On our last night in town, my parents and my sister’s family all gather together for a big pizza dinner at Filippi’s, my favorite restaurant growing up, where I used to play with the dough as a little girl. There are a lot of moments that would normally be very stressful for me—my dad needs to sit in a certain place so he can see very partially out of his one eye, he knocks something over, the waitress doesn’t get his sense of humor, they’re out of everything. But I don’t feel on edge like I did with Blaine. I know Pat accepts me and isn’t judging me on any normal scale of What will the Joneses think?
The dinner is instead hilarious and fun, with my sister’s children taking over my Snapchat, and my dad and Pat swapping jokes nearly the entire dinner. At the end, my father proposes a toast.
“To Pat,” my dad says, raising a glass.
“To Pat,” my mom says, and then she can’t resist adding, “who is one funny motherfucker.”
I let out a huge belly laugh and Pat does, too. I feel so much love for her.
“Children are here, Mom!” my sister scolds, and her kids laugh.
Pat is sitting next to me, and as everyone talks, he squeezes my leg.
“Your family is so great,” he whispers to me. I feel relaxed, at ease, like all my selves are joining together.
* * *
ONE NIGHT IN late August, when I am anxiously trying to fall asleep but unable to do so, I get a text from Pat at 2:34 in the morning.
“I just thought of the perfect day we could get married,” his text reads.
My heart stops. I reread the text. Marriage? Is he screwing with me? We have been together now for seven months. Is this possible? Is this really happening?
“Yeah?” I reply, realizing that unlike other men who might bring marriage up to mess with your mind, he is 100 percent sincere.
“February 29,” he texts again. “We’d have an anniversary every four years.”
“That’s brilliant,” I write back.
“Then it’s decided,” he replies. “We’re engaged.”
I’m shell-shocked.
“!!!!!!!” I text back.
I spring up in my bed like I’ve been hit with a bolt of lightning. I blast Jay-Z’s “On to the Next One” and dance around in circles. When I was a kid, my mom would tell me to work out my energy by running around the pool. I wish I could do that right now, but instead I screen-grab his texts and make them my home screen.
Is this really happening?
When we meet up the next day in Bryant Park, Pat greets me with an embrace and holds me tight.
“We’re going to do this properly with a ring—the exact ring that you want—and I want you to be able to plan it out just how you want it,” he says. “Because this is like the ultimate getting-flowers-at-the-office competition, right?”
I kiss him gratefully. Pat understands how fun it can be to spike the ball.
“I want a ruby ring,” I say.
He touches my face gently.
“You do?” he asks.
The ruby ring has a particular sentimentality for us. When we first shared all our stories, Pat told me once about his grandma’s ring, which featured all of her grandkids’ birthstones.
As a little boy, four or five years old, he would touch the ruby stone and say, “That’s me!”
I want him to be able to do the same with mine.
“And we can do the public proposal on the steps of Times Square . . . and we can Periscope the whole thing so our friends and family can watch,” I say, on a roll now, so excited at the opportunity to go sky’s-the-limit.
“That sounds great,” he says.
On the day of the event, we wake up at 5 a.m., and I pick up a copy of the Daily News, which shows a picture of us in the top left corner.
“Tune in, see her yes face!” the headline reads, telling people to watch us Periscope the proposal later that day. It is like something out of a million vision boards I would never dare create.
“Mandy,” Pat says as a crowd watches on the red TKTS steps of Times Square and another one watches online, “I’ve been smitten with you since before we met for our first date. I couldn’t understand how you could still be single. We met on a stunt date over coffee. You told me stories. A lot of them involving sex. You mentioned how many dicks you sucked. It was magical. After our first date, I was still smitten, but I could kind of understand the still-single part.”
I am crying-laughing.
“Mandy, in all seriousness you’re the smartest person I’ve ever met. You’re the sweetest person I’ve ever met. You’re the funniest woman I’ve ever met. You’re the person on earth I always want to see the most. I’m still smitten. And I know the reason you were still single is because I hadn’t gotten to meet you yet. Because you have the patience and the generosity and the kindness to love someone who is as deeply flawed as I am. So, Mandy . . . will you be my best friend and wife forever?”
I say, “Yes,” as I stand there in tears. He puts the ring on my finger and we kiss like it’s the first time we ever have, like it’s our last night on earth.
I get engaged on October 23, 2015—the very last day of my thirties. I wake up on my fortieth birthday, engaged to the love of my life and unable to believe that I have not only met the man of my dreams, but that I get to spend the rest of my life with him—starting very soon.
