This Will Only Hurt a Little(2)

But then people did start watching, in a way that was truly unexpected. And they were responding to my honesty and openness, which I completely hadn’t anticipated. I just didn’t know how to be any other way at this point in my life. I was done trying to put on a face, done trying to be something that I thought someone else wanted me to be. I was too tired.

Besides, I’ve always liked telling stories, real or imaginary.

And there are things that happen to me that only happen to me. Like almost getting murdered in an Uber that may actually have not been an Uber. Or going to the Golden Globes as Michelle Williams’s date and then getting locked out of my house in the rain at three in the morning, drunk and increasingly panicked. Or witnessing raccoons having insane, horrible-sounding raccoon sex on my balcony. Or having a front-row seat to the craziest Oscars mix-up in history. And that’s only been in the last two years of Instagram stories!

And in between all that, I work out every morning, I make mac and cheese for my kids, I forget their favorite stuffed animals in Hawaii and start a transpacific search party, I cry when my TV pilot doesn’t get picked up by NBC, I go see bands play, I hang out with my best friends, I have anxiety attacks and eat nachos and drink margaritas and go on vacation and live my life and live my life and live my life and live my life. For me. For you. To entertain you. To be seen. It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted.





FANTASTIC VOYAGE


(Lakeside)


My therapist, Bethany Rosenblum, says that everyone has one defining story. The story that basically sums up who they are and why they are the way they are.

I mean, personally, I feel like I have half a dozen of these defining stories. But if I go all the way back, back to when I was preverbal, there’s a story that sums up how I’ve always seen myself. The fact that I don’t actually remember it might seem problematic. But I think it’s the perfect story because I don’t remember it.

Look, I’ll be the first to admit I can be a terrible witness to my own history. I think most of us probably are. I mean, certainly there are facts that exist. Like if you were in a particular city at a particular time in your life. Or if you went to college. Or if you were on that TV show. But other bits and pieces are totally dependent on what you choose to focus on. Remember when James Frey wrote that book and then everyone was so fucking mad that he made up parts of it? And then he had to go on Oprah and look her in the eye and admit that maybe some things had been exaggerated for dramatic purposes? That is literally my worst nightmare—to be judged by Oprah.

But see, I am a dramatic human. I always have been. And I come from a fairly long line of dramatic humans and storytellers. And part of being a good storyteller is knowing which parts need to be embellished a bit, and which details need to be lost completely. I was recently recounting a story (which you will read later in the book, hopefully. Unless you give up on me. Don’t, though. I’m worth it, I promise. I mean, I think I am.) Anyway, I was recounting a story to my husband, Marc, and as I was telling it—or retelling it, as the case may be, since this is one of “my stories”—I revealed something new. Marc has heard this particular story at least a million times over the course of our twelve-year relationship, and somehow I had never included these new details. Details that maybe change some of the intention.

All this is to say, I’m telling you these stories, my stories, as I remember them. As I see them. As they have affected me. But that’s not to say it’s the whole truth or even what the full story would be if you were to track down the star witnesses to my life and line them up and ask their impressions of said stories.

Here’s something: Occasionally in my life, it’s possible I may have been a bit more of a glass-half-empty kind of girl. That might seem incongruous to the persona I’ve cultivated via social media and interviews—I understand and recognize that. But even though I can sometimes be a bit of a Debbie Downer, I am a performer. I live to make sure everyone is happy and having a good time. Sometimes that means pushing my own feelings and anxieties to the side and putting on a good show. And sometimes it means that the way I remember things happening isn’t exactly the way other people remember the same events. Look, I’m going to try to be as honest with you as I can be. But it’s obviously my truth. Not my mom’s or my sister’s or my friends’ or my ex-boyfriends’ or my husband’s truth. Mine.

So anyway. This defining story. The one I can’t possibly remember because I was two. It’s the story my mother also chooses as the defining story to explain who I am. Except her takeaway and mine are a bit different. To Barbara Philipps, the story has been used over the years to illustrate just how headstrong and willful I was as a child. “Oh, that Busy! There was just no controlling her! Have you ever heard about the time she decided to take a walk around the block??! No?! Well. Let me tell you!”

So! From my birth to age six, my family lived in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Both my parents grew up there. In fact, they had met as high school students at Oak Park High and began dating when they were just sixteen. They didn’t go to prom together, because, as my mother puts it, “your dad wanted to go with a big-boobed cheerleader.” My mom went with her theater friend Steve. Anyway, I don’t remember much from that time, but I’ve seen pictures and Oak Park is beautiful. It all looks super Americana, and from my mother’s various stories I know it was the kind of place where there were block parties in the summer and sledding in the winter and all the kids walked to school together and knew the crossing guard’s name.