeteria just for you. Just keep looking and acting like you belong there with the rest of the insecure gang, and it’ll take care of itself. It always does.

We’ve all been in that place. (Sometimes I still visit, and let me tell you, it’s hell getting back through customs.) But it’s up to each of us to get ourselves out. It’s not anyone else’s problem. It’s yours. And when you decide you’re ready to graduate from this high school you keep going on about, the rest of us will be waiting at BlogHer, and at work, and at derby practice.

It’s not college, but there IS beer, and fun, and a whole lot of memories that you’re missing out on every time you decide to announce that you are both too good and not good enough for us.

For instance, there is no such thing as a happy ending. For anyone. There are happy times and sad times, but each of us only gets one ending, and I’m willing to bet that most of us won’t find it to be all that pleasant. SPOILER ALERT: The main character dies. The fact that so many people would likely accuse me of being grim, cynical, or depressing for pointing out this incredibly basic and universal truth only strengthens my argument that we have abandoned reality in favor of an idealized narrative—one that doesn’t end with our own deaths but with a nice wedding or, you know, retirement party or something. (Gold watches for everyone! Yaaaay!)

And this manner of thinking is fine. You could even argue that it’s a reasonable approach to allowing yourself to enjoy your life despite its harsher realities—the same type of suspension of disbelief that allows you to enjoy the movies you are now attempting to cast yourself in. But this manner of thinking is also potentially disastrous, if you are the sort of person who reads your lines and plays your part whether it’s a good idea or not.

Some people have children even when parenting is not something they’ll particularly enjoy. Some people buy houses they can’t afford. Some people get married when they would be happier single. Why? Because that is what happens next, of course. Some people will spend an unbelievable amount of money on clothes, because these are the clothes called for in the script; this is simply what their character looks like. This is the luxury car their character drives; this is the dumbfoundingly expensive engagement ring their character wears. These props are necessary for identification purposes; how will their audience recognize them otherwise? Which character would they be otherwise?

Some people wait around for plot twists, unaware that, without a concerted effort on their part, very little about their lives is likely to change for the better. Some women cast men into predetermined roles and then experience surprise and disappointment when that commitment-phobic philanderer turns out to be … well, exactly that. But he accepted the role of husband! they might protest, as if that could really be expected to change anything. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

I don’t mean to be overly contrary here, but really: according to whom? Is there a script somewhere?

Go ahead, dress up like the bride, and play your role. Say the words you’ve had memorized since you were six. Film the whole thing. Post pictures on your blog. There’s nothing wrong with any of it, if it’s really what you want, what will make you happy—if you’re doing it for yourself, not your audience. Be careful, with that audience: the more you cater to them, offering up cinematic special effects as quickly as your digital SLR and photo-editing program can pump them out, the more you will feel you owe them when it all falls apart. When you realize there’s no movie called It’s Been Years Since Our Really Pretty Wedding and We Have Exhausted All Potential Avenues of Conversation That Two Human Beings Could Possibly Explore, So Nothing Is Really Going On Except for That Part Where We Both Get More and More Bored and Resentful Regarding the Ways In Which We Confine One Another to Our 2002 Personas, and Oh My God You ALWAYS Interrupt Me Like That When I’m Talking and Come to Think of It, I Kind of Hate Your Stupid Face.* When you realize you ran out of script quite a long time ago, and come to think of it, you actually don’t have any idea what the fuck you’re doing or why you’re here. Cut! Cut!

[*If someone made an independent film with this title, I would be so excited to watch it.]

One of the most stressful parts of divorce is this sense that this is not the ending your audience was promised; this is not what they came to see. This notion is, of course, utterly ridiculous, but listen to any friend struggling with the decision to divorce, and you will hear it: I don’t want to be that person. I am not that person. As if they had simply been assigned the wrong trailer on a movie set by mistake.

The saddest thing about all of this effort, the most profoundly disturbing truth about all of this bending over backward for centerpieces and birth stories and decorating schemes, is that no one else ever even really cared that much. With the possible exception of your mother and your best friend, everyone in your audience has fallen asleep, or gotten up to pee, or is busy trying to open their smuggled bag of Skittles without crinkling the packaging too loudly. We look at wedding pictures, baby pictures; we smile; we feel happy for our friends. But five minutes later, we’ve moved on to worrying about whether getting our bangs trimmed this short was a mistake. We have our own productions to star in, after all.

The random and unintentionally hurtful comment we made about your divorce—or your job loss, or your shoes, or God knows what—is already forgotten by us, if not by you. Even the intentionally disapproving ones, the ones who will tell you that people like you are the reason no one takes marriage seriously, the ones who imply that you are selfish and irresponsible, the ones who openly pat themselves on the back for not being you, the ones who say quite earnestly that they really hope they never become you, are thinking about something else entirely not more than thirty seconds after the conversation is over, even if their words sting you for days. So if I were you, I would avoid constructing a sizable portion of your decisionmaking around pleasing a group of critics who have already forgotten you in favor of this ham sandwich they’re eating for lunch.

