How to Be Perfect Like Me Read online

  I wonder about the therapist. Is he still practicing? Was he legitimately creepy, or if I was so messed up, did he even have a chance? He sticks with me. Creepy things tend to do that.

  I have been in therapy since my middle twenties. And I kind of hate it. Mr. Creepy Therapist Guy became my one big reason why I don’t like to get counseling; however, there are a few other reasons to add to the list.

  I hate therapy because it costs a lot of money. I hate going and talking to someone, and it costs me as much as a new pair of shoes. Shoes are not talkative, and they do make me feel better, nearly 100 percent of the time. Therapy is kind of a crapshoot. Often it makes me feel queasy, and shoes—even the really tall ones—never do that.

  And I hate it because therapy doesn’t offer much in tangibilities. I don’t get a certificate stating, “Congratulations! You’re so totally sane!”

  Therapy is lonely. It isn’t really something I can talk about over a latte. It makes me feel naked, and nobody really wants that in a coffeehouse. I certainly can’t post about it on the internet, which is what most of us do about everything. So, no Instagram posts with me walking out of the office all tear streaked and soggy, clutching forty sodden tissues and stating, “Went to therapy today! Doc says I need to journal about rage and abandonment! Time for a smoothie!”

  I also hate therapy because it really hurts.

  Therapy tends to scrape out stuff that has been firmly lodged in your insides for far too long. This image is both gross and disturbing and completely fits how it feels. It’s a dentist visit for your soul, and I hate it.

  As much as I try to avoid it, I hate that therapy keeps showing up in my life, like an awkward suitor asking me to date him. I want to tell him, “It’s not you, it’s me, Therapy,” but in this case that’s really true, and I can’t deal.

  Basically, I hate therapy because it loves reality. And you know how I feel about that stuff.

  When I was little I used to have horrible nightmares. These dreams were the kind that would make a great scary movie today, if the director were on acid. The worst dreams were the recurring ones I would experience with a kind of bored horror: “Oh, this again, but yes, I’m still terrified.” The most memorable nightmare by far was where my mom completely disappeared from our household, until I discovered that she had been sucked under the refrigerator. She was still alive, and, as I recall, she seemed rather embarrassed about it all. But still, she was under there. We all had to live with knowing my mom was under the fridge for the rest of her life; there was nothing we could do. If that dream doesn’t pretty much sum up domesticity on a daily basis, I don’t know what does.

  I do realize that dream sounds pretty ineffectual, but I promise, it was horrific. And yes, trying to relate a scary nightmare often comes across as rather meh—“Oh my gosh! I have to tell you about my dream! My cat stole my Visa card, and I thought he ran up a three-hundred-dollar bill for cat toys at Target! Except it wasn’t TARGET! It was Macy’s!”

  Looking back, the refrigerator dream doesn’t make me shudder at all. It just makes me feel sorry for my mom. But I had that dream for over three years, and I think the truly horrifying part here is that it had the audacity to keep showing up.

  My relapse felt like that dream: sort of embarrassing, even nonsensical, but so horrible. I began to realize that I would always be working on myself. Like, forever.

  Cue the scary music. And cue the therapy appointments.

  I live in a world of extremes. It’s more interesting that way. So, it’s easy to say Mr. Creepy Therapist Guy is proof that I never need to set foot in another counseling office. It’s so much more interesting to swing on that pendulum of all-or-nothing. Dana Gets Sober, Part Two, was starting to learn that life is all about forever living in the middle—and persevering anyway.

  I know. Cue the really scary music.

  A few days after the relapse was when the forever-ness really settled in, and not so pleasantly. My husband and I had a fight. In the history of marriage, fights are pretty common, and we have them regularly enough. When done right, they are a way to clear out the plumbing and air some feelings that need an extra whoosh of oxygen to be revealed. A marriage that is bereft of the occasional argument is weird and plastic.

  But sometimes fights can be done very badly.

  Did you ever watch one of those train-wreck brawls on reality television, where the idiocy is at level ten but the ability to put lucid thoughts and words together is at zero? Think that, but without alcohol and the spray tans. It kind of makes our fight sound worse because booze at least gives you the excuse for incoherency.

