I

Flaws Become You

Here Comes the (Anxious) Bride

Dear Polly,

I am getting married in June, and I am the first child in my family to be getting married. I have a younger brother and a younger sister, both of whom I am very close with. Throughout the wedding planning process, I have tried to be very nondramatic and very non-Bridezilla-y, but when my sister (also my maid of honor) recently asked if she could bring her foreign boyfriend to meet my parents for the first time and also attend the wedding, I immediately and adamantly refused her.

My sister, since entering college, has far and away been considered the hot sister. When we are together, other people, including our own relatives and family friends, often mistake her for the older sister because she looks more mature and sophisticated. Not only is she a talented amateur photographer, but she also spent a gap year in Europe and is now trilingual. She also managed to get into the Ivy League that my parents wish I had gotten into, and enjoys the kind of popularity I have never experienced in my life (nor will I ever experience). I, on the other hand, could aptly be considered the nerdy sister, who was smart and always did things the “right” way but will never be glamorous or nearly as interesting. We were never that competitive as children, because our age gap made a big difference then, but now I have absurd conniptions of jealousy whenever my sister posts gorgeous pictures from her parties and travels.

When my sister was in Europe last year, she acquired a very attractive, older foreign boyfriend. No one in my family was convinced it would last, but now they are still together and seem pretty serious. My sister skipped Christmas to spend it abroad with him. Now she suddenly wants him to meet all of us in the States. And she wants it to happen my wedding weekend.

When I think about this happening, my head implodes, because I know all our relatives and mutual friends will be stunned by how gorgeous she and her perfect boyfriend look together. Because she has never introduced him to anyone, this will mean extra excitement that will almost certainly steal the spotlight from my wedding—my party, which I want to be about ME. I know this all sounds petty and selfish, but if there’s ever a time in your life you get to be a little bit selfish, it’s at your own goddamn wedding. And I just can’t shake the idea that if I let her bring him, their stupid-perfect luminosity will overshadow everything else. I also know that my refusal is almost entirely due to my own insecurities…but you only get married once. Her boyfriend can meet everyone at another time, right? Am I being insanely mean for not letting him come to the wedding? Is it okay for me to be selfish this time, or will I regret this later?

Selfish Bride

Dear Selfish Bride,

Yes, you can be selfish at your own goddamn wedding. You can invite anyone you want and wear anything you want and serve exactly what you love to eat. Hell, if you wanted to, you could release twenty-one white doves and then shoot them all out of the sky with a shotgun, one by one. Fuck it! It’s your day to be the most beautiful fairy princess in the whole universe! It’s your day to shine!

And let’s just admit it, no matter how much we try to rise above it, most of us do have this strange little desire to be the most glamorous creature on the face of the planet for just one day. ONE GODDAMN DAY, THAT’S ALL WE ASK! Can you really blame us? Did we not grow up in this idiotic airbrushed-lip-glossy-goddess-adoring culture? How many Disney movies and beauty pageants and episodes of The Bachelor can you watch before some sick corner of your brain calcifies into an absurd desire to be a gorgeous, shiny sparkle princess for just one day?

Here’s the awful truth, though. Some of us just aren’t any good at pulling off the sparkle-princess thing. We can’t manage it. Sure, if we were surrounded by a team of expensive stylists and trainers and nutritionists and managers and fluffers at all times, we might be able to do it. If we had highly paid service professionals who handed us tall glasses of iced lemon water and fluffed our hair and rubbed pig fetuses into our crow’s-feet every few milliseconds, then we might pull off something faintly approximating glamour and poise and glittery perfection.

But on your wedding day, instead of being surrounded by fawning helper types, you’re going to find yourself surrounded by your family. Your FAMILY, for fuck’s sake. Not to mention your self-involved, bitch-ass friends. And even though your friends are so supportive and loving that they’ll volunteer to help make sure you don’t get a terrible updo from the hairstylist (who will look just like Dolly Parton, by the way), instead they’re going to take off to have lunch and leave you alone and your hair is going to get uglier and uglier, with all these curly tendrils forming like you’re an early ’80s Olympic figure skater. But you’re going to be so hungry and nervous and unhinged that you won’t say a word, you’ll just start weeping and snotting into your hands and your $150 makeup job will smear, but you won’t be able to stop crying and you’ll text your friends “HELP!” and they’ll say, “BACK IN A SEC,” but they won’t be back until thirty minutes later, and by then you’ll look like Hermione Granger at the Yule Ball meets Divine post-monsoon. And then you’ll go to your room and pace and freak out and wonder why you decided to participate in a stressful $18,000 three-ring circus when you two could’ve just gone to City Hall and had a burger afterwards. And when you finally walk down the aisle and say your vows, your husband-to-be won’t have set up the mic, so no one will be able to hear a word and it’ll be 110 degrees outside and you’ll be wearing a gown that basically feels like a comforter strapped to your body, so your ass will be soaked in sweat and you’ll need to use the bathroom, and everyone you know will be there, staring at you, feeling sorry for you because you’re so awkward and so greasy and so old, and JESUS IT’S A MIRACLE SHE FOUND ANYONE, HOW’D SHE TRICK THIS GUY INTO MARRYING HER ANYWAY?

So please, allow me to ruin your special day for you right here, right now, because it will get ruined no matter what with your current attitude. That’s the irony of the selfish bride who just wants to be a shiny happy glowing Bride Barbie for one day. The harder you try to make that dream happen, the more of a nightmare your special day will become. Mark my words. You cannot be calm and relaxed and be the prettiest and most important and most enviable woman in the world, not even for just one day. You can’t! Your dream will not come true. Maybe if you had a million dollars to spend and you had a bunch of jackbooted thugs who forced your sister to wear no makeup and dress in rags and leave the hot, exotic boyfriend at home, you could pull it off. And maybe if your thugs could also force all of the guests to gasp and sigh when you entered, and they could bust in the kneecaps of anyone who dared to make a sound at the sight of your sister. Maybe if you handed out a script to every one of your friends. Maybe if the lighting were just so, and you gave everyone a pre-ceremony Valium. Maybe if you had an animation studio do a CGI version of your wedding so everything came out just right. Maybe if you could just uninvite your entire family.

