GOOD READS:
Books! They’re Good for you!
1 – Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love
Jonathan Van Ness: If you knew everything about me, would you still love me?
JVN’s audio book tells the story of a gender-queer, bright-eyed optimist who kept falling on his face, over and over (beer bottles thrown at every football game when he was the first gay, male cheerleader at his high school). He doesn’t downplay his male, cis privilege, but his past abuse (trigger-warning) sent him on a familiar path of self-destruction that resonates well for anyone’s hetero-normative journey. And he’s really funny. His message of self-love and his personal discovery of self-acceptance is beautiful. It made me think a lot of the ways I’ve acted out as an adolescent and as an adult. It also gave me some empathy towards the people who have bullied me as a child and as a grown-up fairly recently.
If you knew everything about me, would you still love me?
You’re never too broken to be healed.
-JVN
Audible (Really, you need to hear JVN narrate this.)
GOOD VIBES:
Anthropocene Reviewed
John Green (host): John Green rates the Anthropocene—the era of humanity—on a five-star scale. The Taco Bell breakfast menu. Cancer. Etc. But, it’s so much more than that. Here’s a bit from his review on the Sycamore tree which I HIGHLY encourage you to listen to (just skip to the halfway mark in the podcast):
“But no. No. Now always feels infinite and never is. You keep going. You go to therapy. You try a different medication. You meditate, even though you dislike meditation. You exercise. You wait. Your mind keeps playing What’s Even the Point, and you keep refusing to give in to it, battling it with philosophy and self-help books and religion and whatever else that works. And then one day, the air is a bit warmer, and the sky is not so blindingly bright. It’s overcast, and you’re walking through a forested park with your children. Your nine-year-old points out two squirrels racing up an immense American Sycamore tree, its white bark peeling in patches, its leaves bigger than dinner plates. You think, my God that’s a beautiful tree. It must be a hundred years old, maybe more.”
GOOD VIEWS:
Binge to you heart’s content.
1 – Fleabag
Phoebe Waller-Bridge: Fleabag is a BBC, two-series show about a “dysfunctional” woman in London. Ha. That’s hilarious. Mostly, it’s funny because I see it as a show about a woman whose best friend is dead (captured brilliantly by flashbacks and ‘ghost’ shots), whose mother is dead, and who is surrounded by deranged people. And she’s just trying her best. Sure, she’s slightly sex-crazed, masturbates to Obama, and steals soemtimes, but her BIL is a predatory drunk, her father is marrying a manipulative interloper, and she gets sent to a ‘women’s camp,’ where women are not allowed to speak, read outside news, and must do chores all day for self-fullfliment. Also, it’s a comedy. (Side note: I had an aunt just like that; her husband wouldn’t let her read the newspaper until he’d gone through it and cut out all the articles he wouldn’t let her read. It’s real.)
I had several people recommend the show to me and was instantly insulted. “What are they saying?! Why do I remind them of this person? Is this like a passive-aggressive intervention?” Then I got it. All women feel like this. At least, I think we do. Or, we’re just fucking faking it really well.
“Either everyone feels like this a little bit and they’re just not talking about it or I am completely fucking alone.” – Fleabag
