You Are Here: An Owner’s Manual for Dangerous Minds by Jenny Lawson
My rating: 4/5 cats
Sometimes people come into your life just to teach you how not to become them.
only jenny lawson could pull off a book like this.
if someone had said to me, “here, why don’t you read this coloring book that is full of affirmations about the importance of embracing your damage and finding inner strength and realizing you are not alone in the world, which features snippets of empowering phrases woven throughout the line drawings and opportunities to share personal experiences to better understand yourself?”
i would have politely declined. i’m already as self-involved as i want to be, and this kind of stuff:
I am stitched together by careful hands – remade from the torn and shredded pieces of who I have been and who I have grown out of. I am broken, but I am mended. And I am stronger because of it.
well, the polite way to say it is that it is “…not for me.” but i know that jenny lawson isn’t some vaseline-smiling sentimentalist spinning twee saccharine shit into cheerleader positivity. she’s been so candid about her own struggles with pain and mental illness in the past, and this book is a collection of the stuff she drew for herself during her book tour for Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things, “to keep my own hands from hurting me” and these inspirational slogans helped her to deal, which means they will help other people to deal, so who the fuck am i to pooh-pooh it? because for every instance like the one quoted above, which falls into “…not for me” territory, there’s something like this piece of adorable:
or this warning:
We are gentle souls.
But if you fuck with us we will cut you.
And we will eat your face meat.
which is pure baller.
and while the book does get a bit repetitive in its themes and therapeutic battle-cries, and its examples of stuff that is “…not for me,” there’s some advice that hits a little close to home:
I love Shel Silverstein, but I’ve never understood the appeal of The Giving Tree. It’s supposed to be a tale of self-sacrifice but it always struck me as a super abusive relationship. The tree gives this kid her apples and the boy eventually chops her limbs off and hollows her trunk out and then dumps her in the ocean. That’s real serial killer shit, y’all.
Sometimes I work too hard or give too much and I become that tree. And it makes sense. If you give too much of yourself you can’t recover. You’re worthless except as a stump for some habitual user to rest his ass on. Sometimes self-care and restraint and giving yourself the ability to say “no” is the only way to keep yourself strong enough (and you enough) in order to keep giving, and to feel happy in giving rather than feeling exhausted and taken advantage of. Plus, if you say “no” every once in a while you won’t have to wonder if you inadvertently created a serial killer because you were too nice of a tree to say, “NO, ACTUALLY I DON’T WANT TOU TO DECAPITATE ME.” (That last sentence seems like a strange, random string of words, but I’m keeping it because maybe you need to hear it. Friends don’t let friends become decapitated trees.)
remember that, self!
i honestly didn’t know what to expect when i heard she had a coloring book coming out, and i wouldn’t really even call this a coloring book. it’s more like a cross-section of her brain – doodles and thoughts and stories and mantras, everything swimming under the surface of her glorious skull. the drawings themselves are impressively intricate:
in case you can’t see the detail, here’s a closer look:
and the writing isn’t all feel-gooderie pronouncements; there’s plenty of humor and bits about pigeons and poop and pillow-forts, the dangers of narwhals, how beavers are just ‘cheap otters,’ and a hard to disagree with declaration that most of my favorite people are cats.
cue cat drawings!
i want to share one more personal favorite, even though it’s a little long:
When I was little my anxiety disorder made me afraid of everything. I avoided people and retreated into books. I would do anything to stay out of the spotlight.
My teachers often told me to “stop being a frightened little rabbit.” I’m sure they meant well, but when you have an anxiety disorder you avoid a lot of life. You find joy in books or art or things you can do in hiding. Sometimes that gives people the wrong idea. They think that you’re a frightened little rabbit. They think that the fear you battle makes you weak, but in fact, it makes you strong.
You fight through fear every moment. Every day. The worry never completely ceases, but you keep reaching out to find your life, and to live it and love it. That takes courage. A learned courage that has to be sustained and practiced. And sometimes you hide away because the fear wins for a bit… but soon you’ll turn your hand to life again, even knowing the consequences. I am a frightened little rabbit, it’s true. But anyone who has spent time raising rabbits knows this often-forgotten truth…frightened rabbits fight the hardest. They know when to trust and when to run. They pick their battles. They survive tough odds even though they are constant prey for anything bigger than they are. They are cute and adorable, but if you fuck with them they will scratch your goddamn eyes out.
When I was in 3rd grade I had a rabbit named “Pootie McGee” who was a total snuggle-monster, but when the cat got too close to us Pootie freaked the shit out and scratched the hell out of my face, using his tiny but almost magically powerful back legs to get to higher ground (i.e., the top of my head). I had a scar on my face for a month that looked like I’d been in a knife fight. And I had, in a way. I looked like a tiny bad-ass you shouldn’t fuck with because of another tiny and easily underestimated bad-ass.
I am a frightened rabbit. And if you don’t think that’s something to respect then you are seriously underestimating me
lawson OUT!
*********************************************
look what got here EARLY!!!!
ignore the messy bed with hastily-discarded barnes and noble bag behind me – my priorities are always gonna be boasting before tidying.