Barring all that, you will not get your one glorious day to shine. And the more you try to control all of the variables, the less happy you’ll be on your wedding day. The more you think, “This is my day! It must go perfectly!” the less you’ll be able to experience the real point of the day, which is to celebrate not just you, in all of your beautiful but merely mortal wonder, but also to celebrate your brand-new husband, and your mother and father and your husband’s family and your siblings and his siblings and your cousins and his cousins, and YES, EVEN YOUR SISTER’S BRAND-NEW HANDSOME GUY. Weddings are all about anyone who cares enough to buy a stupid preselected gift and drag their ass to the event. The end.

So stop it. Call your sister, and tell her you were temporarily rendered unwell by an asshole virus and you actually want her boyfriend to come to the wedding after all. You’re looking forward to meeting him, in fact. With this act, you will instantly, like MAGIC, render yourself fifteen times more beautiful and glowing on your wedding day. Yes, you can say to your sister, “Look, I’m insecure and worried about this day. Can you help me to stay calm and look nice? And can you try not to look just like a supermodel that day and try to look like a regular person instead? I know that’s weak and lame of me, but can you help me?” Have a good fucking cry while you’re at it. For some reason, I’m guessing that your sister, if she really is the sensitive bohemian you portray her to be, will find your vulnerability touching and she’ll step up her whole game to make your day more special.

I have an older sister, and though I was far from the goddess you describe your sister as, I think she sometimes considered herself the nerdier one of the two of us when we were younger. (And please note, while I’m here dispensing advice, she is a cancer surgeon who saves lives.) I still remember the day of her wedding, when she was anxious about putting on more than the faintest glimmer of blush. “No, that looks fake,” she’d say and wipe it off. It was really cute. Today, I have two photos of my sister’s wedding in my house, and just one photo of my own wedding. In the photo from my wedding, I’m sitting on a rock in my white comforter, talking to two little kids, my brand-new nieces, and I’m wincing as if to say, “Do I have to pretend to care about children now?” I still remember how my legs were sweating profusely and I wanted to maybe throw up or lay down for a while.

But in my sister’s wedding photos, my sister looks so natural and happy and just…I know it’s a cliché, but she looks angelic. She is luminous. She really is. No one went out of their way to tell me I looked nice that day or paid special attention to the new boyfriend I had with me. Everyone was too busy being enchanted by my sister. They were all just thrilled to see her so happy.

I get a good feeling whenever I look at her photos. She was so generous and patient with me that weekend—even though I was feeling a little sorry for myself because my new boyfriend was flirting with all of the bridesmaids. My sister never acted like the whole day was about her. If anything, she seemed to want to share her big day with me.

I’m not trying to criticize you. I just want you to take a minute to picture what it would be like for your sister’s stupid-perfect luminosity to spoil everything, just like you suspect it will, and I want you to get over it. I want you to think about what it would be like if you ever lost her, how much that would crush you like a bug into the ground, and how much you’d regret your behavior right now. I want you to expect that she will upstage you, accept it, and find a way to enjoy your imperfect day anyway. Because you won’t have another shot at sharing your big day with grace and generosity and kindness.

And ultimately, so what? It’s just a fucking wedding. It’s your day to ruin, if you feel like ruining it. But I wouldn’t recommend that. I would work hard to change your attitude. I would reverse your decision and apologize to your sister.

Stop thinking of it as YOUR day. You’re the hostess, after all! What a terrible day to be gorgeous and reign supreme when you can’t even soak it in because you have to run around and kiss uncles and chat up cousins the whole time. If you really want to be a gorgeous princess shining from on high, figure out another day to do it. At your wedding, just be as generous and gracious and kind as you can possibly be. Nothing could be more beautiful than that.

Polly

My Mind Likes Imagining Boys

Polly,

I want to be single right now. Completely, deliciously, misandrist-ically single—not giving a solitary thought to men, much less actively dating them. So why can’t I get them out of my head?

I visited a friend last month to get away from the city and get clear on my feelings about my stumbling relationship. My friend introduced me to her cute friend, who I thought might be a little into her, but I may have misread it since they live in a small community, so sometimes friendships can get pretty intimate. She showed no sign of being interested in him, so I felt no weirdness saying, as we were wrapping up our visit, “I feel like my relationship with my boyfriend is winding down, and if we break up, I definitely don’t want to date for a while. But I have to say, just out of admiration, that your friend is mad cute.” To which she responded, “I’m so glad you said that because I spent all weekend thinking what a good couple the two of you would make! Of course you would want to be single for as long as you need, but when you’re ready to date again, I could definitely hook you two up.”

Three weeks later, I do break up with my boyfriend, ready to be completely without men. Yet, in the absence of a relationship, my brain keeps drifting to this friend of a friend, making up scenarios about him whenever it feels bored or lonely. I try to clear my mind of all things manly, and yet there he is. I’d already scheduled a postmortem call with my friend to go over the breakup, and I decide that during our chat I’ll ask her to give me the friend of a friend’s e-mail address so when I’m ready, I can see if he’s interested. If I can’t stop making up brain stories about him, I might as well look forward to asking him out someday in the future.

So my friend and I hop on the call, and the first thing she says is, “I have to tell you something—friend of a friend and I are dating!”

Oh. Congratulations. How wonderful.

I’m upset. I’m upset? I’m upset! And I feel like an idiot for feeling that way! I’ve only been around this guy for a weekend, and apparently my brain can’t just sit around being brilliant; it has to weave a rich fucking tapestry of what-ifs and expectations until I actually have skin in a game that I barely know anything about!

I know I’ll feel better about this in a few days, Polly. But my brain has always been like this—rich fucking tapestries are sort of its specialty—and I don’t want to keep repeating the process of hopes created by my brain being dashed by other people’s completely reasonable behaviors. Help me make my mind a superspecial top secret no-boys-allowed club.

