Solutions and Other Problems Read online

  A week or two after the egg water thing, for instance, I came home from school and noticed that the pantry doors were wired shut with the phone cord. Inside, my sister was screaming for help.

  I approached the pantry, and Becky came into view.

  When I saw her, I thought, Oh good—Becky must be helping my sister…

  Upon closer inspection, however, Becky’s behavior did not resemble helping.

  She was holding a bottle of cucumber melon body spray, which is a nice enough thing to be holding, but the nozzle was aimed rather aggressively under the pantry door.

  Inside the pantry, my sister was screaming, “I GIVE UP, I GIVE UP, I GIVE UP.”

  Becky said no, cold as ice, and kept spraying.

  No? As in: No, you are not permitted to give up?

  What’s the point, then? What could you possibly be trying to accomplish by doing this to my sister? Are you training her for something?

  Later, I asked my sister how Becky had lured her into the pantry.

  And I said, “What kind of sign? ‘Go in the pantry please’? ‘Go in the pantry or else’?”

  No. All the sign said was “Guess What?”

  Perhaps it was a power struggle. To establish dominance or something.

  If that’s what was going on, things were fucking neck and neck.

  There was a brief period, though, where I think my sister may have pulled ahead a little bit.

  I woke up for school, and the first thing I saw was Becky. Her arms and legs had been firmly secured to the bed frame with yarn.

  She wasn’t awake yet, but she would be soon: my sister was hovering above her like a gargoyle, holding a wet piece of string and a jingle bell. She put the bell two inches from Becky’s face and jingled it. Jingle jingle, Becky…

  Becky’s eyes opened.

  She didn’t recognize what was happening right away. I imagine there was a lot to process.

  Right there, Becky’s fear instincts kicked in and she tried to wriggle away. That’s when she noticed she was tied to the bed.

  The string came into view. I still had no clue what the string was for, but Becky seemed to know. The instant she saw it, her eyes filled with terror.

  My sister didn’t strike yet, though. Whatever she was planning on doing to Becky this time, she knew it would land harder if she built up to it.

  I never found out what was on the string, but my sister spent the whole morning moving it toward Becky’s face at approximately .02 miles per hour.

  By the time the string made contact, Becky seemed genuinely relieved to be done with the suspense.

  It was a totally bizarre relationship, but I will admit that part of me wanted to get in on it. Just to, like… be a part of it.

  They had something really special.

  I didn’t know what it was, but I could tell.

  To this day, it’s a source of inspiration.

  If a friendship can survive all that, that’s a crazy friendship.

  Imagine having a friendship like that.

  Like, Hey there, pal… looks like you’re having a weird day, so I understand if you need to trap me in a sleeping bag and rub the inside of a banana peel on me until I admit that my name is Dance Pony. Of course I understand. I mean… that happens. Honestly, I’m probably gonna do that to you too sometimes. No big deal. You’re my best friend.

  You might be thinking, Why, though? Why is the person who does that somebody’s best friend?

  Because that’s intimacy, Buckaroos.

  Somebody who understands exactly how weird you are, and you understand exactly how weird they are, and you’re in a sort of mutually beneficial hostage situation.

  23. A NONSPECIFIC STORY ABOUT AN ANIMAL

  24. FRIENDSHIP SPELL

  On July 23rd, 1996, I wrote an original friendship spell.

  Fast-forward 19 years.

  July 2015.

  I’m 30.

  I live alone in a 400-square-foot apartment, and the doors are starting to swell shut from the heat.

  A few days later, I’m officially trapped.

  I don’t know the exact day it started, but I found out when I tried to go buy more peanuts from the liquor mart downstairs.

  I’ve got a day or two of cereal left, but if I can’t get the door open by Monday, I’ll be forced to kick the wall until whoever lives on the other side gets mad and comes over here to ask me what the fuck I’m doing. Standing on the other side of the door, they’ll be able to hear what I’m saying, and I can explain.

  Behold the god of destruction…

  The god of destruction is lonely.

  25. FRIEND

  Before mutilating my life like a weaponized rototiller on speed mode, I lived with other creatures.

  Initially, I wanted to keep custody of at least one dog to avoid seeming like a lesser person, but that is a bad reason. Duncan was always the main nurturer. My role was more the stoic father figure who lives in the upstairs bedroom except for holidays and birthdays and the days when somebody needs a talkin’-to.

  That’s a fine character to have in the family if there’s somebody fun and patient around to balance things out, but nobody wants their only friend to be like that.

  So, for the first time in ten years, there was nothing around but me.

  I thought that’s what I wanted. But when the relief wore off, it was actually a little weird not having anything around that wanted to interact with me. This was confusing, but in a way, I kind of missed it.

