Excerpts

Introduction When I was about twelve years old, one of my favorite things to do, besides making desperate audition tapes for MTV's The Real World, was going to yard sales and perusing strangers' junk. I (of course) mean peruse the stuff they were selling, although I'm sure I also checked out a couple of dudes' actual junk on more than one occasion given I was a very curious child and this was before porn was free. I loved looking at the tables of old trinkets and fabricating a narrative of what the sellers' lives were like. Old skis, a chessboard, and dusty encyclopedias inspired me to fantasize about the sellers' mysterious lives; maybe they were detectives, spies, or on the run from the law for some glamorous crime they'd committed! In retrospect, I now realize they were probably just going through a divorce and needed to get rid of their exes' shit ASAP, but at the time this activity was a romantic escape from reality and perhaps the first evidence that I wanted to make up stories for a living. I was also a pathological liar until I was, like, fifteen but that's a way less sexy genesis of my occupation. During one of these garbage-ogling sessions I came across a book called Couplehood by Paul Reiser. At the time I was too young to know who Paul Reiser was (and some of you might still be), but in this book he hilariously recounted the daily confusions and humiliations of being in a committed relationship. At that point in my life I had never been in a committed relationship with anything except anxiety and head lice, and I'm pretty sure my imaginary marriage to Luke Perry didn't count. I somehow related to the book anyway. Reading about Reiser's foibles made me feel relieved and weirdly understood. Whether I could articulate it or not back then, I had some sort of epiphany that other people's misfortune made me feel way better about my own problems. I believe the official term for this phenomenon is schadenfreude. Count on the Germans to have a specific word for something so sadistic. Couplehood made me feel less ashamed of the twisted, often inverted way that I saw the world. It also made me feel better about how obsessed I got over minutiae that most people didn't even seem to notice. Nobody else seemed to care about how weird it was that the salad bar at the Sizzler had chocolate pudding right next to the chickpeas, but this took up space in my brain for days as I tried to figure out what kind of psychopath did the arranging of the fixin's. Nobody seemed as stressed out as I was that Band-Aids always felt slightly racist for not having a selection of different shades of skin colors. I'm sure by now they have a kaleidoscope of shades available, but in the late eighties only waxy white people could protect their wounds without drawing too much attention to them. Nobody wanted to listen to my rants about the injustice of racially insensitive Band-Aids, so I was inspired to write down my observations whenever I could. I found an old typewriter in my aunt's basement and hacked away at it every chance I got. Yes, there were computers back then, but computers saved documents, and I didn't want to risk anyone reading my insane diatribes. Plus, the typewriter made me feel smart and sophisticated. I mean, to feel sophisticated I probably could've just stopped curling my bangs, but at that point in my life common sense wasn't really on my radar. I always dreamed that these masturbatory ramblings would one day be the seed of a book, but my self-esteem has always been too low to follow through. I always told myself I'd wait to write a book until I had accumulated enough entertaining mistakes to actually make the read worth your time. I realize it's a big deal that you're even holding this given how much is available for entertainment these days: YouTube videos of babies eating lemons, girls falling off stripper poles, and apps that remix your face with a dog's. Look, it took me forever to finish writing this book because of these exact distractions, but when I got focused enough to be able to finally get this stuff down, please know I set the bar high, constantly asking myself, "Can this compete with a video of a guy falling off a ladder on the Home Shopping Network?" I was finally able to stave off my social media and online shopping addictions long enough to give you a whole book's worth of yummy, humiliating schadenfreude. For example, I've shaved an entire eyebrow off after eating too much edible weed, started balding from not eating enough fat, broke my shoulder trying to impress a guy, and came very close to spending my life in a Guatemalan prison. For years, I've kept these stories as bullet points in overpriced journals, figuring I would eventually find the courage to talk about them onstage, but they were just too embarrassing. That said, I actually think these stories are better illustrated in book form or on virtual eyeball drones or whatever people are reading with by the time this book comes out. In addition to hoarding mortifying situations that'll make you feel way better about your own choices, I've also accumulated a compendium of knowledge that I believe can save you a lot of time. Look, you're busy. You have a family, maybe even a secret family. You have a life, maybe even a double life. You have a husband, a wife, a Facebook page. I don't have any of those things, so think of me as your personal assistant who went to a billion doctors and got you all the information you don't have time to get yourself and that Wikipedia will lie to you about. Think of this book as the Internet if it was honest and didn't hate women so much. When I do stand-up, I need to make a joke about every twenty seconds. If I see someone in the audience cringing at what I'm saying or generally looking traumatized by the subject matter, I have to lighten the mood by changing the subject or deflecting with a joke. Writing a book gave me the freedom not to be funny every now and then so I could dig into some raw truths that I think can be healing for everyone. With a book, I can't read the room or see your reaction so I'm able to go off the grid without y'all shaming me into keeping the material safe or socially acceptable. I'm finally able to share my most embarrassing foibles, whether it was lying to therapists, driving myself to the ER when I was hemorrhaging blood from my head, or having explosive diarrhea in a literal jungle. I've spent the last five years rewiring my brain, ending toxic relationships, combating insomnia, experimenting with antidepressants, struggling with love (or what I thought was love), talking to an imaginary child, and freezing my eggs. As a result, most of the time I spend with my friends is consumed by them asking me how I worked my ass off to change my brain and worked my ass on to get the body I want. Friends and even strangers ask me how I got good skin, kicked my eating disorder, stopped dating narcissists, quit letting my ego run the show, and generally ceased being cray cray. It would make my life way easier to be able to just say "How about you just read this book?" so I don't have to spend every social event rambling on about neurology when I'd much rather be spending the evening flirting with a guy who is terrible