As we start to figure out the details, Pat has an idea for how we might do our wedding that he thinks might make the night even more special than just resulting in a marriage anniversary every four years.
“What would you say about getting married,” Pat asks, “while performing onstage?”
Nothing has ever sounded so brilliant, honestly. I love nothing more than joining Pat when he performs, and this seems like the ultimate way to tie the knot.
“Are you kidding me?” I respond. “Yes!”
Pat tells me how the wedding will work. Because his stage show has been accepted into the New York Comedy Festival, he’s headlining Gotham Comedy Club on November 11, so we can turn it into the festival’s very first wedding-slash-comedy show. Awesome.
But the date is coming up really, really soon, and it’s not long before we are both running overheated as we scramble to meet the fast-approaching event. It feels like a 24-style countdown to bring all the pieces together: the minister (check), the performers (check), the vows (check), the rings (check).
I find myself slowly having a meltdown.
“You need to take care of yourself, Mandy,” Pat says as I’m trying to figure out the perfect dress, the perfect hair, and the perfect everything. “We don’t have to get married at the show if it’s too stressful. But you have to go to a meeting, see your therapist, something. Because we can’t do this at the expense of your personal well-being.”
And so, as he runs around the city making last-minute preparations, I sit in a small dingy room with other people who are facing the same demons that I am.
Only today is my wedding day, and I have never felt so grateful.
“Hi, my name is Mandy, and I’m an alcoholic.”
Later that night, onstage, surrounded by three hundred friends and fans in a packed comedy club, we recite vows we have written that day.
Pat takes my hands and speaks to my heart.
“You know, Mandy, when we met, everything changed for me,” Pat says. “I really didn’t know somebody like you existed, and if I had known, I wouldn’t have given up on all that shit before.”
A wave of laughter ripples through the audience, and tears well up in my eyes.
“You’re unlike anybody I’ve ever met,” he says. “It’s been the best year of my life. I promise to honor that by never forgetting how bad life was when I didn’t know you.”
Then he looks in my eyes, pauses, and says, “And I’m never going to put you in a home.”
The audience bursts into laughter—at both the irreverence and the surprise of the line—but I know how profound what he says really is. I squeeze his hand.
It is a moment only we understand.
Later that night, when it is just the two of us alone in a romantic hotel suite with roses strewn everywhere, Pat surprises me by pulling out a copy of the letter that I wrote to my “future self,” the one I showed him months earlier.
Nervously, I open the seal.
I read it aloud for us both.
“Dear Mandy, what a beautiful experience these past few years have been,” I say, fully crying now. “You know who you are. You have a heart filled with love—for yourself and others. And you only partner with a man who has earned the right to be with you.”
At that last part, Pat reaches out and caresses the ruby on my ring.
“That’s you,” I say.
“That’s me.”
* * *
IF YOU LOOK deep inside every woman, you will find a black box that records the wreckage of her past relationships.
It’s an intimidating excavation, to be sure. Digging through all the dust and debris until you finally find it buried beneath the surface with the ominous seal on the outside reading DO NOT OPEN.
I know better now than to blithely obey.
I am not and will not be afraid to look and to listen and to learn. I want to go there. I need to find the bigger picture, and in the process, myself. While I relive the most terrifying moments recorded, the most disturbing memories, the darkest nights, I can’t help but shudder.
But I’m no longer afraid of the fear. I’m no longer paralyzed by humiliation or the notion of what others might think of me. Fear will not kill you. Humiliation holds no real power. But being too afraid to look and listen just might.
At first, the voices sound haunting. Taunting even. But I don’t stop. I can’t stop. I refuse to. I will go deeper until I find out what I am really made of and where I have been all this time.
Goddammit I just can’t take it!
This never happened, and if you tell anyone different, I’ll deny it.
I’m disappointed in you, Mandy.
You’re not smart, you’re not funny, you’re not a good writer, and you’re not pretty.
Do you want me to fuck the shit out of you?
If I were you, I would have put a gun in my mouth a long time ago.
Please don’t say I dated Mandy Stadtmiller.
I’d suggest you stay away from marriage going forward?
You took a little nap. I had to wake you up.
That was not sex. That was rape.
I don’t want a Post reporter to die on me.
Are you high yet? You want some more?
You know, there are these swinger parties they have.
