Resilience
5/1/20 - What allows people to endure and try again? In the first of a series tackling big ideas that are helping us get through these deep-feeling quarantimes, we talk with Lulu Miller about a scientist who lost everything - again and again - and somehow was never fazed. Plus, Amina's love of country music, and how friendship is a beautiful unexplained anomaly in an often-selfish world.
Transcript below.
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Spotify.
CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
Image by Kate Samworth for Why Fish Don’t Exist
LINKS
Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller
TRANSCRIPT: RESILIENCE
[Ads]
(0:25)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman. What are we talking about this week?
Aminatou: Well this week we are talking about resilience and chaos. We're talking about loss, love, and the hidden order of life. [Laughs] That is literally the subtitle of Lulu Miller's new book Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life, a book that I have greatly enjoyed.
[Theme Song]
Aminatou: Hello!
Ann: [Laughs] I love we were so low-energy in the intro then you really just brought us back up to 100.
Aminatou: I am so . . . low energy doesn't even begin to explain the level of just like despondency and sadness of the last couple of days for me. [Sighs]
Ann: I was talking to my dear friend Jade Chang yesterday and she was asking me why or whether we were feeling like we should be addressing this moment (TM) more directly on the show. And I was like which moment? I have like 50 different moments every minute you know? [Laughs] How do I even begin to talk about where, what, how is going on?
(2:10)
Aminatou: I've been singing how do I live with the depression to the tune of How Do I Live Without You? [Laughs] My country music ballad of choice. And it's the only thing that genuinely made me a little happy today and I was like you know, depression but make it country. It'll be fine.
Ann: Wait, was How Do I Live, was that from the Armageddon soundtrack or am I confusing it with something else? [Laughs] Like too real.
Aminatou: I believe it was . . . I believe it was Armageddon. Hold on.
Ann: I'm Googling. I'm Googling this right now.
Aminatou: Where has LeAnn Rimes not been?
Ann: I thought you were going to say where has she been full-stop? [Laughs]
Aminatou: No, she's still around. She's still around. No, you're talking about Con Air.
Ann: Oh it's Con Air? Okay.
Aminatou: Uh-huh, you're talking about Con Air.
Ann: What's the Armageddon song that's also really bad?
Aminatou: The Armageddon song is the one that Liv Tyler's dad does, Steven Tyler from that band. Can you tell how little respect I have for Rolling Stones?
Ann: You mean Aerosmith?
Aminatou: Aerosmith! [Laughter] Can you tell how little respect I have for white rock music? One of those bands. Wow. Sorry to Rolling Stones for confusing you with Aerosmith. I know that it stings.
Ann: Okay, it's called I Don't Want to Miss a Thing. That is the Armageddon one, not to be confused with How Do I Live which is a very different conundrum. [Laughter]
(3:50)
Aminatou: Yes, I Don't Want to Miss a Thing I don't think is a good song.
Ann: Sorry I'm fully dying at this.
Aminatou: LeAnn Rimes on the other hand is a genius who should be respected.
Ann: Ugh. Is LeAnn Rimes I Hope You Dance?
Aminatou: No. Oh my god, Ann, what am I going to do with you? [Laughs]
Ann: I'm sorry, this is just like, you know, there is a certain strain of late-90s through . . . pretty much late-90s pop culture that I as an alt teen (TM) was studiously ignorant of because the alt and mainstream binary was very different in the '90s as we know and it was an identity thing to be like I don't pay attention to that. Like I only pay attention to whatever thing that I thought was cool and so my knowledge of . . .
Aminatou: Well joke's on you . . .
Ann: Exactly.
Aminatou: Because Lea Ann Womack's I Hope You Dance is an iconic song.
Ann: I do not disagree. I'm just trying to explain that I have this kind of blind spot by design from the late '90s that I do not defend but is fully existent because of alt damage. That's all I'm saying.
Aminatou: Oh my gosh, this is making me really happy. I'm still dying at the fact I thought Rolling Stones and Aerosmith was the same band until like two seconds ago.
Ann: Listen, we all -- I have mixed up the LeAnns. You have mixed up the aging white rockers. It's fine. It's totally fine. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Oh my god. To quote my girl Carrie Underwood Jesus take the wheel. [Laughs] I was the person that the minute I moved to America I was like there is an entire channel that is dedicated to country music? I will absolutely watch this.
Ann: Oh man. And also just like part of your Texas assimilation I have to imagine.
Aminatou: I mean Texas assimilation but also a thing that I didn't realize for a long time is my dad loved country music so I actually grew up in a house where we listened to a lot of this stuff and I, when I accidentally ended up in Texas, all of the pieces came together so it was really seamless for me.