  I think what I’m trying to describe is loneliness.

  I felt pretty offended by it. I mean, what am I—some clueless animal who needs love and companionship?

  As it turns out, yes—that is what kind of animal I am. I just never realized it before because there was enough ambient love and companionship around to make it seem like maybe I don’t have needs, and that’s why it doesn’t feel like I need anything.

  Experiencing real loneliness for the first time is like realizing the only thing you’ve ever loved is your home planet after migrating to the moon.

  Spider solitaire did not turn out to be an adequate substitute. I became very sad. Unless somebody did something about my emotional needs, it seemed likely to continue.

  I didn’t want to ask for help, though… It didn’t seem like I deserved it. I also wasn’t necessarily ready to admit to an obvious sign of weakness like emotional needs.

  Under the circumstances, the most practical solution genuinely seemed like it might be to befriend myself.

  The idea wasn’t my favorite I’ve ever had. I mean, what the fuck kind of warp-speed loser tries to be their own friend? How would that even work? Ask myself personal questions and pretend I don’t know the answers already? Just be understanding and supportive and try to make myself feel special? That’s some real Sesame Street–type shit…

  But somebody needed to be my friend, and the convenience benefits of doing it myself were hard to argue against.

  How hard could it possibly be, I thought. I’ll just act interested in what I like, do some fun activities, and blammo: best friends.

  As of this writing, that was five years ago.

  It should be easy to become friends with yourself. In theory, it really seems like it should.

  Once you start trying to do it, though, you’ll come up against all kinds of questions you weren’t prepared for, like how to begin, or what to do if you react negatively.

  If you reject yourself, do your best to remain calm.

  Remember: you are trying to be friends, and friends don’t act like frustrated Gila monsters.

  If you mess up and think a bunch of unnecessarily aggressive shit you’d never dream of saying to a real person—for example: “I hate you, I hate you; you floor-face, mouth-face, crybaddy feelbad little crumb of bread,” and: “WHY ALL THE TIME DO YOU SEEM LIKE A DUMPTRANG>:[???”—do not become discouraged.

  Yes, those things were clearly intended to be cruel and demeaning, but they do not make sense, and the addi
tional damage is small compared to the scope of the total, overall damage.

  Take a step back, remind yourself that nobody is a dumptrang, and keep trying.

  It might seem like you don’t want to be friends. At the very least, you’ll distrust the sudden interest.

  This is understandable. When the vast majority of your interactions with somebody have been brutally critical—warlike, even—and you also personally caused almost all the bad things that ever happened to them, it may take a while before they don’t feel spooked by your presence.

  Honestly, at times it will feel pretty much the same as trying to make friends with a wild lizard. But be patient. If you are lonely enough to form a friendship with this thing, it is likely very close to being lonely enough to form a friendship with you.

  At some point, your utility as a companion will be impossible to ignore.

  Once you have firmly established yourself as the only alternative to isolation, take a little time to learn about your interests.

  They aren’t respectable interests, no. But the reality of the situation is that if we want our friend to like us, we must learn how to interact with our friend in a way that our friend likes.

  It may be hard to tell what our friend likes, mostly because our friend is a pointless little weirdo who only likes pointless little weirdo things that are too ambiguous to be actionable, but everybody likes something.

  Sometimes—for example, if there is nothing our pointless little weirdo friend naturally enjoys about spending time together—it can be helpful to focus instead on shared experiences. No matter how much somebody doesn’t get along with you, it is possible to form a crude bond through raw proximity. Go places together. Be in those places together. See the same things as each other. Over time, this will create something very similar to friendship.

  At many points during the friendship, we may notice that our friend is still very far from ideal.

  We may even notice that everything our friend enjoys is stupid, and everything our friend does looks like a clown is doing it, and our friend is weak and tiny like a shrimp, and even when our friend tries to act natural, our friend does not seem natural.

  We must learn to accept this.

  Yes, our friend’s stance is both unnatural and tremendously prominent, but our friend enjoys standing, and this is how our friend stands. While it would be both possible and understandable to become upset about this, compassion will be more helpful to our friend.

  I mean, imagine if you were like that… would it be easy to feel good about yourself? Would you feel at home in the world?

  What our friend needs is encouragement.

  Q: What if the people don’t believe our friend belongs at the beach?

  Are the people our friend?

  No: our friend is our friend.

  And right now, our friend is having a great time at the beach. We should allow it to continue.

  Q: But what if our friend wants to go to the museum?

  That is fine. Our friend only wants to learn more about baskets. Yes, it looks precarious, but it can’t harm anybody.

  Q: What if our friend is on the escalator?