Our black boxes really are such extraordinary devices, built for a level of toughness that is nearly unimaginable. But what we don’t know when we are younger is that sometimes what feels on impact like a fiery crash is just the terrifying last moments of an emergency landing that ultimately saves your life. For me, it was rejecting a deeply negative self-concept that became a twisted, masochistic sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Yes, I may have felt safe and certain with the concept of “unwifeability.” But I never really had any kind of fixed identity. Because no one does. Unless you treat yourself that way, you are always pure potential—always limitless possibility. It was me who felt unworthy. It was me who felt unlovable. It was me who felt unredeemable. So I chose relationships that affirmed my self-hatred. Because if everything is pain, then nothing is.
See that burning wreckage? I did that. That was me.
But empowerment is not self-sabotage—even when you are the one wreaking the havoc. Empowerment, I think, is deciding what you want your final destination to be, developing a plan to protect your heart, and never letting anyone tell you differently.
A funny thing happens the longer you listen to that black box. Over time you can hear how the narrative changes. The more you can take control and confront what needs fixing, the more tolerable the recordings become. What was once a journey of self-hatred and regret becomes the sounds of survival. You start to hear, through the static and the noise, the unexpected connections and daring choices that helped save your life.
Mandy, you can keep calling me up every few weeks, or you can change your life.
You’ve been through a lot of pain.
You know what “shame” stands for? “Should Have Already Mastered Everything.”
Take a walk, and just find a flower and appreciate it.
I wanted you to show me I was valuable through your actions.
You’re unlike anybody I’ve ever met.
Will you marry me someday?
It’s been the best year of my life.
We can always correct course.
What seems like certain death can at any moment become certain rebirth. What seems like unforgivable sin can become an unbelievable act of mercy.
If we welcome in the pain of the past, our black box can unlock our shame, freeing us forever. If we face the very worst of it—all the humiliation, all the self-pity, all the anger, all the regret—we will soon realize the answer has been there all along.
Our black box can never be destroyed.
Acknowledgments
There are thousands of individuals who even in the briefest of interactions have helped me more than they’ll ever know, and to each one, I extend my gratitude. In particular, I am so appreciative of the love, understanding, patience, wisdom, kindness, and empathy of my family: My father, Jerry; my mother, Patricia; my sister, Amie; and the love of my life, my husband, Pat. On a professional level, I am so thankful to Byrd Leavell, Joe Veltre, Hannah Vaughn, and the best ed- itor in the world, Natasha Simons; my publicist Jean Anne Rose and the director of publicity, Jennifer Robinson; editorial assistant Hannah Brown; and the whole team at Simon & Schuster, led by the brilliant Jennifer Bergstrom. There have been so many friends and colleagues who have been particularly amazing, and I’ll name several of them here in alphabetical order. If I left you out, please let me know, and I will write a sequel just to make up for the indiscretion. Here goes.