Ann: You were like how did I live without this knowledge? [Laughter]
(5:52)
Aminatou: Anyway back to how do I live with depression? [Laughs] Hit single. A hit single from LeAnn Rimes featuring Aminatou Sow.
Ann: What are we talking about this week?
Aminatou: Well this week we are talking about resilience and chaos. We're talking about loss, love, and the hidden order of life. That is literally the subtitle of Lulu Miller's new book Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life, a book that I have greatly enjoyed.
Ann: I have to tell you that we're kind of organized for one of the first times ever in CYG history and so I've already listened to a cut of this interview and a few things I have to say about what everyone is in store for. One, you remain one of my favorite interviewers of all time. It's such a great conversation. Two, you might cry but in a good way. And three, there's something I find very comforting about talking about this moment in this kind of like -- these big, sweeping, historical, emotional terms as opposed to this really moment-to-moment ping pong of feelings that I am experiencing. So there's something about the scope of your conversation I also found really, really comforting.
Aminatou: Aww, Ann Friedman, don't make me cry!
Ann: I do feel like the one thing that I wanted to talk about with you is, you know, in your conversation you kind of go from talking about the chaos in this moment and the kind of incomprehensibility of this moment to resilience and how does everyone get through the kinds of things that are threatening and challenging to our identity and lives and livelihoods? I'm wondering about the relationship between those things. Like does resilience feel like this super fall-off goal because we're still in chaos or where are you at? [Laughs]
(7:50)
Ann: Wow, what a question. [Laughs] I think that everyone, you know, like the way that your life is ordered, the way your personal life is ordered I think generally gives you a sense of how you approach even a little bit of chaos and I also think that there is a kind of chaos that happens like global pandemic where no one is banking on it and every single person in the world is going through it at the same time. That's a once-in-a-lifetime event that you can't plan that also confronts you with the fact that chaos is everywhere all the time and it could happen at any moment. That also really confronts you with your own ability to be resilient or not.
I very much can only speak for myself in this. I think that I've not had a charmed life and so for that reason alone chaos doesn't -- it's not that it doesn't scare me but it's that I'm more . . . I'm more attuned to the fact that I'm constantly waiting for it, you know? And so I'm very much a like when is the other shoe going to drop kind of human being which is very bad for trying to live a normal life in the before times because all you're doing is waiting for something bad to happen. It's not great for anxiety. It's not great for a lot of things.
But when the bad thing does happen it also means that you're not starting from scratch if that makes sense. Like chaos is inevitable and being confronted with situations in which you have to be resilient is also inevitable. I firmly believe, and maybe it's not accurate -- I don't know the science of this -- but I believe that most people have a store of resilience that they're not fully tapped into because either they're not asked to or, you know, it feels like some kind of esoteric exercise. You know, people who are always like "Oh, other people are so strong." I'm like don't worry, when your turn in the hot soup comes you will also swim to the top. Most people want to survive.
(9:50)
Ann: Right, it's not an option for most people like oh, I chose to jump into the worst thing ever you know?
Aminatou: Right. And it is truly like -- I don't know, and maybe it's also like being a black woman, it's like one of the most patronizing things that people say to black women all the time. It's like oh, you're so strong instead of saying like I'm so sorry that the odds of life are really stacked against you. Most of the time there's just this faux like oh my god, I just admire how strong you are. And I'm like don't worry, if you were also stacked with the odds I'm stacked with you would probably also be a strong person. So just to say I think both things are things that are, you know, they're ever-present. We just choose to tune in and out of what it means for our lives.
Ann: Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about an episode of Mary Choi's Hey, Cool Life podcast that I listened to in like week two or three where she is talking about something that she's experiencing or I guess was maybe experiencing, who knows where everyone is by this point, of really fully emotionally inhabiting all of the worst-case scenarios for this moment which I think is a little bit about what you're talking about with living with anxiety.
And she discusses her process of trying very consciously to convince herself that it's not going to ease the blow when the inevitable bad thing does happen just because she's lived in the bad moment emotionally before. And it's interesting to hear you say that like oh, when it does happen you've felt kind of like more prepared or like I don't know, it has sort of maybe changed how you feel about it. I don't know, I guess I'm just thinking about different people's relationship to the like -- like the anxiety-provoking aspect of the chaos that is this moment. And when you said that I was just kind of struck by how different it was from what she said. And I don't really know where I come down on this question honestly and I think it feels really different minute-to-minute but I will say that these are the kinds of questions I am more preoccupied with at the moment than maybe some more immediate headline things that I should be more tuned into. I think these are the kinds of questions I'm interested in asking my friends when I catch up with them about how are you? How does this chaos feel to you?
(12:15)
Aminatou: Yeah. I also think that, you know, so much of that question for me is wrapped into like what kind of relationship one has with one's trauma and I think that it's really hard to untangle how you feel about this moment from how you feel about the trauma of your life in general.