  From the looks of it, our friend might be in danger, so we should probably just focus on helping.

  We have been supportive for quite some time now. At least four years.

  Our friend will likely feel reassured by this, and may even begin to exhibit signs of reciprocating the friendship.

  During this stage, our friend may, for example:

  —Say things

  —Show us things

  —Seek our approval

  —Attempt to ensnare us in baseless speculation about pointless bullshit that doesn’t need to be wondered and can’t actually be answered in a meaningful way

  —Develop new interests, such as speed dancing

  Remember: this is good. Our friend is behaving like this because it wants to interact with us. Sure, the interactions are pointless, but so is everything.

  Participate where possible.

  Q: Still? We still need to pay attention to this thing’s feelings and respond to its questions and care about its ideas?

  Yes.

  Q: Why?

  Because that’s what it needs.

  Q: Why, though?

  Because it is a person. And people need somebody who cares about them.

  Q: It’s a person?

  Yes. Everybody is a person.

  On some level, we were probably still hoping to find some hidden, deeply meaningful quality within our friend that would make it easy to care about what it likes and does and thinks about.

  It is time to let go of this hope.

  There is nothing inherently meaningful or important about our friend, and there probably never will be.

  And the things it likes are even more pointless.

  But there are things it likes.

  So we will swallow our pride, get out there, and participate where possible.

  Because nobody should have to feel like a pointless little weirdo alone.

  Especially if they are.

  Acknowledgments

  I don’t know how to do these, but I’m gonna try.

  I hereby acknowledge the following people:

  Lauren and Monika. I don’t know how many hours we spent on the phone during this, but it’s more than I talk to anybody else. I mean, during quarantine, we edited this entire book verbally, which is insane, but we did it. Sometimes things got weird. Sometimes one, two, or all three of us cried (about both related and unrelated things). Sometimes (a lot) we got distracted talking about philosophy, or motherhood, or comedians or something, and only looped back to business 45 minutes later. I enjoyed this. Thank you for being my friends.

  Kevin. Thank you for weathering this with me. Talking with me, helping me when I got stuck, being willing to say hard things, and keeping me company during all these years of near-total reclusiveness. At times, you were the only thing preventing me from turning feral and fully receding from humanity. I like you. You are smart and have good ideas. Plus, you’re a cool dude.

  Mom, Dad, Laurie, and David. We are a small but mighty family. I love you, and I appreciate that you allow me to make fun of you. Especially you, Mom. You are a patient and amazing lady. I like you very much.

  Everybody who helped me make this, including but not limited to: Alysha Bullock, Ray Chokov, Mike Kwan, Caroline Pallotta, Jaime Putorti, the dix! Digital Team, Lisa Litwack, Elisa Rivlin, Rebecca Strobel (holy shit, Rebecca…), Jen Bergstrom, Jon Karp, Susan Moldow, Aimée Bell, Sally Marvin, Jen Long, Meredith Vilarello, Jessica Roth, Anne Jaconette, and Carolyn Reidy, who will be missed by all of us.

  Peter Kleinman, who helped probably more than he realizes. If I turn out to be a decent person, this guy played a huge part in it.

  Claire Johnson, who received a package addressed to me (which contained the full, uncorrected manuscript for this book) and, without knowing me or what was in the package, went to the trouble of calling the sender to find out how to get the package to its intended recipient. You are a good person, Claire Johnson. I only spoke with you briefly because it was my first time leaving the house in months, so I was uncomfortable and smelly and extremely eager to get back to the safety of my home, but I want you to know that I admire and appreciate what you did. It brings me comfort knowing there are people like you in the world, just quietly doing good things for no personal gain whatsoever.

  I would also like to thank the sun, for keeping everybody warm and supplying vitamin D for our bodies.

  More from the Author

  Hyperbole and a Half

  About the Author

  Allie Brosh lives as a recluse in her bedroom in Bend, Oregon. In recent years, she has become almost entirely nocturnal. Her hobbies include baseless speculation, spying, no-stakes gambling games that she makes up to pacify herself, actual games like Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone, learning about math and physics (helps make the speculation less baseless), and also o
ccasionally walking around and looking at things from a safe distance. She is friendly, but spooks easy.

  Brosh is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller and Goodreads Choice Awards winner Hyperbole and a Half, which was named one of the best books of the year by NPR, The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Library Journal, Salon, and A.V. Club.

  Brosh has also given herself many prestigious awards, including “fanciest horse drawing” and “most likely to succeed.”

  FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:

  SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Allie-Brosh

  SimonandSchuster.com

  @GalleryBooks

  Also by Allie Brosh

  Hyperbole and a Half

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