Love,

De-Men Be Gone

Dear DMBG,

Hot damn, do I feel you! What a waste, to focus all of the brilliant colors of your overactive imagination on some random dude-canvas over and over again. That’s like weaving a rich tapestry and then using it as a dog bed. (Not that I wouldn’t do that in a heartbeat. If I could weave.)

I was a mind weaver of rich fucking tapestries, too, back in the day, with some demure yet straight-talkin’, slightly slimmer, slightly more hygienic version of my actual self right there at the center of it all and the imaginary dude of the month right next to me, looking both hotter and saner than he ever did in real life. In these ancient daydream textiles, I was always saying sexy things and flashing my sparkly eyes, and the dude was always guffawing at my ribald humor or gasping at my beauty like he was hooked to an IV of bourbon, Percocet, fine Colombian coffee, and fine Colombian cocaine. All I needed to create these vibrant dreamscapes was a glancing encounter with a random attractive friend-of-a-friend type of dude, and it was ON. And hours and hours of private storytelling and imaginings and pointless mind exercises later—in which said random dude repeatedly treasured every syllable out of my glossy lips, then ravished me like a sensitive hipster Tarzan (but with even meatier back muscles)—I’d discover that the random dude in question was already dating someone, or wasn’t into me, or wasn’t straight, or thought I was gross, or all of the above.

And then I’d require a brand-new male human being to shove into the colorful rainbow-glitter world of my mind so that he might be transformed into some combination of Prince Charming, a masseur, a therapist, a breadwinner, a poet (with one surly, hormonal muse—moi!), and that tender young fillet of manhood with the golden locks from The Blue Lagoon.

It’s all very Miss Piggy, this internal romantic lady world some of us cultivate. And acknowledging how stupidly boy crazy your mind is doesn’t even help! You can say to yourself, “Good Jesus, why do I insist on filling up my vacuous mind with a random-dude puppet show?” But your mind will not listen to your scoldy tones. It will continue to play with its smooth-talking puppets like you never said a thing.

And it starts so young! I don’t know about you, but I had the craziest, most elaborate crushes when I was in the second grade. I was madly in love with this kid Chris—poor guy!—and I spent basically every free second of my day picturing us together, running through fields of flowers or swinging on swings while holding hands (which I guess is the elementary school version of heavy petting?). In my sad mind, Chris and I were the perfect pair, and the whole world was our own private, luxurious, sunshiny tampon commercial.

Do these rich imaginings only kick into overdrive in youngish women who feel alienated and lonely? It’s easy enough to look back and assume that my not-very-warm-and-fuzzy family dynamics were to blame, but I don’t know. I think this boy-crazy thing is just what happens when an overactive mind digests a steady stream of fairy tales in which the heroine is saved from despair by a gel-haired dullard in pointy loafers.

These days, I look at my two daughters, and it kills me to picture their little creative minds already starting to fill up with obsessively imagined scenes starring some boy who barely knows how to wipe his own ass yet. How do I get them to avoid that dead-end road forever? Because when we fixate on boys starting at a very young age, every pointless, empty interaction with a dude starts to seem powerful and electric. I don’t mean to discount the glory of hormones and attraction and young love, but—to think of how rich and full my mind and my heart could’ve been without my boy obsession! I might’ve learned how to, I don’t know, speak Russian, or play the piano, or reupholster furniture!

This is the unsung glory of marriage: No more rich fucking tapestries necessary. Time to garden, read, play guitar, cook, write, hang out with friends, and—perhaps most importantly—watch fifteen hours of reality TV in a row.

What I admire most about your letter is that you acknowledge that the whole crush thing is arbitrary. You hardly know the guy in question, and your friend is hardly to blame for deciding she likes him. We weavers aren’t usually so clearheaded. We tend to inhabit our shiny fantasy lands so completely that when someone taps us on the back and says, “It’s not like that,” we get confused and lash out, as if someone selfishly stole the world’s only masseur-therapist-firefighter-sugar-daddy RIGHT OUT OF OUR HANDS. So pat yourself on the back right now. You may have an overactive imagination, but at least you aren’t taking that out on anyone back in the real world.

I also love that you want to figure out how to redecorate your mind, to use your vivid imagination to think your way out of this. And look, I’m a big proponent of using your tapestry-weaving powers for good and not evil. But sometimes you have to let go of your shiny imaginary creations in order to give in to the magic of the real world, which is far more glorious and full of hope than it first appears. You see, the problem with weaving rich fucking tapestries is that it’s like seeing one too many delightful rom-coms about soft-spoken, funny guys who say just the right thing at just the right moment. You start imagining that real-life guys never say clueless shit or smell like gorgonzola cheese. It’s like training yourself, through successive wanking sessions, to only get off on redheads with giant boobs. By filling our heads with Shower Fresh–scented fantasy worlds, we not only start to expect too much but we also become easily bored with the real world and its very real magic. Or, we imagine that we can only exist in the real world if we fill our heads with magical distractions. We create relationships that aren’t based on real compatibilities but on the crazy mixed-up tapestries that we ourselves constructed in our overactive minds.

I know I’m getting a little freaky here. What I mean is that rich tapestries block out the magic of real moments. Rich tapestries block out real people—love interests, but also other people who matter. Rich tapestries compromise friendships, and they block us from our career goals, and they blot out the sun. They train us to think that the only scene that’s full color in our lives is the scene with the dude in it.

But controlling your brain is not exactly easy. You have to train yourself to romanticize a life outside of men and create a tapestry that’s just as rich without a guy in it. That requires a kind of buoyant solitude that isn’t easy to achieve.

A few things that will make your alone time more buoyant: Inspiring music. A clean space. Regular, vigorous exercise. Great books. A nice bath. A wide range of beverages in the fridge. Friendly pets. Engrossing home projects. Your setting matters! I’m not that into decorating, but you have to put a little energy into your surroundings when you live alone.

But this is also about living in the moment, isn’t it? That’s something we all have to learn to do, whether we’re alone or not. That requires powering down all of the fantastical imagined things we’ll have one day and just soaking in this moment instead. I try to ground myself several times a day and just savor what’s happening right now: There are two dogs sleeping on the bed next to me. My kids in the next room are speaking in fake Italian accents. It’s time to make dinner. My neck hurts. “Everyone’s a building burning,” Modest Mouse is singing in my ear.