for me. I've spent tens of thousands of dollars accruing information from a smorgasbord of doctors, psychiatrists, healers, teachers, and people who jammed things up my butt while making unflinching eye contact with me. Look, if you get anything out of this read, it's that you do not ever need to put anything up your bottom hole unless you really want to. Even then, you certainly don't have to pay for it. So if I may be so bold, I straight-up want this book to change your life. I personally was sick of being a mess and I'm also sick of your being a mess, so let's get our shit together. Together. The Self-Help Chapter I have some good news for you. I love you. And because I love you, you're about to get like a hundred thousand dollars' worth of psychological therapy for the measly price of this book. I'm not proud of this, but I've spent an embarrassing amount of money I never really had in the first place on mental health professionals, some of which I should probably put in quotes. Mental health "professionals." Traipsing along this yellow brick road of healers, I didn't get to Oz, although I did see pink horses a couple times due to low blood sugar from stupid cleanses. The Butthead I went to a "nutritionist" once who I should have known was trouble because he went only by his first name. Let's call him Dr. Bob, even though the real name he went by is even more ridiculous and sounds like a corny DJ who plays cheesy music you would have heard at your uncle's third wedding in the early nineties. Let me be clear: A doctor going by Dr. followed by his first name is a red flag, unless it's Dr. Dre, in which case it's at least worth going to for the story. The fact that I paid money to go to a nutritionist who went by his first name meant the kind of doctor I actually needed to go to was a psychiatrist. Dr. Bob was the skinniest person I had ever met, and that's saying a lot, given how much time I spend around Hollywood actresses. He bragged that he slept on a treadmill, which he kept at a high angle so blood would flow to his head. Honestly, since I hate running, this actually seems like the best use of a treadmill I can think of, but to sleep on it upside down puts the bat in batshit crazy. I realize now that when I heard this, I should have swiftly exited the building, but I'm a sucker for men who have prevaricated for so long that they've not only started to believe their lies but also have the audacity to charge people to listen to them. Dr. Bob's philosophy was that you should eat only food indigenous to where your ancestors are from, and since I'm a Western European mutt, I couldn't eat bananas, coconuts, cantaloupe, or basically anything delicious. Being from Europe, my ancestors pretty much consumed only potatoes, alcohol, and their own teeth. I asked Dr. Bob what would happen if I was in an airport and desperate for something healthy and happened to sneak a banana. His face went paler than it already was. With not one molecule of irony in his tone, he said, "You might as well put a gun in your mouth." Dr. Bob's main obsession was colonics. Giving them, getting them, showing you pictures of them, telling me about other celebrities who got them. If you don't know what a colonic is, I'll save you the Internet search, because frankly I'm worried some very disturbing images will come up that will give you eternal nightmares. This is as elegant a description as I can give of a colonic: Dr. Bob puts a tube up your tushy and releases some water to scare out all your hidden poopies. Nothing can prepare you for the feeling of a skeletal man without a last name slipping a hose into your anus, whilst whispering "You're doing great." Lying there with a tube inside my butt with a man who slept on exercise equipment was so uncomfortable and invasive that after every session I was tempted to call the police. I eventually stopped going to Dr. Bob because I realized that literally all the money I spent on him was being flushed down the toilet. When he wasn't penetrating my reluctant crevice with Tupperware tubes, he did give me some helpful advice: Don't cook your veggies to the point of depleting them of all their vitamins. Veggies should be crunchy, not flaccid suggestions of their former selves. Apparently, if you're not farting, you're not eating your veggies right. And yes, I realize that even though this advice is great for your body, it's terrible for your personal life. Other honorable mentions include: chew your water, drink apple cider vinegar, and you should be bent over when you use the toilet because as it turns out, toilets were designed by misogynists who want everyone to get colon cancer, so we're all using the bathroom the wrong way. Apparently when we use the bathroom, we should be in the posture we'd be in if we were hiding from zombies in our basements: squatting but crouched over instead of straight up. Our bodies are designed to "release" at a certain angle, and traditional toilets are not conducive to that angle, which also explains why a lot of women constantly have to pee . . . because we're not emptying our bladders completely. Sometimes we pee because we need an excuse to get out of a boring conversation with a weirdo, but that's a whole other thing that's less about physiology and more about people being annoying. There is actually a contraption you can and should buy that raises your feet up so you're in a squat. Look, I didn't say it was sexy, I said it was healthy. I've found having a stool around my toilet is incredibly awkward when I have company over, but it's a total game changer for my peeing habits. If you don't have a stool to put your feet up on, you can just bend over like you're giving birth in a ditch in the 1200s. You might not be able to text as much while you're on the can, but at least you'll have to spend less time on it. Lady Finger In order to become a functioning human, I had to learn how to cry. Historically, I've really only cried at unexpected times, such as when a cartoon dinosaur loses its mother or when I accidentally step on my real animal's paw. I'm also no stranger to shedding a tear or two when I hear "I'll Be Missing You" by Puff Daddy and Faith Evans. I think his name is Diddy now, but who knows what his name will be when this book is released, and I don't have time to keep up with his indecisive nomenclature. The point is, the song makes me emotional, so if it comes on in a public place, I literally have to excuse myself to have a wistful sob in a bathroom. Maybe because it makes me nostalgic for when I was a teenager, back when I wanted to escape reality and couldn't wait to finally be an adult. This was of course before I realized that most of adult life is spent on the phone with customer service, making up lies to get out of plans, and thinking every ingrown hair is an STD. Regardless, I had a sort of emotional dyslexia when it came to releasing sadness; often when I heard terrible news, I would laugh hysterically, and when a jovial pop song would come on at the gym, I'd erupt in sobs. Dude, something was up in terms of my relationship to expressing healthy emotion. Excerpted from I'm Fine... and Other Lies by Whitney Cummings All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.