Home > Work > Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"
81 " After all, desire is the enemy of contentment. "
― Lena Dunham , Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"
82 " What a goon. He's lucky to know you, but too stupid to ever realize it. "
83 " You’ve learned a new rule and it’s simple: don’t put yourself in situations that you’d like to run away from. But when you run, run back to yourself, like that bunny in Runaway Bunny runs to its mother, but you are the mother, and you’ll see that later and be very, very proud "
84 " Is what’s manifesting as a fear actually some instinct to resist being young? Youth, with all its accompanying risks, humiliations, and uncertainties, the pressure to do it all before it’s too late. Is the sense of imminent death bound up in the desire to leave some kind of a legacy? "
85 " Randy is my gynecologist. I have had a number of gynecologists over the years, all talented in their own ways, but Randy is the best. He is an older Jewish man who, before deciding to inspect ladies down there for a living, played for the Mets. He still has the can-do determination of a pitcher on an underdog team and, to my mind, that is exactly the kind of man you want delivering your babies or rooting around in your vagina. "
86 " Here’s who it’s not okay to share a bed with: Anyone who makes you feel like you’re invading their space. Anyone who tells you that they “just can’t be alone right now.” Anyone who doesn’t make you feel like sharing a bed is the coziest and most sensual activity they could possibly be undertaking (unless, of course, it is one of the aforementioned relatives; in that case, they should act lovingly but also reserved/slightly annoyed). Now, look over at the person beside you. Do they meet these criteria? If not, remove them or remove yourself. You’re better off alone. "
87 " The anxiety that has followed me through my life like a bad friend had reappeared with a vengeance and taken a brand-new form. I felt like I was outside my own body, watching myself work. I didn’t care if I succeeded or failed because I wasn’t totally sure I was alive. Between scenes I hid in the bathroom and prayed for the ability to cry, a sure sign I was real. I didn’t know why this was happening. The cruel reality of anxiety is that you never quite do. At the moments it should logically strike, I am fit as a fiddle. On a lazy afternoon, I am seized by a cold dread. In this moment I had plenty to be anxious about: pressure, exposure, a tense argument with a beloved colleague. But I had even more to be thankful for. Yet I couldn’t feel anything. "
88 " It’s a little too cold to be outside and we wear our sunglasses, shrinking down into our hoodies. I pick at my pancakes while she tells me, simply, “It’s okay to change your mind.” About a feeling, a person, a promise of love. I can’t stay just to avoid contradicting myself. I don’t have to watch him cry. "
89 " I miss her the way I missed our loft after we moved in seventh grade: sharply, and then not at all. There is too much unpacking to do. "
90 " But that's how I felt in high school, sure that my people were from elsewhere, and going elsewhere, and that they would recognise me when they saw me. They would like me enough that it wouldn't matter if I liked myself. They would see the good in me so that I could, too. "
91 " Because the people may not be polite, but when it counts they’re something better than polite: they’re kind. They’re always letting you take your tea when you’re short on change. Or letting you take the first cab if you’re crying. Or letting you pee when you didn’t even buy something. Or rushing to your side when you step in a pothole wearing platforms and eat it, hard. Helping you trap the lop-eared, terrified rabbit that has been living in a Dumbo parking lot for weeks. Giving you directions home. "
92 " Why spend $200 once a week on therapy when you can spend $150 once a year on a psychic? "
93 " I was reminded again that there are so many things we need that can also hurt us: cars, knives, grown-ups. "
94 " And underscoring it all was my father’s insistence that my sister and I were the prettiest, smartest, and baddest bitches in Gotham town, no matter how many times we pissed ourselves or cut our own bangs with blunt kitchen scissors. "
95 " You’ve learned a new rule and it’s simple: don’t put yourself in situations you’d like to run away from. "
96 " This is a reference to when I told him that, as a child, I was hypnotized by my own beauty. This was the time in life before I learned it wasn’t considered appropriate by society at large to like yourself. "
97 " I've never wanted to be with women so much as I wanted to be them: there are women whose career arc excites me, whose ease of expression is impressive, whose mastery of party banter has bee simultaneously hostile and rapt. "
98 " You will find," she says, "that there's a certain grace to having your heart broken. "
99 " I feel like there are fifty ways it's my fault. I fantasized. I took the big pill and the small pill, stuffed myself with substances to make being out in the world with people my own age a little bit easier. To lessen the space between me and everyone else. I was hungry to be seen. But I also know that at no moment did I consent to be handled that way. I never gave him permission to be rough, to stick himself inside me without a barrier between us. I never gave him permission. In my deepest self I know this, and the knowledge of it has kept me from sinking. "
100 " A friend once told me that when you’ve been in AA, drinking is never fun again. And that’s how I feel about having seen a nutritionist—I will never again approach food in an unbridled, guilt-free way. "