The truth is, I’m not the best at this. I don’t know the perfect way to make your mind into a superspecial no-boys-allowed club. But here’s what I will tell my own daughters, when they start to place all of the magic outside of themselves, when they start to feel like some random dude owns the sun and the moon and the stars:

The world has told you lies about how small you are. You will look back on this time and say, “I had it all, but I didn’t even know it. I was at the center, I could breathe in happiness, I could swim to the moon. I had everything I needed.”

Polly

The Poisons of Materialism

Dear Polly,

I am a writer with a day job copywriting for an enormous and successful high-fashion e-commerce company. I’d resisted nailing down steady employment since graduating from university to try to stay truer to myself as a writer and artist. In the past year, I started my own magazine with my best friend—and it’s doing well, considering we are funding it ourselves and resisting any content anywhere near resembling clickbait, instead providing a cohesive curation for the experimental and innovative. It’s very fulfilling work, something I’m so excited to see grow. But now, this day job, while I enjoy it, is making it difficult for me to stay grounded and focused.

I’ve been going through phases of obsession, I imagine from being surrounded daily by luxury clothing and accessories that often cost double my monthly salary. Being surrounded by this culture brings out my impulsive side: I’ve overspent in moments of weakness on more occasions than I would like to count. It isn’t fiscal irresponsibility I’m writing to you about, though. I could use some advice as to how not to allow my current surroundings, which are not necessarily relevant to who I am, pollute my mind this way. We’re all products of our surroundings, right? Working day to day, surrounded by buyers who get allowances from the company and turn up with the latest Givenchy bag I just got paid $16 an hour to write copy about the week prior, listening to their stories of being flown to Paris for fashion week, and yet feeling on the outside of all of this in my heart of hearts—it’s disorienting.

It’s complicated by the fact that, although most of my close friends are also broke creative types—oh, the musicians I’ve dated—I really, truly like my colleagues at the fashion company. We’ve begun spending time together outside of work. They are good people, they are cool and all around my age, we get along well, but in the back of my mind there is this irreconcilable malaise over the discrepancy between us where priorities and lifestyle ethics are concerned. Since I’ve tried the starving artist thing and found that didn’t suit me (especially not in New York, my god, the stories), and since the dream of working more meaningfully in a field like academia seems not to exist as a viable option anymore save for a lucky few, it seems I am in a good position, jobwise. But I know for a fact that there is more, and the internal struggle against being a materialistic tart without alienating my colleagues is becoming exhausting.

Help me, please, dearest Polly. I’m too much of a brooder to cope with having to sell out in order to pursue the work that is truly important to me.

Sincerely,

Wannabe Buddhist

Dear Wannabe Buddhist,

The fact that you’re seduced by luxury goods merely indicates that you are not a robot. A person can be turned off by the soul-sucking nature of high capitalism and still recognize, objectively, that high-end products are designed by talented artisans and luxury-branding super-geniuses who do not fuck around. Sure, maybe in the old days it was just about slapping your shitty gold logo on a bunch of moderately non-crappy handbags. Alas, like an awkward teenager who blossoms into a megalomaniacal pop star and then explodes, like a dying star, into a global lifestyle brand, the luxe-goods game is stronger than ever, having evolved from its clumsy, blingy roots into a full-service ego fuck-doll for the mega-rich.

To be clear, I don’t care about these objects as signifiers of wealth and taste. My preferred look is best described as “bedraggled bag lady.” What gets me, personally, is soft things. Show me a luxury item that is unbearably soft and supple, and I’ll show you the electrified synapses of my brain, furiously adding and subtracting numbers in order to land in some universe where purchasing an absurd cashmere robe does not necessitate pillaging my children’s college savings accounts.

You are living in the temple of temptation, WB. It is perfectly natural for you to feel like a puppet, pulled this way and that by the fickle luxe-branding overlords. That’s what fickle luxe-branding overlords were born to do: make you feel weak and powerless. When you spend your days staring at bony teenagers in tall boots and touching soft things that cost more than your monthly salary, it eats away at your soul like a hungry little demon-rabbit.

But this is true of so many of the shiny distractions of our culture. Anything that temporarily fills your vision and is also delightful and tempting and gorgeous, whether it be a $5k leather jacket or a charming plate of aged cheeses or a long read on Taylor Swift befriending a wide selection of fun-loving supermodels, can derail your whole day and your values and your priorities and your identity along with it. That’s just the nature of modern living. Everything is custom-designed to make us drop what we’re doing and drool and feel inadequate and long for more. It’s all crack, I tell you. IT’S 2016 AND THE WHOLE WORLD IS MADE OF CRACK.

When I worked full-time as a TV critic, I was regularly swept up in the heady world of pointless televised entertainments, with all of the chattering publicists and mind-numbingly bad programming that entails. Sounds harmless enough, I’m sure. But when you’re swimming through hollow, crass junk every single day, it’s hard not to be affected by it. Until one day you’ve seen one episode too many and you say to yourself, “I can’t bathe in this stuff every day or I’ll turn into someone I don’t like.”

Maybe you’ll arrive at just such a breaking point eventually. But I don’t think it’s fair for you to consider yourself a sellout in the meantime, simply because you work for a business that makes money selling or glorifying things that people are lured into paying too much money for. Likewise, the magazine you’ve created might be fantastic, but there’s a good chance you’ll still need to negotiate with one devil or another in order to pay your bills. Sadly, becoming an adult often requires learning to negotiate with devils.

You hang out with people who like pricey stuff. That doesn’t make you a materialistic tart. While it’s important to honor the principles that are dear to your heart, it’s also important to draw healthy boundaries between yourself and the world around you. What you do for a living doesn’t have to define you. Being an idealist is worthless unless you have a strategy for sustaining yourself and aiming for a more conscientious way of living. If devil negotiation is replaced with idleness, you may not be doing business with the devil, but you may not be doing much of anything, really.