Ann: Yeah. I mean totally understandable. What else do we need to know about Lulu? Before . . .
Aminatou: Oh my god. Lulu is an iconic radio reporter who is someone whose work you and I both enjoy.
Ann: Immensely.
Aminatou: You know how we love a multi-hyphenate in this family so it was a real treat to kind of see all of the reporting, like her reporting skills and her writing skills and her analytical skills all come to bear in a book form as opposed to radio.
Ann: And tell me why did you want to talk to her like right now? That's the other part of this.
Aminatou: She was the last book that I read in the before time. [Laughter] And so I as you know was on this wild cross-country saga like flying to L.A. for mere hours then back to New York.
Ann: P.S., also the only reason we have an author photo so thank you.
Aminatou: I know, Ann! Ugh. Like that trip. I have many regrets about taking that trip but our author photo and reading this book were not regrets that I have. It was such an adventure. And when I was like leaving the next day I just on a whim picked up the book because it was on my to read pile and I was like what seems small and I can tackle it on this six hour flight? And I couldn't believe when we landed in L.A. because I had been engrossed in the book from the moment I passed security. It just felt so right now, you know?
(14:10)
So it's the story of this taxonomist named David Star Jordan who if you know what taxonomy is that's literally the opposite of anything I ever want to do in my entire life. I was like categorizing things? No thank you, that's my nightmare. And so he's like basically credited with discovering nearly a fifth of every fish that's known to humans. His specimen collection is one of the best collections in the whole world and it's demolished by lightning and fire and then the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. So just like his entire life's work, like thousands of discoveries in these like tiny, fragile glass jars just like plummet to the floor and his life's work is shattered.
And instead of doing what I would do which is just like quit life forever he rebuilds his entire collection and rebuilds it in such a way actually that means it is more resilient and, you know, humankind actually learns something about the innovation that he does with the wreckage.
But the way that Lulu tells the story is so engrossing because it's really a cautionary tale about denial and hubris and he's such a complicated human being. He's not a hero. You know, and obviously she makes these really obvious parallels with all of the ways that her own life is unravelling and I just -- I couldn't stop thinking about it on the plane and this was, you know, as coronavirus was looming. And it's been, what, six, seven, eight weeks since we've all been inside now and I couldn't stop thinking about this story because the point that she makes in the beginning is chaos is inevitable. It's like if you know anything about physics, you know anything about human life, you know anything about being alive, chaos is a part -- it's a part of our lives and I think so many of us go through so much to really bury that or dull that or deny the chaos is coming and then we have to live with the wreckage. And I've just been thinking so much about this time as chaos, like the COVID chaos of it all.
(16:30)
And the thing that's amazing is because Lulu writes about the David Star Jordan story in parallel to her story the obvious thing to do as a reader is also see your own parallels in your own life. You're like okay, great, like I feel deeply inspired by this on so many lanes.
[Interview Starts]
Aminatou: The book is really a deep-dive into the story of a man who believed that he could make sense of the chaotic world that we live in.
Lulu: Yeah.
Aminatou: And you investigate how he's able to overcome the loss of his life's work. I don't want to give too much away but also the loss of his children and his wife and his colleague. Everyone dies too young around him.
Lulu: Yeah.
Aminatou: And he's a very resilient man.
Lulu: Yeah, he has some oversized heaping spoon fill of confidence and optimism that just intrigued me and made me wonder like how do you not take the hint that you're not going to succeed? Like that was what drew me in about him was just like how can everything keep falling apart and you seem to just charmingly click your heels and keep going? What becomes of you when you act that way and are you on a path to utter humiliation? Which is kind of what I first thought about him. He seemed like an Icarus. He seemed too prideful. He seemed dangerous.
Aminatou: Well can you tell us without giving too much away about David Star Jordan, the starred 19th century taxonomist that is now one of my heroes?
Lulu: Yes. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Can you tell a little bit about his story?
(18:18)
Lulu: Yeah, so he -- basically he kind of, you know, he was born in upstate New York and was this very curious kid, loved nature. He got so made fun of as a kid. He was beat up for caring about nature. His teachers even mocked him. His first job as a teacher his students like grabbed the pointer out of his hands and set it on fire and yet still he just loved his little passion of collecting flowers and naming them and eventually he got into fish and wanted to name them and figure out how they were related to each other.
