Broken (in the best possible way)
Broken (in the best possible way)
By: Jenny Lawson
[Fulfilling “A book with flowers on the cover” as part of the 2021 Spring/Summer Reading Challenge]
“Do you want to hear a story about how I almost went blind because of diarrhea rats? Of course you do.”
If that piqued your interest, you’re on the right track with checking out this book.
I’m curious what parts are verbatim from her life and what has been adjusted for humor, but either way, this lady lives a pretty crazy and hilarious existence that she has documented, unfiltered, in these pages.
Let’s just get this out of the way first: It’s increasingly hard to find clean comedy these days. So I’m going to assume that if you are considering this book then you are okay with a lot of swearing (79 f-words, 64 s-words) and inappropriate humor. Because that’s somewhat of a standard for a lot of humor, though I don’t like it, I will not critique that; but just be aware of what you’re getting into.
So that aside, I did think this book was pretty funny- more so the first half than the second. But I laughed out loud several times which says a lot.
I actually have no idea who Jenny Lawson is. In fact, as I read this book my brain kept reading it to me in Amy Schumer’s voice…
If you are already a fan of Jenny, I’m assuming you will find this book to enjoyable. If you, like me, are a Jenny-Lawson-newbie, here’s a brief summary of her niche: She deals with mental and physical illnesses of many forms including severe anxiety, agoraphobia, rheumatoid arthritis, pre-diabetes, and some memory loss (among others—don’t worry, she’ll tell ya about it; she says she “collects diseases like other people collect Beanie Babies”). She writes books and finds the humor in her ailments. Considering all that she has gone through, it’s an amazing feat that, like she says, is necessary to her survival. She is very transparent and honest and throughout the book she intersperses more meaningful and sober meditations on life, health, pain, and identity.
“It’s weird because we often try to present our fake, shiny, happy selves to others and make sure we’re not wearing too-obvious pajamas at the grocery store, but really, who wants to see that level of fraud? No one.”
“Human foibles are what makes us us, and the art of mortification is what brings us all together.”
Thus, we have a hodge-podge of embarrassing, surprising life experiences and musings from Jenny Lawson (who is not Amy Schumer).
One of my life goals is to write a memoir someday and I feel like a lot of the structure of her book is similar to what I would aspire to do when my time comes. I love that her chapters are random and don’t flow together and are often just lists of things— I think that’s also representative of her state of mind and how she lives life which adds to this book’s honesty and authenticity. I also love her super long sentences, use of caps and punctuation, footnotes, sidenotes to the footnotes, and parenthetical disclaimers and clarifiers— the humor and voice is spot on. The way she relates her conversations with her husband, Victor, is also hilarious. I can easily picture her writing this book and asking him questions as she’s typing and arguing about pointless things and then writing about it.
And I love her relationship with spellcheck:
“Spellcheck keeps underlining ‘kegels’ and saying that it doesn’t understand what they are. JOIN THE CLUB, SPELLCHECK.”
“Spellcheck keeps telling me that ‘buttworms’ isn’t a real word and I understand your disbelief, spellcheck, but just because we want them to not be real doesn’t mean that they aren’t. Ugh. I totally got distracted by my buttworms. Sorry. This chapter is not about buttworms.It’s about tuberculosis. Which the doctor also said I didn’t get from cat buttholes. In fact, she said it mostly comes from prisons and schools, which are pretty much the same thing if I’m being honest.”
“‘Because she’s a good person and that’s what normal people do,’ Victor interrupted interruptingly. (Spellcheck is saying ‘interruptingly’ isn’t a word because I guess it’s never spent time with Victor before. Also, it stopped me in the middle of writing this in a totally interruptingly way. Way to disprove your point, spellcheck.)
Also there’s a whole chapter about the editing process of her book and some back and forths she had with her editors:
“Editor: There’s no hyphen in ‘monkey waiter.’
Me: How do you know? They don’t exist yet.
Editor: They have them in Japan.
Me: Clearly we need to hang out together more.”
“Editor: You switched from present tense to past tense here so we need to change so that the tenses match. I suggest you change ‘I was crazy’ to ‘I am crazy.’
Me: Harsh. And accurate.”
“Me: If I got stabbed right now you’d find a way to fix this book without my help, right? Can we just pretend that happened and you can take over? Or do I need to be real stabbed?
Editor: It’s gonna be okay.
Me: Did you just use the word ‘gonna’?
Editor: It hurt, but it seemed like you needed it.
Me: You’re one of the good ones.”