You could, instead, see your job as a daily exercise in denying the impulses you recognize as unhealthy. Or maybe you could just look at it as a way to pay the rent while you figure out what you really want from your life. Or maybe you could view it as a way to climb the editorial ladder and then leap over to a publication that supports your values. A chance to climb that ladder and rack up valuable experience is not to be trifled with. I may have been tired of covering television toward the end of my seven-year stint as a TV critic, but few other jobs would’ve allowed me so much time to write. I struggled to file delightful new insights every few days, like any writer does. There’s something to be said for pushing past the naturally repellent aspects of any job and keeping the faith that you’re picking up skills that you’ll be able to use elsewhere. Even though I used to say, “I think I’ve learned everything I can learn here,” occasionally, I don’t think I would’ve landed in the same place if I’d only tolerated that job for two or three years. I learned to put my mixed feelings aside and meet my deadlines, week after week.

Now, as for the people you work with: You like them, but they’re very different from you. Throughout life, you’ll find yourself in this position. Each new job will introduce a brand-new and vastly different culture to you. It’s unavoidable. I worked at an early dot-com, and the culture was pure Angry Nerds with Delusions of Grandeur. In some ways, I fit right in. But I also felt like a slow-moving herd animal among honey badgers. Pushing through that feeling was crucial; it was a dream job, and if I’d let my mournful lowing get in the way of what I actually created there, it would’ve been a damn shame. Likewise, when you become a parent? You are often forced to hang out with the parents of your kids’ friends. For a while, I was seriously avoidant about this, but once I finally gave in and threw myself into befriending other parents, I realized what I was missing. I love those friends! They’re great! If I turned my back on that crowd just because every last one of our interests and values weren’t in line, my life would be far less colorful and rewarding than it is.

The bigger point: Groups can’t fulfill your every need. Your spouse can’t single-handedly bring you happiness. Your best female friend can’t save you from being alone. Your group of college friends won’t feel perfectly right for you when you’re in a certain mood. There will always be discrepancies between you and your friends where priorities and lifestyle are concerned. So don’t let it prevent you from forging new connections.

So repeat after me, WB: “I will not lose myself. I can earn money and create art, too. I can befriend Buddhists and women in $300 heels. I am not a one-dimensional, angry human with boundary issues, like those others who get so fixated on being ONE THING AND NOTHING ELSE. I contain worlds. I have many interests and many tastes, and I give zero fucks about those who question my choices. I am doing my best to build a better world around me. Everything in my life does not have to match perfectly. I like pretty things but not the materialism that sometimes comes with them. I will resist this crack-infused world and do my best to make things that matter to me. I will not lose myself.”

Polly

Am I Too Weird?

Dear Polly,

I’m weird. I’ve always been weird. People have been calling me that since I was a child. As I exit my twenties, it has abated, but I know people still think it. They use different words for it now—“unique,” “funny,” “quirky,” “quite a character”—but it all means the same thing: weird.

I spent a good chunk of time in college trying to be normal. I tanned, dyed my hair blond, and basically tried to look like Paris Hilton on The Simple Life (it was that time). I tried to wear what everyone was wearing, do what everyone was doing, say what everyone was saying. It didn’t work; I was miserable. I looked the part, but I was uncomfortable around all the other normal people (girls who also looked like Paris Hilton and boys who looked like proto–Jersey Shore douche bags), I was so bored talking about normal things (gossip), and I was restless and lonely even when I was surrounded by people engaged in normal pursuits at normal places (clubbing, shopping, pregaming).

Eventually, I vowed to be my authentic self. No more pretending. Now, to the casual acquaintance, the professional colleague, the just-Facebook-friends friend, I’m sure I seem confident and happy just being my weird-ass self. I’m witty and sarcastic, verbose and intellectual, brazenly sexual, unabashed in my love of nerd culture, and as likely to show up in ripped jeans and a leather jacket as I am in a vintage gown. I pursue my myriad passions and hobbies with reckless abandon, and I’m never afraid to simply be different. I come off as a person who doesn’t really care what other people think, and often I don’t.

But when I get close to someone, the cracks in my tough exterior begin to show. To my closest friends and lovers, I show this side of myself as readily as I show my weirdness to everyone else. Some love me just as I am, but others—and especially my boyfriends—will detach or withdraw.

The crux of my problem is this: I’ve toned down a lot of the visual markers of my weird over the years, but as soon as you spend any time with me, it becomes pretty damn obvious. I have a massive oil painting of myself and my dog hanging in my living room next to my “stripper” pole (it’s for fitness). My whole apartment is pink, covered in Hello Kitty everything, and there are framed superhero posters all over the walls. I have a closet full of costumes, wigs, and vintage clothes I’ve collected over the years, and my bookshelves are exploding with dense academic tomes that reside comfortably alongside my collection of sci-fi/fantasy and graphic novels. It gets worse: I still sleep with my baby blanket and a teddy bear. And this is all not to mention how I come off in conversation; I find most getting-to-know-you topics incredibly boring. I’d rather hear about your road trip to New Orleans, or the time you ran out of toilet paper while camping, or the art project you’re working on in your spare time.

I used to feel proud that at last I had embraced my weird. But lately, when I bring a new person to my apartment, I feel embarrassed. I’m scared of opening myself up to someone new only to be mocked, be judged, and have the very things that make me so happy thrown back in my face like they’re indicative of what’s “wrong with me.” It’s negatively affected my ability to date. With guys I really like, I reveal too much, too soon, and I come off as crazy and/or intense, and probably more than a little insecure. They say stuff like “I’m not feeling it romantically,” “I just don’t see you as a girlfriend,” “I think you probably like me more than I like you.”

The only successful romantic relationships in my life right now are with guys I’m just hooking up with. I don’t care what they think of me or if they don’t think I’m “girlfriend material.” We get together, we have sex, we talk, sometimes we get some food. I don’t ever do relationship-y things like spend the night; I really don’t want to, and they don’t ask. But it makes me feel like all I’m good for is sex. Because I’m confidently weird, the “normal girl” rules don’t apply to me; they don’t have to worry about me having a bunch of feelings or demanding a commitment or whatever. So really, all the men I’m attracted to are either just taking advantage of my weirdness or else rejecting it.