And eventually he finds someone who tells him that this matters, a teacher in his life who basically says that to study nature is to try to understand the divine plan of God and that gives him a sense of purpose. And then he just very rapidly -- honestly with that sense of purpose you just see his life take this huge turn then he's promoted, he gets a great job. He collects more and more fish. He and his colleagues basically eventually discover a full fifth of fish known to men in his day so that's a huge portion of the tree of life that he discovers and he just gains more and more powerful and he's really successful. But along the way chaos keeps striking so his first collection of fish is literally hit by lightning and burns to the ground and he loses things that he hadn't named that weren't discovered so there may have been fish that we still don't know today and it takes him 30 years to build it back up. And then it comes down in an earthquake, the 1906 earthquake of San Francisco, and he just keeps going and he invents this new way of protecting -- he believes protecting his fish against chaos.
(19:55)
Yeah, so that's what drew me in about him and I wondered like what becomes of you and what became of his fish and then once I started to look into him it just became this really wild and at times profoundly dark story. So yeah, that's him. That's DSJ, David Star Jordan, this random old white man I have spent a decade of my life contemplating. It just happened. I don't know. It just happened because his story is so weird.
Aminatou: We were talking about earlier the book just opens with this idea that chaos can strike at any time in your life. And, you know, the 1906 earthquake always -- it seemed like this very quaint kind of idea to me. I was like oh, chaos is for other people but COVID-19 is the chaos we are living through.
Lulu: Yeah, totally.
Aminatou: And so the parallels just seem so obvious to me. But what do you think about that?
Lulu: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think just this idea that chaos is always waiting to upend everything and whether it's as massive as COVID or an earthquake, just this massive scale of everything shutting down and life being completely upended and people losing livelihoods and lives, or whether it's small and it's just like your sweet dog suddenly gets a blood cancer and dies in three days, whatever it is chaos is going to destroy everything you hold dear and ruin everything you're working on eventually.
So I think for me that's just a question of kind of how to move forward in the face of that and he seemed to have something. Like he seemed to have some ability to not be stopped by it and I think what I -- like part of why I started investigating him, and again I thought he would be like an essay. I thought this was going to be a week of my life.
Aminatou: [Laughs] Not ten years?
Lulu: Not ten years. But he -- yeah, like I had screwed up a lot in life, like the chaos I had brought into my own life was not really coming from above but was coming from within. I wrecked a relationship by cheating and I felt really ashamed and I was trying to patch it back up and then I had left this dreamy job in radio to try to write fiction and was like so bad at it and nothing was working and I was kind of in a new place with no friends and was just sitting in my own wreckage and wondering, literally, just am I foolish to keep working at these projects of fiction? This relationship showing no sign of mending. Am I walking myself off the plank of insanity? Am I walking towards humiliation to have faith in a thing?
(22:45)
So like I wondered, you know, what became of him and how do you deal with that doubt and that worry that you've crossed a line where persistence turns to madness? But I think about him in this moment because basically without giving too much away what he was really good at was not contemplating loss. So he didn't like look back and think about everything that got screwed up by the earthquake; he just immediately jumped forward and was creative and was like okay, what can I do in this moment? And he just didn't waste time mourning. Which I don't know, I think there's something in that for this moment which is just to say, you know, we've all been stunned and feeling robbed in some way of something and that's valid but maybe the way to move forward right now is to just be like okay, we're all cut off and some of our neighbors and friends are on the frontlines. How do we support them? How do we connect? Let's use this as a creative constraint. I don't know what the answer is but to think of that I think about him.
Aminatou: Oh man, that is spurring me to think about so many things. Like on one hand this idea of looking at how someone else's life is wrecked and it helps you map out your own way out of your mess is something I identify with so much.
Lulu: Yeah.
(24:05)
Aminatou: The entire way that I'm coping with coronavirus is by reading about the Spanish Flu and the thing that I am loving really honestly is the archival like fashion photography of this moment, like the masks that people were wearing in the Spanish Flu are iconic. They are so beautiful.
Lulu: Wait, can you tell me about one? Like what . . .
Aminatou: Oh my gosh, I will send you -- I will text you photos as soon as we get off.
Lulu: Yes!
Aminatou: But these ladies in beautiful like 1918 gowns and wearing these ridiculous looking fashion masks have been so good to me.
Lulu: Yeah.
Aminatou: And there's just something about like just the historical remove of it where it's like okay, great, we are certainly not the first people going through a global massive pandemic. But guess what? People got through it and alongside all of the newspaper coverage of Spanish Flu there is also gossip and there is also fashion and there's also like the economy is collapsing. There was something so soothing about that for me.
Lulu: Gosh.
Aminatou: Where it was like oh, great, the human spirit can remain petty through anything. [Laughs]
Lulu: I know! I was just about to say is this the pettiest message to take? But okay, what's a haiku, right? The constraint of five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables. Artists have always been looking for constraints and we are in a massive constraint. And you could take that as a bummer or you could take that as a moment to just think right, how do I design the most beautiful mask? How do I rig up a system to -- how do I learn Morse code to chat with my neighbor? I don't know, whatever it is. But this is a massive constraint for all forms of artists and for me the question is yeah, how to connect and how to be a mildly decent citizen a couple times a week. [Laughs] What can you do?