Unfortunately, it is not that simple, because even if you manage to ignore those people entirely (and then teach me how, which should absolutely be your next step), you still have an even bigger problem. To make this whole metaphor even more confusing, a part of you is sitting in your own audience, and that part of you might just be the one person in your theater who finds the whole production utterly fascinating. Who loves to watch. Who collects scenes and moments with hands clasped and eyes wide, who sobs openly at your tragedies, caught completely in the moment as she clutches her tissues in that darkened theater, as if tomorrow is not a new day entirely. Be careful, oh so careful, what you choose to do for this part of yourself, because I have this sneaking suspicion that this part of yourself is flat-out insane.

This part of yourself is in love with the character you have created. This part of yourself sets your photoshopped face as her avatar and writes fan fiction about you and would probably (facetiously, ironically) wear a “Team You” shirt if the Twilight people decided to make one. You can’t trust someone like that, or at least you shouldn’t. This part of you sweats over your every move and will be devastated if you gain weight, or announce to People magazine that you are gay, or are photographed without your makeup on, or in any way ruin the illusion. This part of you is convinced that everything you do matters, that everyone is watching as fervently as she is. This part of you is arrogant enough to think you are the center of the universe and insecure enough to let that make you afraid.

This is the part of the post where I would make a point, if I had one, but to tell you the truth, I’m still deciding what, exactly, any of this means. The script is unavoidable, I think, but I’m hoping to at least incorporate some ad-libbed elements. I’m hoping that I can, at least sometimes, behave as if no one is watching. I’m hoping to resist the urge to sell anyone a “happily ever after” where none exists. I’m hoping to at least remember not to take any of this too seriously, if I can.

In a brilliant commencement speech that you should absolutely read before it disappears from the Internet entirely, David Foster Wallace opens with a joke:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

And then, after blowing everyone’s mind like nine times, he concludes his speech by advising these new graduates to remember a seemingly simple truth, repeating it to themselves when necessary: This is water. This is water.

And I guess that right now, that’s all I’m trying to do: write a new script, make a new character, but do it all while remembering that I am even doing it in the first place, in hopes that it will save me, somehow, from living according to the expectations of anyone else and the expectations of that part of me that is convinced that I am hot shit and should continue to prove it.

And when I look up, squint into the spotlights above the stage, and say “line, please,” I am trying to remember to ask myself exactly who it is I think I am talking to, because the truth my ego keeps trying to ignore is that I am the only one here.

I ate Cream of Wheat because it was cheap; I turned down invitations to dinner because I couldn’t afford an entree. Once, when I was out with a large group of friends (and the only one not eating), a waitress plonked an entree down in front of me, reassuring me that the chef had messed up the order and “no one was going to eat it anyway.” When I hesitated, unsure whether I should accept such a thing, she made eye contact, and her expression was so kind that I just looked away and mumbled a thank you, awash with a mixture of pleasure and humiliation. It just happened to be one of the few vegetarian options on the menu, and I still wonder if someone secretly ordered it for me, aware that pride does not count as a dinner.

I learned to stack things onto the grocery store conveyor belt slowly, to load the necessities first and watch the total in order to spare myself the embarrassment of having to void part of my purchase. My stomach went into knots when I watched the numbers spin at the gas pump. I avoided getting my oil changed for ages, avoiding spending the princely sum of $30 but terrified that my car would break from lack of maintenance and I would really be screwed. I put air in the same leaky tire over and over again. Once, when I made a mistake and forgot I had ordered contact lenses, I overdrafted my account and had to visit the bank and beg for a refund on a pile of bank fees that would have made it impossible to pay rent. When that refund was granted, I sat in the parking lot for twenty minutes, trembling so hard with relief that I was afraid to drive.

Not an hour went by that I wasn’t worried about money. That anxiety desaturated my life, dampening my joys in a way that few circumstances have been able to in the course of my life. It wasn’t that I couldn’t afford fancy things; I have never been one for fancy things in the first place. It was the knowledge that even a small crisis of any kind would sink me, combined with the knowledge that small crises are inevitable in this life. It was the sensation that I had stopped living in favor of surviving.

After hearing me make some wistful offhanded comment, my mother surprised me with a Starbucks gift card. I nearly cried into that first caramel latte, because it tasted so good. It sounds absurd, maybe, but that coffee tasted like home, like big planes and other countries and hotels. It tasted like a level of privilege that I had always been grateful for, but nonetheless had pretty much taken for granted as something I would forever be entitled to. It took me back to a time when I had felt fresh and pretty, safe and cared for—when I hadn’t worried that I was turning invisible, dropping through some crack in the bottom of the middle-class world, never to be heard from again. When I hadn’t felt ashamed of myself and of my life. The gift card was for $50, and I used it slowly and carefully, reserving it for my worst moments, for when a warm drink in my hands might make it just a little easier to keep trudging along.

