“I’m going to be sharing a hotel room with Jenny,” said my friend Laura, a few years ago. “Do you know her?”
“No,” I responded. “Should I?”
“I don’t know, maybe,” Laura said. “She writes a blog for the Houston Chronicle. I thought perhaps you might have come across her. Anyway, she’s painfully shy, and she’s really nervous about going to this convention. So I’m going, and I promised that I would share a room with her.”
“Oh, wow, bless her,” I responded. “Well, have fun.”
During the twelve months that followed, I finally met Jenny. I watched her stand on a table in a crowded bar, leading a large group of writers in their very first networking meeting together. I began reading and quickly became a fan of her personal site, The Bloggess, where she talked about everything — everything —with considerable abandon and even more profanity, to hilarious effect. I even saw her give a speech in front of about one thousand people, wearing a decidedly weird blonde wig, as the audience wept in appreciative and admiring laughter.
Jenny? Shy? Surely Laura had been talking about a different person.
“Nope, same Jenny,” said Laura, when I brought it up one evening some time later, while Jenny, Laura and I were having dinner at a restaurant. “She is shy! Aren’t you shy?” she continued, turning to face Jenny.
“Oh, I’m shy,” Jenny nodded emphatically, looking at me straight in my eyes. “I’m really, really shy. I’ve been incapacitated before.”
I looked at her skeptically. “I don’t believe you,” I said, levelly.
Eventually I got to know Jenny even better. I discovered that when she publicly announced to her guests that if they wanted to see her at the huge party she was hosting, they would have to visit her in the bathroom where she was hiding, this wasn’t just gimmicky schtick, it was honesty — she really did need to remain hidden in the bathroom in order to function. That weird blonde wig, which I later learned she called her “Confidence Wig”? It turns out it was absolutely necessary for her to wear it in order to have the courage to get on stage in front of one thousand strangers. And although the photo shoot for this book entailed her wearing a 1940s-style swimsuit, while a mutual friend painted words on her body was admittedly anxiety-inducing, Jenny was required to steel her courage in a way most of us wouldn’t have to. What’s interesting, however, is that Jenny-Off-the-Computer, who deals privately with anxieties and phobias every single day, is just as authentic as Jenny’s online, outrageous persona, “The Bloggess,” with her hilarious profanity and razor sharp wit. Bridging the two sides of her personality is her incredible capacity for kindness, boundless consideration and caring. Jenny couldn’t be mean-spirited if she tried.
Jenny and I live on opposite sides of town, so when we get together, we often meet somewhere between our homes. Over time, we’ve settled on one particular spot: it’s quirky, with bright orange walls, huge murals of old-time pin-up girls, and some of the best egg breakfasts in Texas. It has become almost tradition for us to meet every six weeks or so, just to catch up on each other’s lives. On one particular occasion, our conversation became pretty intense. We discussed some personal aspects of our past, and she allowed me to ask her about her anxiety. “Is this something you’ve always dealt with?” I gently asked. “Or is it recent?”
“It’s my earliest memory,” she said.
“Really? Tell me.”
“I remember I was about four years old. My mom took me to the Bookmobile — you know what that is, yes? One of those mobile libraries? So anyway, I was there, and we ran into another little girl who was going to be in my kindergarten class. I remember my mom trying to get me to be friendly to her, since we were going to be in the same class, and I was petrified. I couldn’t speak to her. All I could think was, ‘I’m going to throw up in front of her. I’m going to throw up, and she’s going to tell everyone in school that I threw up on her.’”
“Wow. And you still feel like this all the time?”
“Pretty much. Social anxiety disorder has affected most of my family. I have an aunt who recently died, and she spent the last part of her life in and out of hospitals because of it. I just remember watching how fragile she was. At first, when she was younger, she would socialize with the family, but eventually she got to the point where she would hide — usually in the bathroom — even when it was just me over at her house, visiting her daughter. I mean, think about it: she got to the point that she couldn’t even come out and see her niece.” Jenny smiled wryly. “In a way, she sort of taught me that the bathroom is the best place to hide.”
I thought of the several times I had found Jenny hiding in the bathroom during parties, and smiled. “Okay, so you remember feeling like this since you were four — and you spent your entire childhood feeling like this?”
“Yup. I was the only goth girl in the whole school. I mean, sure, there was a part of me that liked the whole goth look, but the truth was I knew that if I dressed all in black and sat in a corner reading Jane Eyre, everyone would just dismiss me, say, ‘Oh, that’s just Jenny,’ and leave me alone. It was a defense mechanism. I was petrified. I didn’t speak.”
“You didn’t have anyone in your childhood that you could confide in?” I asked.