Aminatou: I mean I think you're so right about the constraint because I think that a thing -- like not to speak for everyone in the world but I think a thing that is so obvious to me about what is stressing me out about this moment is it just lays bare how small my world is and how many limitations I have.
Lulu: Yeah, yeah.
Aminatou: It's just there are things I obsess about all the time in my interior life. Now it's like my world is literally confined to the house I live in.
Lulu: I know.
Aminatou: It is that small. And I think that there is something that is -- for me at least that unhinges me a lot when I think about how little I can do or how meaningless everything is and it just takes me . . . it takes me to chapter three of your book when you are seven years old bird-watching with your dad and you ask him about the meaning of life, a question I would never ask my dad because I can already see the annoyance across his face. [Laughter]
(26:50)
Lulu: Really? What do you think he would say? What would his reaction be?
Aminatou: Oh my dad would've literally said stop asking so many questions which is what my parents always said when I asked questions that they didn't have answers to. And then I would hear them shade me privately and be like "Ugh, Amina asks so many questions!" [Laughs]
Lulu: Oh my god, they're like that curiosity, ugh.
Aminatou: Yeah. My parents were parents who were sick of my curiosity because they don't like it when they can't answer questions.
Lulu: Yeah. Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah, certainly had . . . I mean he delighted in slapping down any desire for meaning: religion, magic, spirituality. But he did reward curiosity for sure so I was lucky for that. But he very quickly was like ha, ha, ha, there's no meaning and anyone who tells you there is is lying.
Aminatou: I mean which is devastating if you're someone who craves magic and craves meaning.
(27:45)
Lulu: Yeah. And it was so finite. There was no like maybe ambiguity. It was the most dogmatic, nihilist, atheist answer. And that was just -- I mean that was like one example but that was just every turn. He takes joy in meaninglessness and in squashing any form of religion or magic or spirituality. I don't know, that's his own religion. But yeah, it was a weirdly pretty profoundly shocking moment which I guess means I thought that there should be meaning.
Aminatou: I mean I read that in so many ways too. I think that there is something about being a kid where you look up to adults who are the ones who are supposed to have so many answers and they say something that, you know . . . they either say nothing or they say something that really challenges your idea of what an adult is supposed to bring to your life.
Lulu: Yeah.
Aminatou: I think that is really terrifying as a kid and I think the parallel in this moment is still that, you know, I'm like I'm 35 and I still feel like a child whenever I watch the news because I want someone to just tell me what to do.
Lulu: Right!
Aminatou: And you realize that that person does not exist.
Lulu: Yeah. I know, and it's been so intense with this. It's like does a mask help? Does a mask not help? Is it six feet? Is it ten feet? Is it going to pass? Is there going to be a second wave? We're so nakedly lost and then rightfully I think disdainful of overconfidence because we're just in it. We're in a ton of uncertainty.
Aminatou: It's so hard and there's nothing to do about it but it has made me think a lot about how people are resilient. Because I truly -- and I've been trying to read so much about it, of can we make people more resilient? Are some people just born with it?
Lulu: Yeah, right.
Aminatou: What is the wiring of someone who just looks into darkness and chaos and says I'm going to put one foot in front of the other because you have no choice?
Lulu: Yeah.
Aminatou: And I think we can all point to moments in our lives where we've done that but I think that collectively it's really hard to quantify.
Lulu: I mean I think one, having studied this guy who is so good at it, bordering on sociopathic, but I do think one of the lessons -- and it's like take this or leave this -- but I do think one thing he really does is he draws no lesson. He makes no pattern out of repeated failures. Like he just doesn't say "Oh because it keeps not working it's not going to work." Or "Because I keep failing I'm bad." He just does not see that pattern or draw that lesson.
(30:15)
And I think for like probably especially for women like to not take the message that multiple failures in a row mean you're bad [Laughs] is a useful -- like we could all use a little of unconnecting those dots. And I think . . . I think that's a lesson from him. You know, accepting. Like everything is uncertain and we are ruled by chaos and so therefore as a person who tries to succeed in the world we're going to be just dotted with rejections, failures, criticism. But like why not keep going because you may occasionally trip and succeed?
[Ads]
(34:30)
Aminatou: You are a very resilient person because it's just, you know, it's like reading the book there is so much joy and sorrow mixed in at the same time. And it's interesting because I've listened to you on the radio for years, like truly years, and reading about you like when you talk about your suicide attempt and all of the despair that surrounds that it was so interesting to me as someone who I think only knows your radio persona to just be like oh wow. Like this person who sounds so cheerful and cheery and, you know, is so curious and always leads with so much joy is someone also who has had to deal with this incredible amount of darkness. The perception that I have of you on the radio is completely correct but it is not the full picture of who you are.