  Brian and I had been circling each other since I let him know about the drinking. Actually, I had not really let him know about the drinkING, just that I drank, and then I got very, very quiet about providing him with any more details. I figured if he was interested, he would ask.

  He didn’t ask. I remember every so often making eye contact with him—as you do when you are married and occasionally have to say, “Please pass the salt”—and I would quickly look away. One part of me longed to sob in his arms and unload as if I were on my own episode of The Jerry Springer Show. The other part wanted to skulk away and become very, very busy and thus invisible. And all of it was barely held together by a strong sense of dread.

  This whole wanting/not wanting thing is something I struggle with. I want attention, and then I cringe at compliments. I long for communication and then run away when it gets real. I figure this all goes along with my Nutball Pendulum of Despair. For the love of God, it’s very dizzy up here.

  I finally had it with Brian’s silence, so I picked a super brilliant time to talk about it—while Brian was watching playoff football. He was leaning in toward the television, intensely chewing on some popcorn, and I sat down next to him on the sofa and began.

  “I am sorry I screwed up. I am sorry I’m such a total mess. I am just so . . . very . . . sorry.”

  To his credit, Brian had actually muted the game and was facing me as I said this. But when the tears started, I think I actually saw Brian’s inner Brian roll his eyes. Outer Brian would never do this because he is generally kind and pretty patient, and rolling your eyes at me is a way to lose your eyes. But he seemed to sigh a little, so I pounced.

  “What? Am I being too dramatic for you?”

  And you know what? This time, I think I actually was.

  And you know what else? Brian was really mad.

  Like, all of a sudden, he was really, really mad. And we were off to the races.

  “You don’t even seem to care if I am sober or not.” I poked my fingers at his head with angry emphasis. “Are you even in there?”

  Brian swatted my hand away. “Yep, I’m here, Dana. Taking care of our kids. And our house. And working. I’m HERE. Why weren’t you?” “I DON’T KNOW. I just know I feel alone, and you can do super dad and super worker, but what about super husband? I haven’t seen HIM in a while!”

  “PROBABLY BECAUSE HE’S TIRED OF YOUR CRAP.”

  We stood, staring at each other. I was preparing for a certain-death comeback because that’s usually my thing. I am good with words, and so I know the zingers. And this fight had long ago taken a turn into not wanting to work out anything at all. All it wanted was to hunker down and lob as much of the arsenal at the enemy as possible in hopes of total annihilation. We were out for blood.

  And so, that’s when Brian decided to win the war. He stood up from the couch and turned to me and thundered, “YOU HAD IT ALL. YOU HAD ALL OF US HERE WITH YOU. AND YOU PISSED IT ALL AWAY.”

  Then, he stalked out of the room.

  Brian had been angry with me before. We’re married; we’ve had some really intense fights about all sorts of fun things that married people fight about. All those arguments came down to hurt feelings, which stemmed from the fact that we really did, deep down, love each other. And we would get back to that loving part, eventually. It might take a day or two, but we always did.

  But
this time, it felt different. When he left the room, I felt it. A part of him, maybe just a small part, had chipped apart and fallen away from the marriage. Lost, maybe forever.

  I sat on the couch and stared at my hands and felt the great heave of sadness inside me develop into more tears. They filled my hands and my lap and seemed to fill up the room. I was awash in misery, and he wasn’t going to save me. Neither, right then, could I.

  I asked him about this fight much later, when the relapse was on the long-ago horizon and we had picked up as many pieces of ourselves as we could find to put back together. Marriage means the pieces are not only yours or his. There are also parts that connect the two of you, like puzzles tethered. We were lucky. We found most of those bits, and we carefully set them in place and continued. And when I asked him about that fight, whether he might have left me, whether he was done, he looked surprised.

  “I would never leave. I’m married to you, for better or for worse. It was a lot more worse at that point, but we’re good now.” This is Brian’s kind of answer. It is a whole-picture kind of thing. It is simple. It is often very heartening. Yet, I wonder.