And then her chapter where she takes truisms and makes them ‘better’:
“THE BEST THING TO HOLD ON TO IN LIFE IS EACH OTHER… Or the remote. Or the phone. I’m always losing those. But I almost never lose people, because I can just call them and be like, ‘Where are you? Also, have you seen the remote?’ Unless I lose my phone. Then I have to scream until someone comes and calls me with their phone so I can find my phone. So I guess holding on to each other is good too in case you need your phone.”
“IT’S ALWAYS TOO SOON TO QUIT… Unless we’re talking about smoking. Or spending all your money on lottery tickets. Or being a serial killer. Actually, skip this truism. I need more information.”
It’s the type of book that you read and then will come to mind in later conversations where you want to share one of her stories or comments and think “Oh, this one time, my friend Jenny…” and realize, oh yeah. I just read her book. She’s not actually my friend. But her simple and conversational writing will leave the impression that you know her intimately.
Here are some more quotes to illustrate her humor and diverse subject matter. (And then I conclude with a little look at her more serious observations.)
“And while I do prefer to be barefoot, I do not like to be wearing just one shoe, because then you’re lopsided and it feels like you have accidental temporary polio. (No one gives themselves polio on purpose, Victor.)”
“Apparently someone had called security to report the wayward shoe. I guess they’d kept the elevator stopped while they made sure it wasn’t a bomb or a maybe investigated how some trashy Cinderella had made it as far as the elevator. Then the security guard brought my shoe down to me and I gave him two dollars because I don’t know how much you’re supposed to tip for your own shoe, and I vowed to never walk out of my shoes in an elevator ever again, and I never did until I totally did it again one week later.”
“(Note: Fight or flight syndrome is what a lot of people with anxiety deal with during stress. My choices seem to be either shank the person who is making me scared or get rid of all my fluids so I can run faster. I choose peeing over stabbing. You’re welcome.)”
“Someone gave me a poster that says, ‘Let her sleep for when she wakes she will move mountains,’ and I think it’s a nice sentiment because it encourages people to not wake me up, but I already can’t sleep because tomorrow I have to go to the bank and I can’t turn off my brain and now I’m finding out that I HAVE TO MOVE MOUNTAINS? I’m probably only sleeping late because I was up all night worrying about mountain relocation. Maybe the mountains need to stay where they are. Why is this my problem? Screw this. I just scratched out the part about moving landmasses and left ‘Let her sleep’ standing. Because I don’t throw babies out with the bathwater. In fact, I don’t throw babies at all. Or move mountains.”
“Victor tried to make me feel bad because I never got Hailey a birth certificate, but in my defense I didn’t get one because they’re like baby receipts and I’m not gonna get a refund. Then Victor said that they’re not for returning babies, they’re to prove that you have a baby, but I already have proof that I have a baby and her name is Hailey and she lives here.”
“And that’s sort of what depression is like…like when your mom turns into Kathie Lee Gifford’s face on giant, murderous swamp puppies. If you don’t have depression this analogy might seem baffling, but if you have it, you’re probably pointing at this page and saying, ‘BINGO, LADY. YOU NAILED IT.’”
(Her being a ‘bad risk’ to insurance companies) “It’s like global warming for elderly people. They probably think it’s likely but they know they won’t live to see us invaded by polar bears and volcanoes (I don’t know how global warming works) so they keep committing arson with aerosol bottles or whatever dangerous things elderly people do for fun (I don’t know how elderly people work). Basically, I’m global warming. But faster. And with fewer polar bears. (I don’t know how good analogies work.)”
“Victor was like, ‘Why is there a disco ball on the credit card?’ and I said, ‘It’s not for me. It's for some famous retired monkeys who aren’t allowed to roller skate anymore.’ And that’s when Victor threatened to turn off my credit cards.”
“But I explained that if I were a dentist I’d bury all the extra teeth I pulled in a pit in the backyard and then maybe a hundred years from now someone would dig them up and be like, ‘Holy crap! A serial killer must’ve been here!’ And that would be nice because it’s fun to add a little mystery to strangers’ lives. I’m a giver.”
“Luckily, my TB was inactive, so it was as lazy as I am. Apparently I’d been exposed to someone with active TB at some point and now I carry it around, along with all my deep-seated resentment of girls who were mean to me in junior high.”
“I don’t know if you’ve ever had a trash-fire shower, but that’s pretty much what this whole week has been like. Literally and figuratively. And it makes you rethink a lot of your choices… like my choice to ignore things I don’t want to think about until they are literally on fire around me, which is probably the most American thing about me.”
“On the other hand, I don’t think I’m allowed to vacuum anymore, so I guess it all works out in the end. It still sucks though. Or blows. Maybe both.”
So yeah. She definitely has a gift for comedic writing.
But then she would also throw in some introspection.
Her letter to insurance companies was very compelling and probably speaks to the heart of a lot of people dealing with compounding medical issues and having to fight so hard for coverage of the medication they need to live.