Lulu: Yeah.
Aminatou: And I think that, you know, reading the book and thinking about the radio personality construct that I have of you in my head, it was something that was really painful to read obviously for many reasons but it was also very . . . there was something really encouraging about it for me so thank you for writing it.
Lulu: Aww, I'm glad. Well here in the last couple days two people from my childhood, like a mom of a really dear friend and a really good friend both wrote and were like "Oh, I got the book but I'm actually really nervous to read it."
(35:55)
I think I've been so guarded about like I think actually so much of my identity is built out of the moment after I survived the suicide attempt where I was so embarrassed and I never wanted anyone to know that. I was like I don't want to be a burden. I don't want them to take whatever meanings or judgments they're going to take from this. And so I think a lot of my personality has been like I bought overalls and started doing improv and got real hokey. [Laughs] Or I was probably always hokey. But I think a lot of it has been built around being like don't worry, I'm not -- I don't . . . I don't know. There's just this fear that that would be a burden. Or unlovable, like you don't want to be with someone who's ever going to need you in that way. There's just a big fear around that.
And to the extent that I was fact-checking some stuff with my oldest sister and I was like yeah, you know, because I share a little bit about her own struggle with mental health stuff. And then I'm like I'm putting -- I decided to put in the fact about my suicide attempt and she was like "You tried to commit suicide?" She had no idea.
Aminatou: Aww.
Lulu: And that was how much we protected it from her. Even just within -- and I had assumed. I was 16. She was 23. I had assumed my parents told her but they hadn't told her. And I was like even within a family. I was like oh . . . then she got really worried and for a couple weeks was like "Oh my god, are you still struggling with that?" I was like no. I mean, you know, the book honors it, like you still have dark thoughts. I don't think that's a vanquished thought ever. I'm just teaching myself to be less afraid of it. But that just took it home for me that I just assumed for the last 20 years we were walking around with that shared knowledge and she's my sister and she didn't know that, you know?
(37:45)
So I think I . . . it was not in the first draft and it kind of came out in some free writing and my editor being like "Why do you care about these big, abstract questions about meaning?" I was like oh, that was why. It was like how do you -- if nothing means anything how do you convince yourself to stay on a day you don't want to stay? That's what I was looking for in him honestly if I'm naked about it.
So I finally decided to put it in and it was hard to do it but then I was also like I've been for 15 years asking people to tell me their deep, dark secrets on the air. And it helps people. Like it helps me as the listener. I'm hungry for it. I'm mining it out of people because I want to see how they climb out of hurt. And it helps listeners. People write in and I was like all right, it's my turn to do it. Like why not? Fuck it. Here it is. Okay. I was a cheater. Like these are my darkest shames. I just felt like it was time to just put them out there. And it's been scary but it's been so far good. Yeah, it feels honest, so just taking off this jacket that I've been wearing for a long time.
Aminatou: This makes me feel so emotional hearing you say all of this. Do you feel freer every day? Like now that all the -- you know, it's like the shame is just . . . the minute you put light on it it doesn't belong to darkness anymore.
Lulu: Yeah. I think the suicide one I actually feel okay about. The cheating one I still feel a lot of shame about. But like I said I mean it's had these interesting moments. My mother-in-law, I finally got her a copy about two weeks ago and she was reading it before everyone. We all went on a walk together a couple days ago. [Laughs] And she was like "I read the book." She was like "I'm so proud of you." And she kind of bumped, like corona bumped my shoulder -- we were both in puffy jackets -- and it was like this profound moment where I'm like my mother-in-law knows that I cheated on the person before -- like on a serious relationship. That I have that in me, like that I could disrespect her daughter in that way. He daughter married a cheater. There's just this huge shame and worry of her ever knowing that but now she knows it and it allowed for just this . . . like it's just creating these weird conversations. Then she's sharing stories about friends or just people who seem to have it all together but don't and that sharing is way more important than illusions of perfection and it just was like this giant worry dissolved in a corona shoulder bump.
Aminatou: Aww.
(40:25)
Lulu: It just was so powerful, you know? And it's been kind of beautiful to just think you can show your ugliest parts and not have that mean a shutdown or rejection. Yeah.
Aminatou: I mean I think that especially in a moment like this [Laughs], you know, in a pandemic, I'm like if you cannot be yourself when the rest of the world is going to just like shit . . .
Lulu: Yes!
Aminatou: Like I just have no faith that the human condition can be overcome. So there is something -- I don't know, there's something so profound about that to me where I was like there's the chaos of your life and there's the chaos of the world.