It sucks because I want to be loved and desired FOR those things that make me different, NOT in spite of them. I would never shame someone for having interests and pursuing them. To me, a healthy, happy partnership is one where you pursue some passions as a couple, listen interestedly to those you do separately, and tolerate those you think are ridiculous. I’m really starting to think I will never find someone like that, and I will have to fake being normal in order to have a relationship where no one shames me. Polly, am I simply too weird to ever find true love?

Signed,

Weird Gal

Dear Weird Gal,

Your assertion that you are categorically “weird” while others are categorically “normal,” and that these are static qualities that can be broadcast easily with Hello Kitty decor and vintage gowns, strikes me as a little bit childish. Plenty of those Paris Hilton look-alikes and Jersey Shore wannabes were—like you—trying to figure out how to fit in (or not). They probably didn’t relish every moment of sloppy dorm-room pregaming. And even if they did enjoy Jell-O shots and flat ironing their hair, who’s to say they actually felt fulfilled while they were doing it? You assume that you are complex where others are exactly what meets the eye. But you aren’t the only one who thinks that it’s more interesting to hear about someone’s cool road trip than to make small talk. Most people aren’t that into small talk; it just happens to be the accepted opening maneuver between humans who don’t know each other that well. It takes effort and a little time to achieve a real rapport.

My guess is that at least some of the shit you’re taking for being out of step with the mainstream is related to your (perfectly understandable!) urge to shove all of humanity into one of two clean categories—odd and normal, vibrant and dullsville, unique and average.

Your taste for reductive dichotomies, along with your outsized reactions to other people’s perceptions of you, may not always serve you, but they probably spring forth from your sensitivity and smarts. You’re quick to pick up on ambivalence. You’re quick to turn this evidence over and over in your mind. You’re quick to make meaning from these messages. And you feel like you need to explain your choices, to react, to do something to make the whole picture clearer and more palatable to other people.

But you don’t! You don’t have to explain a goddamn thing—to anyone, ever! All you really need, more than anything else, is the ability to tolerate the fact that some people are going to like you, some people are going to dislike you, some people are going to hate you, and—yes!—some people are going to drop to their knees and say, “SMART, UNPREDICTABLE, SENSITIVE, UNIQUE WOMAN, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE?”

But first, you’re going to need to relax your grip on your worldview a little and accept yourself for who you are once and for all. And while you’re at it, accept that the so-called ultra-normals out there are far more complex than you give them credit for. The only enemy you have right now is you. You’re casting a wide net and meeting a wide range of people. That’s great, but listen to me: Anyone under the sun could feel unnerved by that process. Anyone. Meeting new people and showing them who you are and maybe even making out with them? That’s an inherently shaky, uncertain experience! It’s almost impossible not to present a blustery, overconfident version of yourself in those circumstances and to form angry, defensive impressions from your bad experiences. After enough bad interactions, your bluster and confidence start to give way to self-doubt.

And that wouldn’t be so bad, but you are a truth teller! You’re a confessional person by nature. If there’s a feeling of doubt in the room, you have to acknowledge it, put it into words, bring it to light.

But sometimes we confessional overthinkers have to bite our tongues. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that it’s not necessary to DO anything. We can just stay present and listen. We can watch and observe. Even when we know that someone thinks we’re flawed and strange and out of step with what’s considered “normal,” we can remain silent. I regularly ask my husband to vet my more long-winded or confrontational e-mails. “You don’t have to say all of this stuff,” he usually tells me. He points out that in professional settings, when a conflict arises, most people just act unconcerned and faintly unaware. They don’t go into detail. They are polite but brief.

“Unconcerned” and “faintly unaware”! These words have never been used to describe me. This goes against everything I stand for, everything I live for, everything I am! I am concerned and aware. I notice things, and when I notice them, I say so. I cannot let tiny things drop. I refuse! I am a blaring siren! “Do you see what I’m seeing?” I ask over and over again.

Ah, but people hate that, Weird Gal. They really do. So many people are allergic to confessional, outspoken women. And let’s face it, we’re not always serving the common good. We’re neurotic motherfuckers with way too much on our minds at all times.

So here’s what we have to do: We have to be self-protective but still vulnerable. Does that sound impossible? Sometimes it is. But here’s how it works: You don’t put yourself in situations where you’re going to cycle through bluster and neediness. That means you really can’t hook up with random men. Even if you never let down your guard in those situations, they still hurt you. They fuck with your sense of yourself. They lead you to believe you’re only good for sex, and you can’t EVER settle for feeling that way.

You have to protect yourself from yourself, too. You can open your heart and tell the truth to your trusted friends. That’s good for you. But don’t tell yourself that you’re confident enough to share yourself with just anyone. Don’t open up to people who don’t understand and accept you yet. Wait until you feel completely comfortable.

I know you claim that you’re already careful about this, but I don’t buy it. You sound conflicted to me. You say you’re never afraid to be different, but then you ask me if you’re too different. You say you feel totally confident about being weird, but then you ask if you’re too weird for love. You say you’re brazenly sexual, but then you say you want more than these one-night stands you’re having. As long as you’re conflicted, no one else will be comfortable with you. As much as you might say, “I’m proud of who I am, damn it!” your statements about yourself still sound like marketing copy.

Likewise: You put a stripper pole in your living room, and when people ask about it, you say, “It’s for fitness.” That’s like saying you buy Playboy for the articles. Yes, it’s possible that you discovered along the way that Playboy had good articles and that a stripper pole gets you fit. But there’s a reason you picked up a copy of Playboy over Vanity Fair, or picked out a stripper pole instead of, say, a set of kettlebells. When you’re defensive about your choices, that makes other people less accepting of those choices, too.