Thank you to: Lexi Alexander, Lindsay Allen, Christina Amoroso, Megan Amram, Fred Armisen, Johanna Aster, Bahar Atvur, John Avlon, Brian Bachner, Joan Baker, Katie Baker, Todd Barry, Maggie Bandur, Amanda Barrie, Joy Behar, Greg Behrendt, Sara Benincasa, Ron Bennington, Scott Bixby, Michael Blaustein, Rachel Bloom, Kristin Booker, Alex Borstein, Dave Boyle, Jonathan Brandstein, Abigail Breslin, Sharon Bridbord, Casey Brodley, DeDe Brown, Stella Bugbee, Dennis Burger, Candace Bushnell, Susannah Cahalan, Charlie Carballo, Erin Lee Carr, E. Jean Carroll, Richard Cernese, Gina Chon, Amy Chua, Corynne Cirilli, Donna Cochener, Dr. David Colbert and everyone at New York Dermatology Group, Rives Collins, Michael Colton, Margi Conklin, Courtland Cox, Kambri Crews, Mark Cronin, Anthony Cumia, Kelly Cutrone, Eric Danville, Anna David, Kristin Davis, Mackenzie Dawson, Rachel DeAlto, Jessica Delfino, Juan Delgado, Stephanie DeLuca, Shirine and Tony DiSanto, Kathleen Donohue, Andrea Dunlop, Debbie Pell Dunning, Noam Dworman, Mark Ebner, Scott Einziger, Chris Erikson, Daniel Falato, Stephen Falk, Wayne Federman, Al Fielder, Shannon Fisher, Siobhan Foley, Julie Frady, Maya Francis, Alison Freer, Serena French, Jon Friedman, Molly Friedman, Paula Froelich, Adrienne Frost, John Fugelsang, Sarah Fuller, Ardie Fuqua, Jim Gaffigan, Joel Garreau, Marianne Garvey, Ido Gaver, Robert George, Hanna Gibeau, Laura Gilbert, Pia Glenn, Evan Gore, Elina Gorelik, Michelle Gotthelf, Joe Grieboski, Lloyd Grove, Joanna Gurin, Isaac Guzmán, Lauren Hackney, Sylvia Haider, Olivia Hall, Charlaine Harris, Eric Hegedus, Sarah Hepola, Gabe Hoffman, Jenn Hoffman, Ron Hogan, Jessica Hudson, Joselyn Hughes, Mary Huhn, Gale Anne Hurd, Jenny Hutt, Larry Izzo, A. J. Jacobs, Richard Johnson, Molly Jong-Fast, Chelsea Kalberloh Jackson, Don Kaplan, Jill Kargman, Robert Kelly, Gayle King, Jaime King, Leslie Kinzel, Gayle Klein, Jessi Klein, Larry Knapp, Sarah Knight, Annie Kreighbaum, John Kupetz, Shinji Kuwayama, Jillian Kuzma, Bonita Labossiere, Destiny Lalane, Anne Lamott, Artie Lange, Sam Lansky, Enty Lawyer, Beverly Lefkowitz, Michelle Leigh, Warren Leight, Ali Ler
man, Lori Levine, Samantha Levy, Tony Leys, Amy Lighter, Courtney Lilly, Mark Lisanti, Courtney Love, Joe Lozito, Michael Lustig, Francesca Lyn, Steve Lynch, Peri Lyons, Ira Madison III, Michael Malice, Cat Marnell, Erin Mater Hogan, Jillian Dolby Mavodones, Soren McCarthy, Sheila McClear, Patrick McCloskey, Emily McCombs, Liam McEneaney, Joi-Marie McKenzie, Tara McKinney, Kimberly Rae Miller, Raakhee Mirchandani Singh, Sara Moffitt, Lee Moon-Griffo, Lane Moore, Sonja Morgan, Jonathan Morvay, Polly Mosendz, Allan Mott, Rajasri Narasimhan, Sharilyn Neidhardt, Lester Nelson-Gacal, Randi Newton, Brian Niemietz, Jayme Nimick, Hamilton Nolan, Jim Norton, Maggie O’Brien, William O’Connor, Arianna O’Dell, Keith Olbermann, Sandra Oles, Hannah Orenstein, Charity Palmera, Peaches, Eileen Phoenix, Jo Piazza, Brittny Pierre, Steven Pinker, Lindsay Plotkin, Benari Poulten, Jane Pratt, Liz Pressman, Julia Pugachevsky, Katherine Pushkar, Colin Quinn, Issa Rae, Lauren Ramsby, Katrina Reese, Paola Reyes, Luiz C. Ribeiro, Jim Roberts, Marci Robin, Dana Robinson, Jon Ronson, Mike Sacks, Horatio Sanz, Pamela Redmond Satran, Sue Scheff, Michael Schneider, Ray Schneiders, Amy Schumer, Amanda Schwab, Bex Schwartz, Luke Seemann, Pete Segall, Carrie Seim, Jim Serpico, Noah Shachtman, Susan Shapiro, Rob Sheffield, Kelly Shibari, Rachel Shukert, Shakti Shukla, Harry Siegel, Sharon Simon, Illyse Singer, Anna Siri, Suzie Sisoler, Ashley Skidmore, Emily Smith, Graham Smith, Jackie Smith, Keri Smith, Kyle Smith, Ryan Smith, Aaron Sorkin, Megan Soto, Lainie Speiser, Heather Spillane, Rob Sprance, Dese’Rae Lynn Stage, Jerry Stahl, Karrine Steffans, Marlow Stern, Doctor Steve, Nicole Stillings, Neil Strauss, Cheryl Strayed, Lisa Swanson, Aundria Theocles, Michael Thomsen, Reed Tucker, Deanna Urciuoli, Dr. Belisa Vranich, Jessie Militare Walsh, Hilary Weaver, Jordan Weeks, Miriam Weeks, Allison Hope Weiner, Gene Weingarten, Farrah Weinstein, Abigail Welhouse, Emily Whitaker, Alice Wright, Franklin Wright, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Laura Yasinitsky, Nikki Yeager, and Ellen Soo Hoo Zurfluh.
About the Author
Mandy Stadtmiller is a comedian and columnist for The Daily Beast who has written for the New York Post, New York magazine, xoJane, the Washington Post, Time Out, Maxim, Penthouse, and many more. She lives in New York City with her husband.
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