Lulu: Yeah.
Aminatou: And I think that, you know, the chaos that's outside of yourself will always be bigger but it never feels that way when you're a self-centered person.
Lulu: Right.
Aminatou: You always think oh, what is going on with me is it's bigger than everything. And it's like no, welcome to COVID-19. If you can't say the honest truth about who you are who knows when you're going to get a chance to say that next?
Lulu: Yeah. And I do think -- okay, this is like a weird silver liningish thing. Okay, so right now I'm looking at my neighbors' apartments but I can't see them or talk to them and it's like this weird isolation where we're very close to the soup in which we swim but we're not in it. We're isolated. And that does allow for this little untethering. Like I've been going a little batty and in that there is this untethering from norms like we're all these little microcosms and maybe we just experiment with getting a break. Like actually maybe there's something like okay, who do we become with this distance? With this safe distance where we can see where we came from and the world we're a part of but actually we're like we have some time to try new things. Just go a little batty. I don't know. I don't know. I've been thinking about that.
(42:25)
Aminatou: I'm definitely going a little batty.
Lulu: Yeah, have you done anything particularly batty?
Aminatou: Oh what have I . . .
Lulu: Well besides masks, Googling -- besides Spanish influenza.
Aminatou: Besides Googling the mask, you know, it's like I think that the thing that's going on with me in this moment is I'm either really doubling down on relationships with people that I feel a need to be around and also feeling very free to let a lot of relationships just go and being really honest about it. And so, yeah, I was like the distance, there is now physical distance and I'm realizing that there is a kind of relationship I have that requires in-person connection a lot otherwise it just does not -- it doesn't happen.
Like my relationship with Ann is not a relationship that is that way because we are used to navigating the distance already. It's like we have a lot of problems. A pandemic is not one of them so we can handle that.
Lulu: Yeah.
Aminatou: And that's true for a lot of my other long-distance friends but there are like friendships or romantic relationships that I had where it was like oh no, I need to see this person every day otherwise we are not connecting. And really starting to unpack that and to understand what that's about.
Lulu: Yeah. The ones like that are a little bit letting go right now, does that feel good or does that feel sad?
(44:00)
Aminatou: It feels good and I feel really guilty about it.
Lulu: Yeah. No, don't feel -- oh my god, we're all going to die too soon to feel guilty.
Aminatou: [Laughs] Some of us are going to die right on time honestly.
Lulu: But see, that's so interesting. So then what do you think is . . . what is it that . . . so are you saying it's just not having to have the face time with them that lets you realize like oh, actually I don't need to maintain this and it feels good? Or is it something else about the distance that's letting you just drop it?
Aminatou: I think that that's what I'm trying to figure out of what is it -- what is it about my wiring that makes me feel uneasy when I need to be in person with someone in order to connect with them? I think I'm really trying to answer that question. I think in a moment like this where every minute is precious you just realize that you can't connect with a hundred people. Like it's just not going to happen.
Lulu: Right.
Aminatou: And I really suffer from a . . . I'm an emotional cheater I think in the sense my emotions are overextended everywhere. And I was like oh, this is not a sustainable way to do life. And it's what Is pend every . . . you know, my therapist is sick of talking about this. But I was very much like how -- I was like there are 24 Beyoncé hours in a day. I love a thousand people. How do I give them all the love that they deserve?
Lulu: Right, who gets it?
Aminatou: And it is just, you know, this moment is really . . . it's really forcing me to make tough choices and also to be really honest with myself about what is it that I put in my relationship and what is it that I want out of them? And so . . .
Lulu: And which ones do you actually authentically want? I mean that has been such a . . . see, because I was wondering, you were saying why do I connect better in person? But it almost sounds to me, I may be totally wrong, but it almost sounds like when you're in person you do connect because you're you and you can give that. But once you're free of having to just go on that autopilot they're not someone who you actually want to give your time and your energy to.
Aminatou: I mean I don't know. You know, I'm figuring it out.
Lulu: Yeah.
(46:10)
Aminatou: But it's so weird. It's truly the great privilege of there's a roof over my head and the groceries are getting delivered. I don't have any real . . . like I am not suffering in this pandemic. I think that that's worth -- that bears repeating is the amount of privilege that so many of us have that we can work from home and really we're fine. It is a huge inconvenience but we are fine.
Lulu: Right.
Aminatou: It's real. But the thing that I did not expect is to have these really deep probing questions that are what is my world? Who is in my world? What does it mean to be friends with someone? That's the kind of stuff that keeps me awake at night. I had an ex-boyfriend send me a text on day two of pandemic and was like "Ha, ha, how are you doing?" [Laughs] And I didn't respond to it because I was really annoyed at first. I was like please, the world is falling apart. It does not mean you have access to still talk to me.