It’s not a problem for the men who just want to sleep with you, because they want to keep their distance. But for guys who could be genuinely interested in you, defensiveness and bravado that conceal larger insecurities add up to a major red flag. These things say, “I may pretend not to care about what you think, but I actually care a lot. I want to explain myself, but I shouldn’t have to explain myself.” You’re wearing a sign that says, “HERE’S WHO I AM, GODDAMN IT. LOVE ME OR SCREW YOU,” and handing out cards that say, “How would you rate me on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 means ‘strongly approve’ and 1 means ‘Get out of my face, freak!’ ”

It’s time to take better care of yourself, to embrace and support yourself more, to remind yourself what you truly care about, and to make better judgments about who is worthy of the full, glorious light of weirdness you will someday shine on the world, far and wide.

And you will! Oh, will you shine! I love that you know what you like and don’t like, that you show yourself to the world no matter what, that you sleep with a baby blanket and a bear. You do what you like, even when you don’t feel appreciated for it. Don’t lose that.

But you do have to recognize that people like you—and me, and lots of people out there—will always feel some tension between themselves and the world. We’re tempted to provoke, to deliberately rub people the wrong way. We do this because we’re pissed that the world isn’t kind to us. We’re sick of being treated badly just because we have unusual preferences and strong opinions and we talk a little too much. It’s easier to go against the grain if you’re thick-skinned, but we’re not. We’re sensitive. And nothing is quite as hard as being a sensitive, aggressive weirdo.

It gets easier when you surrender a little, when you let down your defenses. It gets easier when you allow yourself to be vulnerable. You don’t have to make a pitch. You can tell the truth. “I got the pole in a stripper-obsessed phase, and now I just use it for fitness.” “I’m kind of a strange person and I like what I like, but sometimes it’s hard to be me.” “I used to be sure of exactly who I was. Now I’m more confused about it.”

I think you’re in the middle of a transition. Some of your choices make sense to you, and others feel outdated. Wear THAT on your sleeve. Resist the urge to reveal every inch of yourself—or to invite people to your place—immediately. Let them get to know you gradually. Practice sitting still in the presence of someone whose disappointment and lack of interest are becoming palpable. Sit with it instead of trying to convince them otherwise. Sit with it instead of getting defensive or angry. Practice saying, “I’m opinionated. I’m a weirdo. I’m not for everyone.”

You’re trotting out all your secrets right now. You can’t do that until you feel good about your secrets and you accept that lots of people won’t like you once they know who you are. That’s true for anyone.

A lot of people won’t be into you. You will feel the pain of that for your entire life, trust me. You really should accept it and learn to deal with it—not by shutting people out or becoming defensive or rigid, but by (paradoxically!) allowing people space to feel however they happen to feel and making small adjustments to how you move through the world based on what feels good and what doesn’t.

It’s okay to be an oversensitive freak. Oversensitive freaks tend to overreact. They tend to spin in circles. But they are some of the most loyal, interesting, intense people around, and they just get better as they age. Welcome to the tribe!

Polly

Crushed by an STD

Dear Polly,

I had a devastating breakup earlier this year. In the aftermath, I tried to take care of myself: I exercised. I ate healthier. I traveled. I spent time with friends and family. I threw myself into work projects. I started seeing a therapist. I even went on a few promising (and not-so-promising) dates.

A few months after the breakup, just when I was starting to feel human again, I got very drunk and had unprotected sex with a good friend. The lack of protection was obviously a mistake; I’ve always been vigilant about condom usage and both of us are regularly tested for STDs, and we both acknowledged our error in judgment. Several days later, I developed two sores on my genitals and immediately went to see my doctor the next day. She visually diagnosed me with herpes, which a blood test later confirmed. I sobbed in her office, and I’ve cried every day since.

My doctor has been absolutely exemplary and understanding in terms of answering questions and providing comfort; I feel very grateful to have her as my physician. My friend who I slept with has also been wonderful; I informed him right away. He was concerned but listened with an open mind and heart and was deeply reassuring. I know that while it’s not curable, it is treatable and that the stigma and shame are the hardest parts to manage. I know that even if we had used protection, I still would’ve been at risk since it’s transmitted via skin-to-skin contact. I know it’s possible for herpes to lay dormant for years without showing symptoms (either of us could’ve contracted it previously) and the only way to truly protect yourself against STDs is to abstain from sex.

I know all of this. I keep repeating it to myself like a mantra. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve massively, massively fucked up, and it feels like this diagnosis is confirming every long-held negative thought I’ve ever had about myself, mostly about how I’m a reckless, selfish drunk who’s unworthy of love.

It had been so hard to stay hopeful and authentic and vulnerable these last few months, but I was so proud of myself for taking positive, active steps to better myself and live the life I always wanted. Now, with this development, the idea of putting myself out there and ever trying to date again feels daunting, terrifying, and impossible. I even feel myself starting to withdraw from the life that I rebuilt: I’m bailing on social plans, I canceled an upcoming trip to see friends, I’ve lost interest in the job I love and worked years to get. I’m falling apart because I just can’t let go of the idea that this was supposed to be the good part. I worked so hard, I took care of myself, I tried to be considerate of others, and I still messed it all up, and I now have to live with the consequences. I’m depressed and angry and crushed.

I’m seeing a new therapist. (My previous therapist left the practice one month before this happened.) I’m taking a long, possibly permanent, hiatus from drinking. My doctor is tremendous. The two people I’ve confided in (the previously mentioned friend and my best female friend) have been wildly supportive. But how do I navigate this for the rest of my life? I know I’m going to meet people who will judge me, and I don’t know how to navigate those responses without crumbling. I know a genital herpes diagnosis is not the end of the world, but why does it still feel that way?

Crushed

Dear Crushed,

You feel like your diagnosis is the end of the world because it IS the end of a world that you inhabited for a long time. And somehow this feels like your fault. It feels like something that will plague you forever. You feel like you’ll never get over the stigma of this. You think that anyone you have feelings for will cringe and run away, and that behavior will only confirm your darkest fears: that you’re fucked-up and selfish and unworthy of love.

This situation plays on your worst insecurities. You already felt like a reckless drunk before, as you explained, and now you have what feels like an outward manifestation of that fact.