  I still wonder whether Brian left himself, a little. He left his ideals, I think. The knight, the one on the white horse who saves the day, was defeated. His wife had one-upped him in the battle, and he didn’t even know he was in one. And I think he hated me then, a little. And for Brian, hate hurts. It’s his kryptonite.

  Relationships would be so much easier if they didn’t involve relating so much.

  When I was drinking, alcohol had a funny way of stopping up my ears. I couldn’t hear others around me, nor could I hear myself. When I stopped drinking, my ears could hear, and I could listen. Hearing and listening do have to work together, it seems. So, why did I choose to start drinking again? Why stop up my ears? Why bury my own words?

  Humanness, I guess.

  Humans walk around, being all human with each other, and we mess up—a lot. I wish I had a statistic for this, but in my own experience, I screw up about 67.2 percent of the time. Give a baby a plastic hammer and eventually, or really soon, he’s going to start whacking away at everything he can find. And for a baby, it’s no fun to whack away at a pillow, but when he tries it out on the cat, there’s a fluffy reaction. It’s more fun, but it’s messing up. Just ask the cat.

  We human all over each other. We crash up against and rub raw and jostle and break and make a big mess. And our messes mess with other humans, and all their messes, and so on, until infinity. Let’s face it: humanity is one big bouncy house. There will be crying, or puke.

  I know this is not earth-shattering, that humans screw things up a lot, but it was earth-shattering to me. Perhaps someone who is writing a book on humanness should not admit to missing out on this basic characteristic of humanity. What can I tell you? Brené Brown I am not.

  One of my dad’s favorite movies of all time is a classic western spoof called The Hallelujah Trail. I want to make this very clear: I am not recommending this movie. It’s really hilarious, yes, but on the whole “let’s be politically correct and not stereotype anyone” thing, it veers. However, it was made in the sixties. I mean, the father in The Parent Trap smoked and drank martinis throughout the entire plot, and that was with an adorable Hayley Mills around. That’s a lot of veering. Anyway, The Hallelujah Trail stars a young and tan Burt Lancaster, and I don’t care if a movie has him only standing on a chair; I would still watch it. He’s dreamy.

  One of the most epic scenes—from here on I will admit that I do rather love this movie; we quote it all the time in our family, which explains so much—is when a wagon train, headed by Burt and his soldiers, ends up in a sandstorm and gets attacked by the Indians, who are Native Americans in Burt-speak; sorry. The sand befuddles everyone, and they circle the wagons, randomly shoot guns and arrows, whoop and holler, drink whiskey, and ride horses right by each other in endless circles. And all the while, the unflappable narrator, who sounds a lot like Spencer Tracy, lets us know how ridiculous this is.

  You had to be there, I know. It doesn’t really sound all that funny, does it? Come over to our living room sometime, and we’ll watch it together. You’ll see. I’ll even make popcorn.

  The good guys and bad guys are all really within about twenty feet of each other and firing in all the wrong directions. As is so often the case in any sort of skirmish, nobody really has any idea what in the hell is going on. It’s hilarious. We know that they don’t know.

  This is how God feels, I think. I wonder if occasionally he thinks, “Well, let me just pop some corn and have a sit-down to watch this for a bit,” while we run amok.

  Humanness means we wander around and lob off attacks, which are misguided and stupid, and we look so silly from above.

  And humanness means we start drinking again after years of sobriety and not for any sort of reason. No one died. No one’s cat even died. We just decided one day, “Hey, I’ll drink right here! This here will be the day when I take all the work and lessons and tip them out on the floor with a crash, and other people will watch me in shock and awe. Voilà! Look at me being human all over the place!”

  Now, I realize “being human” can also mean goodness, much like those posts on Facebook about people saving baby ducks from a storm drain. That’s the thing about us humans. We like to do both of these things. We’re baby duck people, and then we’re firing at anything that moves. We like to mix it up.

  You do realize that every time I spoke of “we” in this chapter, I really was sort of hoping you could come along with me on this ride. Perhaps you’re saying, “Uh, no, Dana. I’m all baby duck, all the time.” If that is the case, the baby ducks and I salute you.