I found it moving when she opens up about her memory loss and forgetting people or things that have happened. I am a very nostalgic person so memories are so important to me. I fear what it would be like to lose them. But I thought she said it well here:
“If one day I look at you and don’t remember who you are or how much you mean to me, know that your importance is still as real then as it is now. Know that you are locked away someplace safe. Know that the me who loved you is still sitting on that beach, forever feeling the sunlight. And know that I’m okay with not having that memory right now, because the me that holds it tight is keeping it safe and uncorrupted and glorious. And she loves you. And I do too. Remember that.”
She titled this book ‘Broken (in the best possible way)’ because she knows she faces a lot of obstacles in her life, but she has also seen the good from a new perspective and has insights on life that many would never understand. I love her honesty and transparency. I’ve not dealt with severe anxiety or depression so this was an illuminating read for me. Here is her world:
“The problem is that depression is my forever side dish to any period of convalescence and illness, and depression lies. It tells you that you are worthless. That life was never good. That you are a drain on the world and that it will only get worse.”
“I always told Hailey that being afraid of the dark was silly because the thing about darkness is that it’s not just a place for things to hide. It’s a cloak that hides you as well. The night can be a friend. And that’s a good thing to know, but only when your head is working properly and you can assure yourself that once you step back into the house you’ll cast a shadow again instead of being one. That promise doesn’t exist tonight and I hurry back inside, feeling claustrophobic in the darkness that seems as if it will consume or wash away what little bit of me I have left.”
“If I look closer at these stories that make up my life, a strange theme emerges. It’s the idea that something is only real if it’s damaged. I suppose it makes sense in a terrible sort of way. After all, we are changed by life… it puts its teeth in us, it leaves its handprints and marks and scars on us. And as much as we try to ignore those things, in the end they make us who we are. For good or for bad, we are changed and touched and broken and mended and scarred. And those marks (inside and out) tell a story. They tell our story.”
And then this concept she spends time on in her last chapter. It struck me and I can’t read these words and abandon them:
“I’m not much for organized religion, but I think we all have souls. Glowing half orbs… And as we live, our spheres crack. They splinter with sadness or loss or doubt or pain…Then we walk around with these slivers missing… these holes… Sometimes we try to fill these holes with things that seem to fill the gap but aren’t right. We wedge a square bit in a round hole, but it’s a large hole, so it fits, although inexactly… Sometimes the sphere is too broken for people to go on. It’s like when people say their God hole is empty. We’re all built differently, and maybe for you the missing piece is religion, or trust or love or acceptance, but we’re all shattered in our own way and we all pick up pieces that others leave behind… We are broken. We are healing. It never ends. And, if you look at it in just the right light, it is beautiful.”
First, this is her heart so I don’t want to take away from her sharing these pieces of her. I can’t fully understand everything about her that has shaped her viewpoint. But I can’t read this and leave it at that. What she finds beautiful is healing, however imperfect, seeing something good come from something bad. She sees a glimmer of something much brighter. She misses out on the real healing and redemption that can only be found in God.
I can’t help but be reminded of Lysa Terkeurst’s awesome book ‘It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way’. She says, "What if shattering is the only way to get dust back to its basic form so that something new can be made?" Throughout her book she uses analogies of dust, of pottery. Of the biblical truths that we were made from dust. God makes beautiful things out of dust. God uses the things that break us to make something new in us.
Jenny is right that we are all, indeed, broken. Truer words have not been spoken. But she is wrong to say that it never ends. There is a hope that awaits us that promises we will one day be whole and perfect. Jenny’s broken body, riddled with diseases and trash-fire, is a work in progress that God desires to redeem if she puts her trust in him.
“Some things won’t be fixed on this side of eternity; they just have to be walked through. But when my brain begs me to doubt God—as it most certainly does—I find relief for my unbelief by laying down my human assessments and assumptions. I turn from the tree of knowledge and fix my gaze on the tree of life. I let my soul be cradled by God’s divine assurance. His Son. Who completely understands. And who will walk me through every step of this if I keep my focus on Him. That’s how I survive the 86,400 seconds called today.” (Terkeurst)
Lawson’s book, Broken, is simultaneously light-hearted and deep, both humorous and sobering. It’s a finding of brightness in the darkness and of a real acknowledgment that there is something broken in us that we are all searching to heal.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
P.S. I was today years old when Jenny’s epiphany became my epiphany that the chicken crossing the road to get to the other side was because: “OMG, THE OTHER SIDE= DEATH. THE CHICKEN IS SUICIDAL,’ and suddenly I understood the joke for the first time ever and now I’m wondering what other basic things I think I understand but really don’t at all, and Victor says there are probably too many.”
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