Mithila Reads

I don’t remember how I stumbled upon this book. But I can tell you why I decided to read it: the title. I’ve struggled with being at peace with my loneliness and at times being completely devastated by it. Going into this book, I thought I’d get a quick and genuine list of to-do’s as a single person: How to survive and thrive despite feeling lonely. But what I got instead was even better: a memoir of the life of this fantastic person called Lane Moore, who had a non-existent relationship with her parents (as good as being abandoned even though you live in the same home), and the resultant psychological effects of that on her personal life and her love life, laced with an exorbitant amount of loneliness and take-care-of-your-own-damn-self-ness.

I wrote this review after ugly-crying throughout my reading of the book and ruminating about the various commonalities between the author and me. I gave myself the weekend to heal from the wounds that certain paragraphs had created in my heart. The accuracy of her honest narrative and the wholesomeness of it made me feel like I was reading my own diary.

The book starts with the acute loneliness of not having anyone’s name to fill in the “Emergency Contact” section of a medical form. It may seem weird to people who belong to families that are supportive: won’t you just write the name of a parent or a sibling or a spouse? Lane describes her predicament as being in a “no-man’s-land” – you technically do have parents who can house you, but you’d be safer anywhere else rather than there. Being safe doesn’t really mean only being physically safe, but also being emotionally safe. Having a reliable, healthy and emotionally mature parent also is included in this definition of safe.

Further, Lane opens up about her analysis of people who say that female friendships are full of drama versus her own experience and understanding of it. She speaks about her passionate desire to find her soulmate. She croons out her love for music and her phase of being in a band with possibly-paedophiles old men. She whines about the time when she rented an apartment without looking at it beforehand, and how she ended up living in a crack-den for a while before gathering the courage to leave. She touches on topics like types of attachment in relationships (secure, anxious and avoidant). She also speaks about topics like sexual assault, and how you totally do not have to consider being sexually assaulted as your “first-time” and can choose any romantic encounter as your “first-time”.

On the work front, she started off with fending for herself after she left her home by babysitting. She speaks about how parents can be grossly unbothered and unperturbed by the lack of affection they give to their children while dealing with their own eMoTIonAl TrAuMa. After that, she landed a job at The Onion where she was brilliantly underpaid despite being brilliant at her work. While she didn’t touch upon this in the book much, she also was the Sex & Relationships columnist at the Cosmopolitan Magazine for a while. She has won a GLAAD award for her groundbreaking work championing diverse, inclusive coverage during her time at Cosmopolitan. Her standup show called “Tinder Live”, where she gets on a stage and uses Tinder and interacts with the audience about whether to swipe left or right, has been praised as this generation’s “The Dating Game”. I have yet to watch it on YouTube as of writing this review, but I sure as hell am going to catch up on them the rest of this year (when I’m not rereading this book for the gazillionth time and crying my eyes out). She is a vocalist, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who performs as “It Was Romance”, a rock band.

Lane also confides in the reader about the intricacies of her various romantic relationships and how they were littered with red flags which she noticed only in hindsight. For me, as a reader, I was sitting on the edge of my seat while reading these parts. Not because I didn’t know the outcome of the relationship (duh), but because I wanted to learn how she picked herself up from it. Throwback to the first para of my review, dummies.

There are a lot of pop culture references in the book, which is evident from the Dedications page itself. Most importantly, The Office fans will love the chapter “TV Couples who made me believe love is supposed to be better than this”. The opening quote is from the teddy bear of the show! (heart eyes).

Popular lonely-people topics like – living/feeling alone on the holidays that everyone else seems to enjoy with their family and friends, the quest for a soulmate, dealing with well-wishers who tell you to stop looking for The One and wait for things to turn out well romantically in their own time, platonic intimacy, trust issues and the exhaustion that comes with keeping your eggs in a supposed wrong basket, the fleeting connections we make with strangers who don’t owe us anything but still make us feel like royals. But the crowning glory of the book has to be the last chapter. It will make you feel all the feels and you will need a bagful of tissues to deal with this one.

This book gave me the answers to questions I’ve been confused about for a really long time

1. Why do I have this unnatural obsession with wanting to have one ultimate best friend?
2. Why do I feel threatened and insecure in female friendships but openly embrace friendships with guys?
3. Why have I always based my self-worth on the number of friends I’ve had or the people who were in love with me?
4. Am I the last hopeless romantic on Earth? (Lane Moore is certainly another hopeless romantic so I’m clearly not alone!)
5. Why am I, as a person with anxious attachment, always attracted to people who have an avoidant attachment personality?

I have highlighted the hell out of this book and look forward to having my own apartment where I put up tiny scrolls of these quotes all around my house. And of course, a hundred copies of this book to give to anyone who wants to understand why I’m so obsessed with friendships and relationships.