The really crazy thing about all of this is that I wasn’t ever REALLY poor, not for a moment. “Stubborn” is a much more accurate word. My parents and Jeff all made it known that they would help me in a heartbeat; all I would have had to do was ask. Not only that, but I have a degree from an excellent college, impeccable manners, and one hell of a pleasant phone demeanor. Long have I walked with the middle class, and lo, I know of their ways; I can make eye contact and shake hands and speak articulately and thank people for their time. You can’t put a price on that kind of cultural capital, and if you own it, you can never be as destitute as someone who doesn’t.

I am lucky to have it, lucky to have parents who put me behind a cash register and next to a phone starting at the age of thirteen and taught me well. And when I finally got back on my feet again, secured a few good contracts, and could afford my own caramel lattes once more, I didn’t kid myself that my promotion back into MiddleClassLand had been awarded on personal merit. I was just born fortunate, that’s all, growing up in a home full of as many books as I could get my hands on, with parents who weren’t too exhausted or overworked to make sure that I kept my grades up and stayed out of trouble.

I was never really poor, and I can hardly bear to imagine what it must be like to be any poorer than I was for any longer than I was. For me, the most striking part of the entire experience was the persistent and yet somehow impossible knowledge that it could be worse. Some people do this for years, I thought to myself. Some people have it worse than this and no way to make it better. But I couldn’t really believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to think about how this would feel to a child who was old enough to be scared but not old enough to do anything about it, or to an elderly person who was struggling physically and mentally as well as financially. The idea of it breaks my heart.

I know it’s not fair of me, but it’s still hard for me to listen to someone complain repeatedly about how poor they are and then watch them buy a drink at a bar, or walk into a coffee shop and buy a latte, or purchase their third or fourth pair of fashionable boots. I am as guilty of this as anyone, I know, but there is nothing poor about that. There is nothing poor about most of my friends or most of us in this online community. Most of us can spare something, even if it’s just a little bit, and if we can’t, it’s more likely a result of our priorities than our financial situation itself. I’m sorry to be such a hardass about it, but come on. How many of us are skipping meals because we can’t afford to eat? How many of us are taking the bus to work because we can’t afford a car? How many of us will be working a checkout lane at Wal-Mart this Christmas?

I know that not everyone has something to give to others this holiday season. But if you can, please please do. If you’re in the St. Louis area, this is a great charity. That’s the one I chose this year, but there are plenty of options out there if you prefer another.

The experience made me more empathetic in ways that I hope I don’t forget anytime soon. My absentminded scurrying tends to make me a bit unintentionally distant, but instead of breezing through the checkout lane yesterday, tapping on my Blackberry and sorting through a million internal thoughts, I remembered to smile at my cashier, who was an older woman, and treat her like an actual person, because I still remember having that feeling when I worked in customer service to make ends meet—the feeling of disappearing, of not mattering, of being dehumanized. At a bit of a loss for something to say, I commented about how quiet the store was now that the multitude of students living in my neighborhood had gone home for Christmas.

“Aren’t you going to go home for Christmas?” she asked.

“In a few days,” I said. “I have a few things to wrap up here.” (This was my vague way of saying that I had just finished all of my editorial projects for the pay period and wanted to take a few days to myself to soak in the tub, snuggle with the cat, tidy up my house, nap, and write blog posts.)

“I wish I could go home for Christmas to see my family,” she said. “But I’ll be working. I’m going to be able to take a few days off in March, though. I’ll get to see my grandchildren then! I can’t wait.”

March? March isn’t even on my radar. I will be excited about a million different things about between now and then. I’m going to San Diego for New Year’s, and even that seems far away to my frequently indulged self. Isn’t it time to drink too much wine, yell HAPPY NEW YEAR! and then climb into my hotel bed and pass out? No? You mean I have to endure days of loafing around by the fireplace on my parents’ couch in a Snuggie first, piled with wee puppydogs and books? Oh the humanity.

No matter your situation, happy holidays to you. If things are hard, I hope they get better soon. If things are better, I hope you share the wealth. If you have nothing else to give, at least be kind to the person bagging your groceries or waiting your table. None of us want to admit it, but we have at least occasionally thought to ourselves that the unprofessional, sullen woman filing her nails behind the counter for nine dollars an hour deserves to be where she is. Even if she does–even if the different strata the two of you exist in really are separated by a cushion consisting entirely of your merit as a person, which is so beyond debatable that it’s laughable to even contemplate–your life is likely infinitely better than hers, and you can afford a little patience and a little grace.

But maybe, if you really think about it, and if you skip a few fancy coffees this week, you can afford even more than that.

If you can, thank you, from someone who can only guess what it must be like to be relying on those contributions this season. Here’s hoping they have a good Christmas, too, and that we have a little something to do with that.