Sanity Reads

what i read when i'm losing it

There’s only so much I can write about womanhood while glossing over the brutally cyclical nature of our emotions, worldview, and even the minute details of our relationship with ourselves. But a distinction worth making explicit: there’s exercising bodily literacy and being more open about the complexity of our biology, and then there’s succumbing to the reductive notion that women are governed by their hormones and cycle phases that is not just condescending but can be used against us and our agency. Let’s be very clear about that distinction. I would hate to contribute to the latter in any form.

Anyway. Every four weeks or so, the world blurs into one big dreary luteal nothingness, the sky paints itself cold, fathomless grey, and I’m in a one soldier battle with my vices of greed, envy, and extreme apathy, seasoned with some real disturbing thoughts, then sweetened with the total ambiguity of whether the ailment is temporary or I’ll just be broken forever. It always is temporary — just feels terminal every damn time. Those who get it, get it, I guess. Yet I’m appreciative: somehow, it becomes my most generative time. Previously inaccessible levels of psychological turmoil are at my service, fueling and nourishing the process, as mother nature intended. I retreat to my cave to ideate and make things, let things run their course, and don’t dare touch the alchemy of this delirious neurochemical state. I also become more receptive to the world around me, so literature becomes the activity de la semaine.

As this increasingly unstable, tender, and self-critical state proceeds to seep deeper into my tissues, I need extra literary support that brings me back to life. But not all reading is created equal, so this very specific category of Sanity Reads has to meet the criteria and tick all the boxes. First, it has to antagonize me or make me at least a little bit uncomfortable. Then, it must provide an escape and take the edge off my heightened emotional state. Finally, it should leave me with an aftertaste of relief. It also needs to make me ponder on my fragile human nature. Bonus points if it’s about a woman in distress. Solidarity! Here’s a very curated shortlist — each one of these books has gotten me through a rough night or two.

Famesick — Lena Dunham

Would any current book listicle be legitimate without everyone’s book of the month? Especially when Lena Dunham & her team graciously sent me a copy?

I’m a Dunham fan; always have been, always will be. Chronic illness is not an easy feat to talk about without collapsing into the fragility of the experience, the surrender to no end point. It takes a certain tone of optimism and bravery, but also deep perceptual awareness. Famesick manages to encapsulate all the above. Told truthfully and lyrically, the memoir reads like an exhale and an arrival, which is the relief I need to make sure the erratic get-everything-done-at-any-cost nature of any adventurous woman’s twenties is not a character flaw. Famesick is proof that there is, in fact, solace on the other side of chaos; there’s also love and a better relationship with yourself and with your own capacity. Lena is, of course, at once incredibly wise and incredibly playful, a combination necessary to enjoy a tough subject memoir.

Also goes without saying, but Famesick is a multimedia experience – you can (and should) look up references and people as you go, and observe, retroactively, the precise ambiance and cultural climate of any given scene and chapter. And yet, the best thing is it doesn’t discriminate against those with a different media diet: my mother, a violinist residing in niche cultural fields far removed from the zeitgeist, who’s a big fan of Girls but has never heard of a ‘Jack Antonoff’, will still find this memoir hilarious, sincere, and resonant.