She smiled. “One,” she said. “Ms. Atkins. She was an art teacher, in seventh grade. She was just like me, but way more of a dingbat, completely, eccentrically dizzy. She was the first person I’d ever met who was like me. She’d traveled all over the world — I loved that. I’d go to her house, and we’d make this amazing art. She was the first person who made me feel like it was okay to be eccentric.”
Jenny was quiet for a moment.
“Anyway,” she finally continued. “I also remember always being ill — that’s my big indicator, I get ill when I get nervous or am about to panic, I feel nauseous, I get hives — and it was many years before my mom realized that all the illnesses, during major holidays or any time I was stressed, weren’t just coincidences.”
In that small breakfast café, over eggs and French toast, I sat there, transfixed, as she told me stories of times when she panicked, or, when things were really bad, instances when she seriously thought about taking her own life. She told me about times in her life when she experienced incredible loss, including one particularly painful miscarriage that almost sent her completely over the edge. Eventually, I interrupted.
“So, Jenny, what changed? I mean, it sounds like you spent most of your life afraid, you hardly spoke, you were in a downward spiral and life was dealing you a hell of a time. What pulled you out of it?”
“Well, I remember watching my aunt — the one who recently died — and I realized that her hiding made her more and more fragile. If I continued to ‘stay in the bathroom,’ so to speak, I’d end up becoming more and more fragile myself.”
“Fragile? What do you mean by ‘fragile’?”
“It’s like you live all your life in the bottom of the ocean, and eventually you just don’t have the strength to come out.”
“But you did,” I countered. “You could’ve totally stayed at the bottom of the ocean, but you didn’t. What made you come up for air?”
“Well,” she said, “two things happened.”
The first, she says, was the end of an unhealthy relationship. The person with whom she was involved was incredibly controlling, to the point where she had falsely convinced herself that being reclusive and separating herself from people around her was actually a manifestation of her loyalty to him. Eventually this person betrayed her, and she began to realize that her anxieties had been exploited.
“And the second thing that happened?”
“Blogging, actually,” she responded. “By the time I started blogging, I had already sought professional help and was receiving counseling and treatment on a regular basis. But even so, the changes in me over the last three years that I’ve been blogging have been dramatic. I used to be quiet, very passive, but through blogging, I was able to find people who experienced the same sorts of anxieties that I experience. It was the first time that I began to realize that the things that made me different, the things that I’d always wanted to hide are, in fact, the things that make me special.”
I thought about this and was immediately transported to a time in childhood when I was feeling particularly “different.” I had recently moved from my home country of Trinidad to Houston, and I was attending a school where I was one of the few minority students, and possibly the only one with a foreign accent. I remember confiding in an adult friend, a teacher, who tried to comfort me by telling me my difference “made me special.” When I heard those words, I didn’t believe her — in my adolescent mind, I assumed she was confusing the meanings of “special” and “freakish.” Yet these many years later, the truth in my teacher’s encouragement has become clear. Sometimes it takes reframing the thing that makes us different and realizing that the trick is to understand that our differences aren’t impediments but a call to use them in a way that brings more to the table. Our differences can be sources of power, of peacemaking and of inspiration. And now, listening to Jenny, watching the earnestness in her manner and the light in her eyes, it was clear that Jenny understood this concept. She not only saw her Different, but celebrated it. She truly believed the concept that her Different was special.
Suddenly, Jenny became energized.
“I used to describe myself as ‘crazy’ all the time, and my mother hated it. Then once, a couple of years ago, I wrote a post on my blog where I came clean about my mental illness. And in this post, I said that I was okay with crazy. Crazy wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I was okay with admitting that I was crazy. And then …”
She began digging through her handbag and eventually pulled out a small fragment of yellowed paper.
“This is one of the comments that a reader left me on that post. I’ve carried it around with me since that day. She told me that she had emailed my post to her daughter — I remember she called her daughter her ‘golden girl’ — because her daughter was going through her own anxieties and difficult time. And she told me how much my words helped her daughter.”
At this point, Jenny looked at me, a glimmer of amazement in her eyes.
“I began to realize that the parts of me that are broken can help other people, too.”
I thought of all the people who had responded so powerfully to her writing. “Yes, they can.” Then I continued, “but you know what, Jenny? I’d never describe you as crazy. I mean, yes, there’s no doubt you’re eccentric, but I can’t think of you as crazy. I think of ‘crazy’ as being out of control. You’re always in control.”
Her brow furrowed as she considered my words. “Yes,” she said, “even when I’m out of control, I’m sort of in control. I mean, I know when it’s going to happen — when the panic is coming. And I usually say to myself, ‘Well, okay, here it comes, I’m just going to go along for the ride, and watch what happens.’”
“You detach?”
