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klingonpop's review
3.0
This felt like something that she originally started to write because her therapist told her to, like a 12-stepper making amends to herself. It was an enjoyable and horrifying and funny and sad and crass read. The girl peed in cereal bowls because she was afraid of her bathroom. Consider yourself warned or intrigued.
annabcarey's review
5.0
Little known fact for you, world: I’m an agoraphobe. I’ve always been anxiety/depression-prone, and then several events of 2008 took place and I suddenly found myself rather unwilling to leave my bedroom. I’m functional, mostly, if everything goes mostly ok and nobody looks at me funny on the street, or if I can get someone I trust to come along with me with promises to help me find a place to hide if I get panicky. But I’m perfectly capable of going weeks without leaving my apartment (my record is thirty-seven days), and preferring it that way.
I’m able to turn places that aren’t my bedroom—places like work, or classrooms—into “safe” places, with effort and time, but because I’m currently in the funemployment stages of immigration, I don’t have a lot of places I have to be. Which isn’t great for me, but I mostly manage. I manage largely because I have a very patient partner who knew exactly what he was getting into. Namely, that he would be doing all the grocery shopping because I don’t go into supermarkets anymore unless it’s a life or death situation.
Oddly, like Sara, I’m a decent performer. I’ve been a tour guide, I’ve been a singer, I’ve been a teacher. I’ve made all visions of potential futures filled with the kinds of careers that require me to stand in front of people and perform. So, in most kinds of Adulting Situations, I can totally pass for Not Agoraphobic. It’s only after you’ve tried unsuccessfully five or six times to get me to go out to a new restaurant after work, or to get me into a grocery store, or to interact with me in any situation where I may not be able to perform, that it shows. One of the things I’ve learned from spending most of my time interacting with other mad people: we’re good at pretending to be normal, except when we’re not. The ways brains and their brokennesses work are myriad.
So this book. I heard about it a few weeks before it came out and immediately put my name on the hold list at the library. I was at the top; there were five people after me. Despite the fact that I’m often leery of books about mental illness (because they’re all too often of the “look at how I got better!” variety), I needed to read about a functioning agoraphobe who isn’t Paula Deen. I mean, I love Paula Deen, partly because of her history with the monster, but there’s only so much butter.
When my hold notice came in and I had the book in hand, I devoured it in one sitting (well, there was a flu-induced involuntary nap in there, but I never actually got up) and…well, I laughed uproariously at the same time I was sobbing and I got tears and snot everywhere and really freaked out the dog.
I read it emotionally and personally and, frankly, kind of developed a little crush on Sara, the kind borne of over-identification. This was exacerbated when I emailed her with a quick thank-you-for-this-book note and she promptly replied from her phone. So there might be things in this book that, read in a different mood, I would nitpick about. But I’m not going to, because today, right now, I needed this book as it came to me. This little reminder that even if I’ve got a little bit of crazybrain for the rest of my life, it doesn’t mean I can’t be awesome. It doesn’t even mean that I’m not already awesome, even if it’s sometimes buried in nonsense.
So. I really want you to read this book. I want you to read it because it’s about how I feel about so many things (though I’ve never been afraid of the bathroom, I have occasionally been inexplicably afraid of foyers), but also because it’s brilliant.
I’m able to turn places that aren’t my bedroom—places like work, or classrooms—into “safe” places, with effort and time, but because I’m currently in the funemployment stages of immigration, I don’t have a lot of places I have to be. Which isn’t great for me, but I mostly manage. I manage largely because I have a very patient partner who knew exactly what he was getting into. Namely, that he would be doing all the grocery shopping because I don’t go into supermarkets anymore unless it’s a life or death situation.
Oddly, like Sara, I’m a decent performer. I’ve been a tour guide, I’ve been a singer, I’ve been a teacher. I’ve made all visions of potential futures filled with the kinds of careers that require me to stand in front of people and perform. So, in most kinds of Adulting Situations, I can totally pass for Not Agoraphobic. It’s only after you’ve tried unsuccessfully five or six times to get me to go out to a new restaurant after work, or to get me into a grocery store, or to interact with me in any situation where I may not be able to perform, that it shows. One of the things I’ve learned from spending most of my time interacting with other mad people: we’re good at pretending to be normal, except when we’re not. The ways brains and their brokennesses work are myriad.
So this book. I heard about it a few weeks before it came out and immediately put my name on the hold list at the library. I was at the top; there were five people after me. Despite the fact that I’m often leery of books about mental illness (because they’re all too often of the “look at how I got better!” variety), I needed to read about a functioning agoraphobe who isn’t Paula Deen. I mean, I love Paula Deen, partly because of her history with the monster, but there’s only so much butter.
When my hold notice came in and I had the book in hand, I devoured it in one sitting (well, there was a flu-induced involuntary nap in there, but I never actually got up) and…well, I laughed uproariously at the same time I was sobbing and I got tears and snot everywhere and really freaked out the dog.
I read it emotionally and personally and, frankly, kind of developed a little crush on Sara, the kind borne of over-identification. This was exacerbated when I emailed her with a quick thank-you-for-this-book note and she promptly replied from her phone. So there might be things in this book that, read in a different mood, I would nitpick about. But I’m not going to, because today, right now, I needed this book as it came to me. This little reminder that even if I’ve got a little bit of crazybrain for the rest of my life, it doesn’t mean I can’t be awesome. It doesn’t even mean that I’m not already awesome, even if it’s sometimes buried in nonsense.
So. I really want you to read this book. I want you to read it because it’s about how I feel about so many things (though I’ve never been afraid of the bathroom, I have occasionally been inexplicably afraid of foyers), but also because it’s brilliant.
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