You're Not In Trouble

PLUS: The winner of our print contest.

A quick note: If this one feels a little unfinished to you, that’s because I had to split it into two parts. For a more complete essay, stay tuned next week!

A Note for You, If You’re Having A Bad Day

My Dear Friend,

My husband Luke was in a therapy group once where the therapist challenged participants to go out and do something where they were sure they would get rejected. Here is what Luke did, and just thinking back to this makes my stomach quadruple over itself in nausea and fear.

We were at a Wild Reeds concert at a hip little venue; it wasn’t too crowded. He liked a lot of the merch (what a nice aesthetic the Wild Reeds have!), and so he went to the merch table and he asked if he could buy a record and get a t-shirt for free. “Like a bundle deal,” he said.

I’m sure they said some version of, “hahahaha.” I don’t know, when I found out he was going to do this, I got as far away from the merch table as possible, as though it was a bomb. Is this something you can understand?

I’m so terrified of getting in trouble that I don’t even know what “in trouble” means to me anymore. You will not relate to all of these examples, but here they are.

Getting-In-Troubles I am legitimately scared about:

• If I go to pick up a prescription, I will somehow have missed an important piece of information about the prescription, and the angry pharmacist will need to make 10,000 phone calls on my behalf, and the line will get super-long all because of me. As I leave (without my medication, because I’m so clearly incompetent), a person in line will spit at me.

• If I try to return something in-store, it will become known that (1) the product I’m trying to return has been discontinued; and (2) they have reason to believe I stole the product anyway. (I didn’t steal the product, but they think I did. They have video footage of someone looking just like me stealing this product on the exact date I said I bought it.) I get arrested.

• If I ask where an item is located in a store, the person who works at the store will laugh at me and tell me that they don’t have the item, they’ve never had the item, and they WILL never have the item. They’ll roll their eyes at me and go to the break room to tell everyone else who works at the store about this idiot who thought they sold items there — what a moron.

• Do you happen to know that scene in The Office¹ where Michael is trying to pull up a hotel reservation in Canada for the upcoming Olympics, and the person on the phone can’t find the reservation, and she kind of mocks him, and then she finds the reservation, and then she charges him $300 to cancel it? That exact situation, with every customer service hotline on earth.

• When the person at Trader Joe’s asks me if my daughter wants a lollipop, and I say yes, the person will say, “Wrong answer. Do you know what time it is? It’s 9 a.m. on a Sunday. What kind of a parent are you?” Or even worse, they’ll put their hands up and say, sort of under their breath, “I don’t judge. Your parenting choices are yours.”

I could truly go on and on with this list. In fact, the very first piece I ever published in The New Yorker was about this exact fear, in all its iterations.

Once I tried to explain my fear of getting trouble with authority figures — and the low bar I have for what an “authority figure” is (basically anyone who is not me) — and my friend Jill told me I needed exposure therapy, and should practice asking strangers for things more often. I was sort of like, Why practice doing that when I can just stay in my house and put my head under a bunch of blankets?

Here’s why. Authority is a social construction. In all the scenarios where you’re afraid you’ll get in trouble, what’s really happening is that you’re interacting with another human being — and they are a person whose story you don’t know. You don’t know what they had for breakfast, how much they slept, or, crucially, what they are afraid of. When someone yells at you, or makes fun of you, or treats you like you’re trash, it’s usually because they feel scared. And if they’re not scared, they’ll say something like, “Oh, I’m sorry, we don’t carry Item at Store. You should try Other Store instead! Good luck!”

Everyone scary wakes up in the morning unsure about what will happen in their day. They take off their night clothes and put on their day clothes. They feel hungry; they eat. (Though, a lot of scary people don’t eat enough, tbh.) Some people look in the mirror and say something like, “You can do this. Be strong.” Or whatever. People try to convince themselves they’re more than an animal, surviving. But no one is.

There are times when you will make choices that you know are rule-bending, and then you get caught. There are other times when you make those same choices and get away with them. Either way, the fact that we all do this — lie, cut corners, distort — is indicative that too much is being asked of us. The whole world seems to be designed for people who are willing to convince themselves that they’re somehow more than alive. That’s a subject for another letter, which I’ll send you next week. I’m thinking about calling it something like, “Lying, cheating, and doing the bad thing.”

For now: if you feel like you’re in trouble, I want to remind you that the word trouble has the same root as turbulence, and turbulence is temporary. I’ll be your pilot and tell you to stay in your seat; but this will pass.

Good luck out there, bravely facing all that breaks your heart.

Love,

Sophie

Housekeeping

• Another in-person co-write approaches at the

  Office of Modern Composition
  in Chicago! April 2, downtown (116 S Michigan Ave., Floor 20). FREE! More information here. If you think you want to come, respond to this email and let me know! I’ll make sure to personally greet you.

• You chose “Biking Into The Sunset” as your print selection this time around. This will be automatically mailed to everyone subscribed to the “Get Mail In The Mail” subscription tier, but you can buy one for $15 here. These are good presents! I put special little surprises in the envelopes, and will hand-write your well-wishing message for whichever friend you send it to.

  

  Loose Thoughts:

• My loose thoughts are always dictated by where I’m sitting when I write them. Right now I’m in my windowless office at SAIC. I’m thinking about how to get crumbs out from under the keyboard keys. I think probably I should have taken preventative measures.

• Last time I was at my mom’s house, I snuck some Littlest Pet Shops into my pocket and brought them home with me. They are technically mine, but she likes giving them to her grandchildren — mostly not including my daughter, who doesn’t live near her. These are the only toys I care about and I find myself aching for them. What is wrong with me? Did you have a toy like this?

• On that note, I find myself not liking it when I read the words “I found myself” or “She found herself” or “I find myself” or. I’m leaving the words in these two bullet points for effect.

• I also dislike when some describes something using the phrase “all [word] and [word] and [word].” For example: The summer stretched on, all fireflies and beach curls and late nights. Or: She was the picture of innocence, all blonde curls and sparkling eyes and white sneakers. Have I complained about this before? If so, I’m curious why the novelists whose books I read don’t read my newsletter.

• Omg you guys, LAURIE BERKNER, easily my favorite musician, messaged me back on Instagram recently. This was something I had fantasized about having happen. Do you have people like this, who you fantasize about reaching out to over social media or something and you daydream about how you might have a whole conversation?

• The spring is WAY too cold. I’m impatient.

1. I truly apologize that this is the TV show I reference most often. It’s really bad. I wish I was a different person in this way, but I’m simply not.