by Lena Dunham
These days, the tables have turned. You’re the one who’s distracted while your mother tries to talk. You’re the one who thinks fathers just need to get through their father problems. Now you always fall asleep before your little sister—you drop her at the subway stop and watch her disappear belowground. You hear she’s a great dancer from friends who run into her when she’s out at night.
You’ve always suffered from dissociation. Whether it’s clinical, as has been suggested by at least two therapists, or willful (“Are you listening to me?” your father is always saying. “I can feel you dissociating again.”), you can’t say, but that syrupy terror that characterized summer nights as a nine-year-old sometimes lasts for days now.
“You know that thing, when you’re having sex, but instead of feeling it you can see yourself from above, like you’re watching a movie?” you ask your friend Jemima one day as she’s painting you nude on her couch.
“Uh, no,” she says. “And that’s really sad. Have you talked to anyone about that?”
Everyone tells you that you look like your aunt. You have the same nose, the same butt, and you hug the same way, like an overcompensating koala. One day she tells you a story about when she was first dating her husband. She knew she wasn’t his only girlfriend, but she liked him anyway. One evening he went out to get beer and, when she heard him return, she pretended to be asleep. Just to see what he would do. Would he cover her with a blanket? Would he walk around like she wasn’t there, make an important phone call? Would he watch her sleep?
You think this must run in the family. You tried this just last week, with the person you are dating, and the results were disappointing.
The fact is, since that first blow job, you haven’t gotten any more comfortable with sex. Every sexual encounter has felt like a first visit with a new general practitioner. Awkward, burdensome, a little chilly. Eventually you learn some buzzwords and positions that make the whole thing flow more easily, and you always go into it with the best intentions of not watching yourself from the doorframe like a not-very-incognito detective.
But you are still running away.
One version of running away is to take a very long shower while someone you’re pretending to like sits on their bed watching trailers on the computer.
Another version is getting a UTI and, after hours of strained urination in a bathroom the size of a bucket, you slip out wearing just your nightgown, back to your parents’ apartment, where your mother has set out antibiotics and cranberry juice but has gone back to bed.
Another version is calling a cab in a haze of pills and getting home at 6:00 A.M. only to realize you’ve left all your valuables at the home of a guy who doesn’t wake up until two and can’t be summoned from his narcotic sleep by the buzzer.
Another version is sneaking off to meditate in the morning, then getting back into bed like you never slipped out. Another version is just meditating.
Other things you can try: Saying you’re sick. Saying you fell down in the street because of impractical shoes. Saying work ran late. Writing your head off. Saying you’re sick again. Saying you’re a person who gets sick a lot. Going radio silent, then saying you lost your cell phone somewhere in your bed. Going to work and staying there all day long. Listening to a Taylor Swift song about dancing in the rain. Not jogging. Never jogging.
Soon you will find yourself in more and more situations you don’t want to run from. At work you’ll realize that you’ve spent the entire day in your body, really in it, not imagining what you look like to the people who surround you but just being who you are. You are a tool being put to its proper use. That changes a lot of things.
And one day you’ll get out of bed to pee, and someone will say, “I hate it when you leave,” and you will want to rush back. You’ll think, Stuff like this only happens to characters played by Jennifer Garner, right? but it’s happening to you and it keeps happening even when you cry or misbehave or show him how terrible you are at planning festive group outings. He seems to be there without reservation. He pays attention. He listens. He seems to want to stay.
Sometimes that old feeling slips back in. Of being invaded and misunderstood. Of being outside your body but still in the room, like what you imagine a spirit does immediately after death. You used to own the night and put it to good use, during that sweet spot after your father could no longer tell you when to go to sleep and before you shared an apartment with someone else. Is togetherness killing your productivity? When’s the last time you stayed up until 4:00 A.M. testing the boundaries of your consciousness and Googling serial killers?
But then you remember how hard it was, that moment between wakefulness and sleep. How the moment of settling down was almost physically painful, your mind pulling away from your body like a balloon being sucked into the atmosphere. He settles that. He tells you that your day was rich enough and now it is time to wind down. He helps you sleep. People need sleep.
You’ve learned a new rule and it’s simple: don’t put yourself in situations you’d like to run away from.
But when you run, run back to yourself, like that bunny in Runaway Bunny runs to its mother, but you are the mother, and you’ll see that later and be very, very proud.
I WOULD LIKE TO gratefully acknowledge the following people, who were instrumental in the writing and publication of this book:
Peter Benedek, the greatest friend and champion. I owe you so much, which is why I give you 10 percent of all my money. Jenny Maryasis, you are a most literary and forthright woman in a world full of dummies who lie. Thank you both.
Kimberly Witherspoon, thank you for encouraging me to take up all the space I need, both in a chair and on the page.
Jodi Gottlieb, who really keeps it classy.
Susan Kamil, Gina Centrello, and the rest of the Random House femme-squad. A beautiful bunch.
Andy Ward, you are the best editor a girl who uses the word “vagina” a lot could ever ask for. Your careful, attentive, and brilliant work on this book has had an impact far beyond these pages. Hi, Abby and Phoebe ☺.
David, Esther, and the whole Remnick/Fein clan: your friendship and wisdom have been a balm to my soul. Thank you for the endless humor, encouragement, and matzo brie.
Joana Avillez, you draw the world I wish to inhabit. This book is a document of our twenty-five-year friendship.
Ilene Landress, who keeps me going, keeps me on time, and makes me very happy
Jenni Konner: my best friend, my partner in work and crime. It’s not a coincidence that shortly after I met you I stopped losing my voice. Every day, thank you. I love you, Mack and Coco!
My family: Your art, humor, and love are my reason. I’m sorry I keep doing this to you. Laurie and Tip, I’m done at least until you die. But Grace, you aren’t off the hook quite yet.
Aunties SuSu and Bonmom, Grandma Dot, Uncle Jack, the cousins who are here and who are gone, Rick and Shira and Rachum.
Jack Michael Antonoff. These words would never exist if not for your love and support. Thank you for making a life and home with me.
Isabel Halley, Audrey Gelman, Jemima Kirke—friends and muses. The funniest and prettiest of them all.
A hearty thank-you to all the brassy folks I interact with every day on the Internet, who have supported my self-expression, challenged me plenty, and confirmed my ultimate hope that the world is full of kindreds.
I have received help, encouragement, and inspiration from many. This list includes, but is not limited to: Ericka Naegle, Mike Birbiglia, Leon Neyfakh, Alice Gregory, Miranda July, Delia Ephron, Ashley C. Ford, Paul Simms, Charlie McDowell and the Roon, Murray Miller, Sarah Heyward, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Judd Apatow, B. J. Novak, the New Yorker magazine, Glamour magazine, Rookie magazine, HBO, Mindy Kaling, Alicia Van Couvering, Matt Wolf and Carl Williamson, Teddy Blanks, Roberta Smith and Jerry Saltz, Taylor and all her songs, Polly Stenham, Larry Salz, Kassie Evashevski, Richard Shepard, David Sedaris, Zadie Smith, Tom Levine, Maria Santos, Ariel Levy, Kaela Myers
, Maria Braeckel, Tom Perry, Theresa Zoro, Leigh Marchant, Erika Seyfried, and Lamby.
LENA DUNHAM is the creator of the critically acclaimed HBO series Girls, for which she also serves as executive producer, writer, and director. She has been nominated for eight Emmy awards and has won two Golden Globes, including Best Actress, for her work on Girls. She was the first woman to win the Directors Guild of America award for directorial achievement in comedy. Dunham has also written and directed two feature-length films (including Tiny Furniture in 2010) and is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.