  Alas, for me, I am not a baby duck kind of person often. I apologize, sweet waterfowl. In my case, I would misfire and end up accidentally scaring the baby ducks back into the storm drain. Such is my luck.

  It’s so much more than baby ducks, though. I stubbornly insist, even with my terrible percentage of messing up, that humans—of whom I am one—have some of the greatest qualities of creatures on this Earth. We are right up there with the dolphins and those elephants that watch over orphaned baby elephants, and that cat that took in a litter of possums. Basically, we’re slightly under all those animals that show kindness to other animals. So, we’re about forty-seventh down on the list. But you get the idea.

  We love and we mess up; we keep messing up and we keep loving. It’s funny in the movies and not so funny in real life, but I’m still here and I’m still laughing. So there’s that.

  Now, I am off to find some baby ducks in need of help.

  Conversations with God Part One

  Me: Are you there, God? It’s me, Dana.

  God: Let me guess, you’ve always wanted to say that.

  Me: I loved Judy Blume as a kid.

  God: Me too. Still do. Of course. That’s my thing.

  Me: Right. I need you to answer a question.

  God: I know.

  Me: Stop getting ahead of me! This is important. Can you please tell me, why does life have to be so hard? I mean, what is the point, really? Why are we here? What does it all mean? And why, please, why do I have to keep messing it all up? Why can’t I get it right?

  God: Whoa. That’s way more than one question.

  Me: Wait, there’s more. Why do kids have to go hungry and why do we have to worry about bad people snatching away our children and what is going to happen to our country? We’re all so mad at each other. But for now, let’s just start with me.

  God: Okay. Well, the straight-shot answer is love God and love others.

  Me: And, let me guess, live by the Boy Scout law?

  God: Well . . . if you’re into camping, I guess. But really, it’s all about love.

  Me: That’s such a Michael Bolton answer.

  God: I love Michael Bolton.

  Me: Of course you do. That’s your thing. Listen, I’m no Mother Teresa—

  (God rolls his eyes.)

>   Me: What I mean is, I can’t just love others and that’s it. It’s too hard. And boring. Mother Teresa can do that but not me.

  God: It’s true. You really are no Mother Teresa. She and I had lunch today, and you certainly are not her. You’re Dana. And you may find this whole loving me and loving others thing is not boring at all.

  Me: Okay. But it is hard.

  God: That’s true. But you know what Michael Bolton said.

  Me: Oh, no.

  God: (singing) “That’s what love is all about.”*

  Me: You didn’t.

  God: Yep. I sure did.

  * * *

  * Michael Bolton’s album THE HUNGER released in 1987.

  CHAPTER TEN

  HOW TO

  be cool

  When I was a kid, I would watch my brother get ready to go out dancing on a Saturday night. He would coat himself in Brut and polyester while the Bee Gees chirped in the background. “Be cool, kid,” he would say to me and then head out into the evening, trailing sophistication, and a whole lot of cheap cologne, in his wake.

  I have a cinematic memory of my brother. It’s illuminated with the soft-filtered light of Polaroid images where I am little and he is big. I am looking up. I have feathered hair and a lime-green terry cloth jumper, and he’s getting into his souped-up Volkswagen before prom night, dressed in a white tux. He was John Travolta. Now, my memories of him are carefully folded and put away, but whenever I get them out they are a bit more frayed, a bit more creased around the edges. Some have fallen behind a drawer or under the dresser, lost forever.

  He is stuck in my head accompanied by the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, shiny polyester, and imitations of Steve Martin. Chris was a wild and crazy guy. In my memories, he is his own walking and talking greatest hits album.

  Looking back now, I realize I had missed a few things. Heck, I was seven. As a seven-year-old, my understanding of my brother was a bit skewed. I realize now that Chris, even as a teenager, felt the weight of being the life of the party. There were those fights with my father. And he got a few DUIs. He dropped out of college after one year, probably due to too much partying. But as he grew older, these behaviors seemed to abate, and we all breathed a sigh of relief and filed them under “He’s always funny, which means he’s totally fine.”