“Yes. I detach,” she said. “It’s been a great way to cope. And besides, I think I have the gift of perspective — it’s why I am able to surround myself with good people, family and good friends — who take care of me. And I can sort of step out of myself and look at how I’m feeling from outside, and I can see what people see. I can look at myself and go, ‘dude, that’s fucked up,’ in sort of a detached manner. And then, luckily, I’m able to write about it in a funny way.”
I pushed on.
“Okay, Jenny, fair enough, but you do some pretty daring things, even for someone who doesn’t have social anxiety disorder. I mean, you’ve given speeches in front of huge crowds. You’ve thrown really big parties with other people. And last year — what, you flew in a jet onto a Naval aircraft carrier, for heaven’s sake! How the hell do you get to the point where you can do that?”
“I’m always thinking, every single second of my day, how can I escape. So for example, with that party, I hid in the bathroom, because that would narrow down the number of people that I would have to deal with at one time — and if that became overwhelming, I could just walk out of the bathroom. Once I know that I have a way to escape, then it becomes easier for me to cope.”
“Right. But in the case of the aircraft carrier thing, when you’re on a jet …”
“… and I’m afraid of flying …”
“… over water …”
“… and I can’t swim …”
“… and you’re about to land on an aircraft carrier …”
“… and I’m afraid of giant squid …”
“… where there are thousands of strangers, military personnel on board waiting to greet you, what exactly was your escape plan, then?!”
She smiled.
“Oh, then? When I have to face things like that, that’s where the Confidence Wig comes in. That’s when I become someone else.”
“Ah,” I said, trying to understand. “So … you … become someone more confident?”
“Yes,” she explained. “It’s not multiple personality disorder or anything — I mean, I’m still me. But I pretend to be someone else. Someone more confident. The wig helps — I don’t need the wig all the time, of course — but regardless, I detach and make believe I’m someone else. Someone who can handle the situation. And it usually works. Of course, the Xanax helps as well,” she added with a grin.
“That’s amazing, Jenny,” I said, shaking my head in wonder. “You could easily just choose not to do those things, particularly since you know how crippling your anxiety can be. It’s so courageous.”
“Maybe,” she said, “ I don’t know. I think courage is sometimes just about choosing between the emotionally safe thing and the stupid, try-to-push-yourself thing. And stupid is always more fun.” She laughed.
I laughed as well. Suddenly, I noticed that the breakfast crowd that had surrounded us when we arrived had disappeared. The waiters were preparing for the lunch crowd, a signal it was time for us to leave. We gathered our things, but as I was about to stand up, Jenny stopped me.
“Wait,” she said. “You’re a diver. Can I tell you a story about something that happened to me while I was snorkeling?”
I love when something suddenly comes to her mind right out of the blue like that. I sat back down. “Sure,” I said.
“I was in the Yucatan — I was about thirty years old. Victor and I were married, but Hailey wasn’t born yet. Now, you know I’m terrified of water and I can’t swim, but for some reason, Victor thinks it’s a good idea for us to go snorkeling in a cenote, which is like this underground cave filled with water. So we hire a tour guide and rent some wet suits (because the water in these caves is freezing, and it’s so pure that you can’t wear sunscreen or anything), and we get into this Jeep that looks like it’s about to fall apart.
“So then we’re standing in the back of this Jeep — because there were no seats — and we start racing through the Mexican rainforest, like right through it, in the middle of the jungle, with monkeys jumping around and everything. And I’m thinking oh my God, we’re going to die … Monkey!… We’re going to die … Monkey!… We’re going to die …
“Sometimes I pretend to be someone else. Someone more confident.
Someone who can handle the situation. And it usually works.”
Jenny
“And finally we arrive, and I don’t see anything but jungle, and I think this is where we get mugged, and then I notice the guide is pointing to a huge hole in the ground with a rusted ladder. I couldn’t see the bottom, but I figure what the hell and I climbed down anyway.
“So we get down the ladder, and suddenly we’re in the middle of this amazing underground ocean, with the purest, bluest water ever, and the water is freezing. I have the mask on, and Victor is telling me ‘Put your face in,’ but I’m too scared and I start to hyperventilate, and the guide starts to look worried.
“But then, finally, even though I’m terrified, I put my face in, and the water was completely clear, and I could see these huge — HUGE — what are they called? Stalagmites? Stalagmites, just jutting out of the ocean floor. It was amazing. And that’s when I suddenly realized that below the surface was this entire whole world, and I would’ve never seen it if I hadn’t been brave enough to put my face in.”
I smiled, taking in her story and feeling very lucky that I do know Jenny and count her among my friends. Because after listening to her for the past few hours, it dawned on me that with all her neuroses and phobias, detachments and Confidence Wigs, it appears Jenny has actually figured out the Meaning of Life:
You just have to put your face in.