But you were going to have to deal with the fact that you felt like a reckless, selfish drunk who’s unworthy of love either way. This situation forces you to deal with it now, all at once. Instead of tripping along and making mistakes and eventually waking up to how little you like your bad habits, this diagnosis is making you face them immediately.

And even though it’s easy to say to yourself, “I got herpes because I massively, massively fucked up,” plenty of people get herpes without fucking up at all. Their boyfriend or girlfriend or spouse gave it to them. They used protection with someone they trusted, and they still got it. They got it, and they couldn’t fathom how they got it. Imagine being a gay man in the early ’80s dying a slow, horrible death and thinking that it happened because you fucked up. Imagine being told by a parent, by a priest, that you’re dying BECAUSE YOU MADE BAD CHOICES.

It wasn’t true for them, and it isn’t true for you. You have to deny these voices in your head when you hear them. You have to stand up for yourself, to yourself, and say, “I am NOT being punished for being a reckless drunk.” This world is filled with reckless, selfish people who are reckless and selfish in ways that are horribly damaging and hideous and unfair. The guy who sold me the house where I now live, a guy who had a wife and two kids, was killed in a head-on collision last year by some fucked-up teenager who seemed to think that driving was just like playing a really exciting video game. Getting wasted and sleeping with a friend without protection isn’t the most cautious thing in the world, but on the scale of fuckups available to humankind it’s a small one.

No one with a brain in their heads will look at that kind of a mistake and think, “Boy, are you a fuckup.” No one with any sense will hear that you have herpes and think, “Jesus, what a wreck. No thank you.” People who think these kinds of things are beneath you. They are stigmatizing you to sustain a belief that nothing terrible will ever happen to them. It’s a common response. There are people who treat cancer patients like they must’ve turned down breast milk for blue Slurpees as babies, or they must’ve spent their teenage years sunbathing while huffing spray paint. There are people who treat divorced women like they must’ve gained too much weight or henpecked their poor innocent husbands to death. These are the dots we connect in order to assure ourselves that nothing bad will ever happen to us.

You don’t have a debilitating illness or a death sentence. You don’t have something that will prevent you from loving or being loved. You don’t have a hopeless, lonely future. What you do have now is a really efficient, effective litmus test for future sexual partners and friends. You have a reason to treat yourself with respect, to not get drunk and reckless. You have a reason not to just hop into bed with someone without talking it over first.

This herpes thing is a giant drag. I get that. It sucks. But if anything, it proves that you are not a selfish, reckless drunk. Because if you were, you wouldn’t be taking a hard look at your life right now and talking openly about it with your friend. You wouldn’t be preparing for a new life, in which you have to have a pretty serious conversation with anyone you’re going to fool around with. Your emotional response to this situation isn’t just a response to the situation itself; it’s also a response to the commitments you’re now taking on: to face this, to talk to people about it, to tell future partners about it, to navigate this new reality with your eyes open. Do you know how many people don’t have the nerve to do those things? If you were selfish and reckless, you’d deal with this upsetting situation by drinking and escaping and avoiding everything. You’re not doing that.

I was a pretty reckless drunk for a while, a fact I wasn’t remotely willing to face until my dad died when I was twenty-five years old. His death helped to shake me out of a pretty dramatic downward spiral. Without that event, I might’ve languished in confusion and self-hatred for a long time. That awful time snapped me out of a lot of my bad habits.

Now you have an awful time to get through. You’ll have to live in a new way. You’ll have to face yourself and overcome some of your unhealthy tendencies.

Talk to anyone living with herpes (and there are plenty of them around you whether you know it or not), and they’ll tell you that it’s really hard at first, but it gets easier, and the affliction itself gets less dramatic. Even though you can never completely forget about it, it doesn’t end up being the giant scarlet letter on your chest that you imagine it will be at first.

Whatever you do, don’t continue to cut yourself off from others. Don’t let your shame take over. Shame and suspicions that you’re fundamentally unlovable: These things may be kicked up by a herpes diagnosis, but they were there all along, asking you to address them. So keep addressing them, but separate them from the STD itself. The STD is an unfortunate thing that happened to you, nothing more and nothing less. It doesn’t have to carry all of this weight if you don’t let it. So be strong and separate it from the rest of your issues. File it under “Unfortunate Things That Happened.”

You are just a person with regular flaws, fumbling your way toward a satisfying life. You’ve been handed a big challenge, but one that’s going to help you to grow up and take care of yourself and connect honestly with other people. You don’t have to love this challenge right now. You can cry every day and feel terrible about it. But this challenge wasn’t meant to topple everything else you’re doing that’s good in your life. This challenge fits right in with your exercising and eating healthier and traveling and connecting with friends and taking care of yourself. This is you, facing whatever comes next while also acknowledging that you’ve been thrown for a loop. In the months after my dad’s death, I could see that I would have to become a new kind of person in order to survive. I felt terrible, of course, but you can feel terrible and also feel fully alive. You can feel crushed and also feel inspired and hopeful. In your darkest moments, look for some hope. It’s there.

You aren’t alone. This isn’t the end of the world, not even close. When you look back on the Days Before Herpes, you’ll say, “I was more careless, but not nearly as happy back then. I take care of myself now, and I’m more protective of my heart, and my life is so much better.” You feel ashamed now, but that shame isn’t going to stick around for long. You’re going to learn how to roll your eyes at other people’s judgment.

You know who else has to learn how to do that? Every person on the planet. And if you keep facing these feelings, shame and the idiotic judgments of others won’t have much power over you. You won’t be crumbling and depressed. You’ll be clear about who you are. You’ll know what you will and won’t stand for. You’ll be stronger than ever. People who stand up for themselves are magnetic—partly because most people don’t.

Whether or not you can feel it yet, you’ve just joined us here, where the once broken and the shamed and the damaged stand together and say, “Other people’s ignorance and casual rejection don’t define me. I know who I am.”

I KNOW WHO I AM. Repeat those words every morning, okay? I know who I am. I am honest and brave and stronger than ever.

Polly