This is going to get messy.

When my book came out in paperback, I had a release party in a small room off the bar at Revolution Hall in Portland. I was planning to read an essay but as always seems to happen, I waited too long to start writing. So it was sort of on the page, but mostly in my head, which is not ideal for me. I’m not an “off-the-cuff” person. Unless I have 10 cuffs with pieces of my essay printed on each one, like flower-petal fabric pages. That’d work for me, but would disrespect the spirit of the idiom.

My point is, the essay didn’t go well.

It was supposed to be about getting my book published. I have fantasized about writing a book since middle school and never dreamed I would actually do it. Or that the book would do well.

From when I was a kid to…much later in life than I’d like to admit, I believed that I was supposed to strive for a certain number of years until I reached my goals—a great job, a house, a partner, a big dumb golden retriever named Molly or Hortense or Jolene—and then I’d be happy. Not happy every minute, but that having the things I always wanted would create a level of contentment that would finally give me a sense of peace. And the inside of my head would finally quiet the fuck down.

What I hadn’t counted on when I imagined my greatest dream coming true was that I would still be me when it happened. That doing this thing I never thought possible wouldn’t also gift me a brain that wasn’t peppered with pathologies that drain the joy out of most experiences.

I think we need to train for our dreams coming true like we’d train for a marathon, slowly teaching our brains how to feel joy again so they recognize it when it arrives. This might include lying on the floor under a pile of puppies, watching The Sound of Music on psilocybin and kettle corn, or floating in a warm swimming pool under a starry sky with your ears underwater so you can hear yourself breathe. I’m just spitballing.

I don’t want to give you the impression that I wasn’t happy when my book came out. But it was my brain’s version of happy, which feels disconnected and colored by the buzzing of my underlying anxieties. Like if happiness were a bright red ball the size of a softball, I could absolutely play with it if it magically flew into my hands, but unlike most people’s balls, mine would still have about four layers of shrinkwrap on it so I could never actually see its true color or feel its textures. Is it smooth and squishy like a Nerf ball or nubby and hard like a basketball? These details would help me decide how to play with it.

I tried to say something to that effect the night of my book release, but before I could get to the point, I started to cry a little. In front of about 50 people. It was awkward.

Sometimes we don’t know how raw a story is until we start to tell it. And by then, of course, it’s too late.

Weirdly, crying in front of an audience can be better than breaking down over pastrami sandwiches with a friend because our emotions are always heightened when we’re performing, so the crowd often gives you a special performance dispensation.

Breakups give us a similar dispensation, but only for a limited time.

I went through a breakup 10 months ago, and I think I’ve come to the end of my pass. But I’m not sure I’ve come to the end of my grief, so I’ve entered my Messy Period. Or, if I’m being honest, continuing my Messy Period.

I had drinks with a friend three months ago and mentioned that I’d recently been told by another friend that I was a bit too intense and sad.¹

“You’re messy. It’s just part of the package,” my friend replied. She said it as if she were telling me I had a piece of lint on my sweater.

This breakup has put me on a journey of self-discovery for which I did not purchase a ticket. Perhaps a necessary journey, but one that I am being dragged on, by a camel, through a desert, kicking, screaming, and demanding to speak to the manager.

I want, from this day forward, for no one to ever tell me anything about myself. In fact, even if I have an entire kale salad in my teeth or a roll of toilet paper hanging from my ass that unrolls for half a block, just fucking zip it.

The weird and wildly inconvenient thing is, I like the mess. Not being one, of course, but witnessing other people’s. Seeing your mess helps me accept my own as inevitable.

It’s like the difference between cats and dogs. One of the myriad reasons cat ownership is difficult is that they hide their physical pain—they’ve evolved not to appear weak, so by the time they show symptoms, it’s often too late to get them help. Dogs, on the other hand, have been known to fake injuries for scritches and jerky.

Humans are like cats when it comes to emotional pain. And I’m not a fan of it. Because if you haven’t yet figured it out, I am the dog in this scenario. Not that I’ve ever faked an emotional injury, but it feels impossible for me to hide them when they happen. And I also love scritches and jerky.

If we were all more honest about our inner lives, yes, it would make the icebreakers at business meetings insufferable, but at least we wouldn’t all be under the mistaken impression that literally everyone on earth has their shit together except us.

So what if we made it socially acceptable to be at least mildly messy?

How many people can I recruit into my Cult of Mess? We can create patches you can earn like “Crying While Watching Videos About Unexpected Animal Friendships” or “Getting Unreasonably Angry That Your Partner Never Switches Out the Gross Sponge” and hold messy conferences in Puerto Vallarta or some other port the Love Boat used to dock in.

“We are done holding in every feeling, every moment of every day,” I’ll yell into the mic, my entourage flanking me, nodding silently as we all stand under a giant banner that reads, “Sponsored by Kleenex.”

Who’s in?

---

1. It may sound harsh, but I assure you, I am both of those things. I’m not being self-deprecating, I promise.