Lulu: Yeah.
Aminatou: And I responded to him finally yesterday and he was like "You're only 28 days late on this text. That is so you and what our relationship was." [Laughs] But it was, I don't know, in that moment he was so gracious and we had a really funny exchange.
Lulu: Yeah.
Aminatou: And, you know, and then he was like we should FaceTime and I got to meet his new girlfriend and it was so odd and funny and I was like I can't. I was like the human spirit is really beautiful.
Lulu: Wow, like it was good?
Aminatou: It was so good. It was so good. I really like her. I was like great, she's awesome. And I was like -- but there was just something about the me of 30 days ago would've never done that.
(47:55)
Lulu: Yeah, and I think it's like the hunger. It's the hunger for the authentic connection. It's like yeah, who am I going to do this Zoom with?
Aminatou: I know but also I was like -- I was like I was mad at this person for so long for something that was really petty actually. You know, and I was like if the world is ending will I have one last laugh with them? Absolutely.
Lulu: Yeah.
Aminatou: And it ended up being the funnest Zoom I've been on in like 30 days of Zooms.
Lulu: Oh my god, right.
Aminatou: I'm just saying do something reckless every once in a while.
Lulu: Oh heck yeah. I mean yeah I think so. But that's interesting. I mean so it's like maybe our job is to like notice these things and these lessons and don't just chock it up to isolation and be like shit well if we have the privilege of being safe in this time then like is a thing we do . . . I don't know, this is maybe too self-serving, but is a thing we do notice that and actually make our life a little better and enjoy our life a little more because we are still gifted with life and notice the change or the observations that came in isolation and don't just go back to the autopilot of giving your energy to the people who drain you? Maybe there's some little gut check to take from this time and be like who did I as slightly altered baddy self, what did I notice or what did I do and is there something I take back into the life of connection that's different? I don't know. I'm washing my hair a lot less. That's for sure. That's for sure. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I don't think I'm ever going to be able to wear pants ever again.
Lulu: I know! What's a pant?
Aminatou: Never wearing. I started calling them hard pants and I'm never wearing hard pants again. Those days are over.
Lulu: Oh my god, hard pants, yeah. Hard pants are over. Bras, oh my god. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I know. Bras are canceled. It's just, you know, but at the same time the world really is always falling apart so you might as well be exactly who you want to be.
Lulu: Yeah, yeah.
Aminatou: We're going to be okay. We're going to be okay. [Laughs]
Lulu: We are. Yeah, I think so. I think so.
Aminatou: I love that. But you know what? I'm going to take that message to heart. Keep showing up because we need it more than ever now.
Lulu: Yes, totally, and show up for your friends. I think that's the -- yeah, that's the little miracle love story that we all just . . . the friends that are there for you, for no reason, like you're not sharing an income or a household or a child or blood. You're just there for each other. I have had that thought that in the chaos that my dad cursed me with at a young age that I'm a true believer in the sense of a planet that's meaningless filled with creatures that are inherently evolutionarily wired to be selfish that friendship is the outlier. Like why are we good to each other?
Aminatou: Aww.
Lulu: It is!
Aminatou: It makes no sense. It truly makes no sense. And in my darkest moments I start to examine religion where I was like religion is the only place where they answer this question of why are you loved when you don't deserve it?
Lulu: Yeah.
Aminatou: I was like I can't go there because that is truly the dark side. [Laughs] But also I'm like, yeah, I'm like the love of my friends, I don't deserve it and I am overwhelmed by it every single day.
Lulu: Yeah.
Aminatou: You are the best Lulu Miller. I hope you have a great day and I will see you on the Internet.
Lulu: Oh it was so, so great to talk to you Amina. Thank you!
[Interview Ends]
Ann: Ugh, thank you for that conversation,
Aminatou: Hey, you're welcome.
Ann: [Laughs] I love the simplicity of you just being able to say you're welcome. I am very grateful. I also want to give listeners a heads-up that we're going to do, for the rest of May, episodes that kind of feel like this that are about bigger feelings and themes of this moment and talking to people who are helping us approach them in new ways. I don't know, is that a fair way to describe it?
Aminatou: That is more than a fair way to describe it.
Ann: So I guess I will socially distantly hear you back here next week? [Laughs] I was going to say see you. Hmm.
Aminatou: [Laughs] I miss you a lot Ann Friedman.
Ann: I miss you too! I really, ugh, the before is so, so long ago. Truly.
Aminatou: The before times. I'll see you on the Internet.
Ann: See you on the Internet.
Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favs. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back, leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf and you can buy our book Big Friendship anywhere you buy books. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We have editorial support from Laura Bertocci. Our producer is Jordan Bailey. This podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.