I'm Glad My Mom Died, by Jennette McCurdy

Here is a letter Jennette McCurdy got from her mom.

Dear Net,

I am so disappointed in you. You used to be my perfect little angel, but now you are nothing more than a little SLUT, a FLOOZY, ALL USED UP. And to think—you wasted it on that hideous OGRE of a man. I saw the pictures on a website called TMZ—I saw you in Hawaii with him. I saw you rubbing his disgusting hairy stomach. I KNEW you were lying about Colton. Add that to the list of things you are—LIAR, CONNIVING, EVIL. You look pudgier, too. It’s clear you’re EATING YOUR GUILT.

Thinking of you with his ding dong inside of you makes me sick. SICK. I raised you better than this. What happened to my good little girl? Where did she go? And who is this MONSTER that has replaced her? You’re an UGLY MONSTER now. I told your brothers about you and they all said they disown you just like I do. We want nothing to do with you.

Love, Mom (or should I say DEB since I am no longer your mother)

P.S. Send money for a new fridge. Ours broke.

Relatable.

Jennette McCurdy's mother wanted to be an actress, so she made her daughter into one. It worked out about as well as you'd expect.

Jennette's mother was a cancer survivor up until the point that she failed to survive; she made a video of her cancer diagnosis and treatments and made the kids watch it every weekend to remember how amazing she is. She whips out her "stage four cancer survivor" status on every possible occasion, to agents, directors, waiters, and security guards. And that is just the tiniest tip of the iceberg.

She pushes Jennette into acting, which she hates and is temperamentally unsuited for, to the point where she gets the second lead on a Nickelodeon show, iCarly. (Reading this book, I learned that the show was not about an AI named Carly, but three teenagers who make a sort of early vlog.) Jennette makes friends on set, but the creator is a creepy emotional abuser and fame is both her worst nightmare and feeds her worst tendencies.

Based on the title, I expected this book to be about how much Jennette hated her mother. In fact, the problem--well, one of them--was that she loved her mother. They were extremely enmeshed and living each other's lives, and up until her mother died of cancer, Jennette was desperate to please her. The disillusionment came later, when she finally took a breath and looked out at the wreckage of her life.

There's awful stuff in this book but it's also very funny. Jennette has a distinctive, sharp, very modern narrative voice. The chapters are structured like little short stories or TV episodes, often with punchlines. She sees two therapists, and remarkably manages to capture the actual experience of therapy very well. I laughed a lot, but in solidarity. Though her terrible relationship with her mother is bad for pretty much the exact opposite reasons and in the opposite ways that my relationship with my parents was bad, I found it very relatable.

It also has some excellent surprises I don't want to spoil.

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I listened to this in audio read by the author, which I definitely recommend.

Thanks for the rec, mildred_of_midgard!

Content notes: Child abuse, bulimia, anorexia, alcoholism, cancer, mental illness, child labor, gross descriptions of vomit which I fast-forwarded.

Post for Yom Kippur

I am not terribly observant, to be honest. But I do try to observe somewhat.

The fast is the part people tend to think of first. (I only do it sort of (I drink some black coffee in the morning, or else I am sidelined for the whole day with a splitting headache, which is not conducive to doing anything else)). The other part is that it's a day to grieve for people who have died and think of people who are in trouble. And it's the Day of Atonement.

Part of that is asking forgiveness from people you have wronged or hurt. The idea is to admit that you did damage to the person you hurt, take ownership of it, and accept that forgiveness may not be granted.

But ideas have changed about asking for forgiveness. It's very fraught. Unless you're a Jew talking to another Jew on Yom Kippur itself, it's more likely that even asking is going to come across as an unwanted imposition, and create a burdensome sense that you have to accept the apology and forgive. I also have a tendency to be a bull in a china shop and barge in where I'm not wanted, and I'm aware of and working on that. So I'm not going to do individual apologies unless you are literally a Jew I'm going to see on Yom Kippur, which is zero people reading this. (Though if you would like an individual apology, feel free to contact me!)

With that in mind, I apologize to everyone reading this who I have wronged or hurt or wasn't there for in the past year. For most of you reading, "not being there for" is the big one. I've been very bad at being in touch with people, online and off, in this past year. Sometimes that's as small as reading a post (or a fic) that I know someone would really appreciate a reply to and not commenting, or as big as letting a friendship drift away by failing to keep in touch. I'm going to spend tomorrow repenting of that, and I will try my best to do better next year.

If you observe, may your fast be easy.