a name like So Sad Today, I feel pressure to write the perfect essay about anxiety and depression. But it’s the illusion of perfection that catalyzes my anxiety and depression. Perfectionism turns a minor shift in body temperature, a missed breath, into a full-fledged panic attack, especially when I am in the company of people for whom I feel I need to perform. The beginnings of a panic attack—the shortness of breath, the tightness in my chest, the unreality—are simply sensations. They will escalate or dissolve based on how fearfully I respond to them. Thus far, I’ve usually responded fearfully.
Perfectionism, of course, is not the sole culprit in my anxiety and depression. There is also chemistry, sensitivity, history, nurture, DNA, and questions existential and mystic—questions I have been discouraged from thinking about too hard, like, Why am I here? What is all of this? Am I going to die? Am I going to die right now? If I die right now, is that all there is? If I don’t die right now, is this all there is?
It seems weird to me that here we are, alive, not knowing why we are alive, and just going about our business, sort of ignoring that fact. How are we all not looking at each other all the time just like, Yo, what the fuck?
In the name of perfectionism, I have tried to stick to a linear narrative in describing my history of anxiety and depression, as it is a trajectory that most of us can follow in our surface comings and goings. Hopefully I was able to transcend it just a little. Maybe you relate to my what the fuckness and feel a little better about your own. All I want from you is to be liked. Of course, that is a scared woman’s way of saying what I really want, which is to connect with you on a deep and true level while I am still on this earth, and maybe even after I am off it.
Acknowledgments
Love and thanks to:
Sara Weiss, for bringing me on
Karah Preiss, for moving and shaking
Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, for being more than an agent
Libby Burton, for edits on fleek
Jonathan Smith, for VICE cool and unexpected kindness
The first SST followers, for finding me in a dark corner of the Internet
THE TEENS, I love you most of all!!! <3 <3 <3
Liz Pelly, Jenn Pelly, Brandon Stosuy, Gabby Bess, James Montgomery, Preteen Gallery, Hazel Cills, Nimrod Kamer, Simon Vozick-Levinson, Safy Hallan-Farrah, Sky Ferreira, and Dev Hynes, for blowing my shit up
Brad Listi, for dreaming big. Bush did 9/11. #chalupa
Caitlin Mulrooney-Lyski, for publicizing a publicist
Carolyn Kurek, best copyedits ever
Roxane Gay, Jami Attenberg, Molly Crabapple, and Bethany Cosentino for being lovely and early responders
Geoff Kloske, for Meredith (and also just being nice)
Kristen Iskandrian and Lorian Long, for witchin’ out
Tyler Crawford, ilysm bae
Hayley, for going through it all with me, I love you
Mom and Dad, I love you (and sorry)
Nicky, for the comprehensive love package and keeping it the most real
Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of others. Thanks to VICE and The Fanzine, where some of the material in So Sad Today first appeared in a different form.
About the Author
MELISSA BRODER is the author of four collections of poems, including Last Sext (Tin House, 2016). Her poems have appeared in POETRY, Guernica, and The Iowa Review, among other journals. She lives in Venice, California.
Also by Melissa Broder
Last Sext
Scarecrone
Meat Heart
When You Say One Thing but Mean Your Mother
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
How to Never Be Enough
Love in the Time of Chakras
I Want to Be a Whole Person but Really Thin
Help Me Not Be a Human Being
Love Like You Are Trying to Fill an Insatiable Spiritual Hole with Another Person Who Will Suffocate in There
Honk If There’s a Committee in Your Head Trying to Kill You
I Took the Internet Addiction Quiz and I Won
I Don’t Feel Bad About My Neck
The Patron Saint of Nicotine Gum
My Vomit Fetish, Myself
One Text Is Too Many and a Thousand Are Never Enough
Hello 911, I Can’t Stop Time
Google Hangout with My Higher Self
The Terror in My Heart Says Hi
Never Getting Over the Fantasy of You Is Going Okay
Keep Your Friends Close but Your Anxiety Closer
I Told You Not to Get the Knish: Thoughts on Open Marriage and Illness
Under the Anxiety Is Sadness but Who Would Go Under There
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Melissa Broder
Newsletters
© 2016 by Melissa Broder
Cover design: Brigid Pearson
Cover © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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First ebook edition: March 2016
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