Welcome to the United States of Anxiety: Observations from a Reforming Neurotic Read online

  PRAISE FOR JEN LANCASTER

  “If laughter is a great tonic for the spirit, then Jen Lancaster . . . is a double dose.”

  —USA Today

  “Falling somewhere between David Sedaris and Laurie Notaro, Lancaster’s goofy charm will no doubt continue to win fans, as well as influence the next generation of sardonic, winning, self-effacing memoirists.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[Jen Lancaster is] like that friend who always says what you’re thinking—just 1,000 times funnier.”

  —People

  “[With] a wicked sense of humor, [Lancaster] adds just the right amount of sweetness to counteract the bitter.”

  —New York Post

  “You’ll revel in the lessons she gleans from her travails.”

  —Redbook

  “Scathingly witty.”

  —Boston Herald

  OTHER TITLES BY JEN LANCASTER

  NONFICTION

  Bitter Is the New Black

  Bright Lights, Big Ass

  Such a Pretty Fat

  Pretty in Plaid

  My Fair Lazy

  Jeneration X

  The Tao of Martha

  I Regret Nothing

  Stories I’d Tell in Bars

  FICTION

  If You Were Here

  Here I Go Again

  Twisted Sisters

  The Best of Enemies

  By the Numbers

  The Gatekeepers

  Text copyright © 2020 by Jen Lancaster

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Little A, New York

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Little A are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542007948 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1542007941 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781542007924 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1542007925 (paperback)

  Cover design and interior illustrations by Philip Pascuzzo

  First edition

  For Paige McDaniel, Joanna Clarke, and Community Partners of Dallas, for your tireless work . . . and the greatest day of my life!

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR

  PART I

  ANXIETIES UNBOUND

  THE STATE OF OUR STRESSED-OUT UNION

  PART II

  YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT?

  FEAR OF A FAT PLANET

  FASHION FORWARD

  GIMME SHELTER

  PART III

  LIFE IS HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH

  GLOBAL WARRING

  NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN

  ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL

  PART IV

  BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?

  MOMMING SO HARD

  FRIENDING IS NOT A VERB

  PART V

  THE LOBBY FOR A HOBBY

  REMEMBER MY NAME

  FUNNY GIRL

  PART VI

  NOW WHAT?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  NOTES

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works—no civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.

  —Chamath Palihapitiya,

  former Facebook VP of user growth

  Don’t worry, be happy.

  —Bobby McFerrin

  LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR

  March 21, 2020

  As I was finishing the final edits on this book, everything in our country changed.

  I’m polishing this work under a statewide lockdown because of COVID-19. I haven’t left my home in more than a week, and the only person I’ve seen is my husband—unless you count the handful of delivery drivers I’ve spied from the window as they drop off our orders and scatter. During this crisis, I’ve discovered that I would thrive under house arrest. So there’s that.

  My hope is that when this book comes out in October, we’re a nation of healthy and happy hand-washers. In a perfect future world, we’ll have become rule-followers, blessed with limitless compassion and serious immunity. This best-case scenario in my mind allows us to gain appreciation for what we briefly lost during this uncertain time—and mourn the people who have passed. I imagine a highlight reel of Americans coming together and helping our communities; I envision us with full employment and a whole new batch of Bravo Housewives. I prefer to not envision the worst-case scenario.

  Outside of staying inside, washing my hands, and waving heartfelt thanks to the delivery people and postal workers who are keeping us fed, sane, and functioning, I can’t assist much with the pandemic panic this country is feeling. It’s so early on in this moment, and the advice is evolving every day. However, I can invite you to join me as I uncover all that we don’t need to fret about . . . from a socially appropriate distance, of course.

  PART I

  ONE NATION, UNDER STRESS

  Maslow’s Hierarchy:

  psychology’s gold standard of categorizing and ranking our human needs.

  ANXIETIES UNBOUND

  My greatest takeaway from my college years on the ivy-covered grounds of Purdue University, the divine truth that revealed itself as I pored over volumes written by the world’s most profound minds, was that I hated waitressing.

  The portmanteau “hangry” didn’t randomly become part of our lexicon; it speaks to our most primal, basic urge. Peckish diners’ lizard brains perceived the feckless waitress as standing between themselves and imminent starvation/death, so it often got ugly when I forgot the extra salad dressing.

  My burning desire to exit apron-based employment propelled me to get my shit together and graduate after eleven years of study. I ended up with a bachelor’s degree in political science, but that’s beside the point. Any degree was a ticket out of the service economy back in the 1990s. That ticket’s not exactly still valid; it’s not lost on me that every barista at my local coffee shop has a master’s degree in classics and, unlike me, knows the difference between “further” and “farther.” But back in the ’90s, the assurance of that piece of paper was solid.

  Though I’ve not taken anyone’s drink order in a quarter of a century, in my stress dreams I’m always sweating through my oxford shirt and poorly tied tie, deep in the weeds, having been triple seated with eight tops, thanks to a clueless seventeen-year-old hostess. The bartender’s taking forever to mix a single Rusty Nail because Sergey Brin hasn’t yet invented Google. Empty plates are stacked tall as skyscrapers on the tables, which is confusing. Why would a party of four dirty up twenty-three plates apiece, even if I were serving tapas? There’s no busboy in sight.

  When I finally wake myself up, my heart’s pounding and my stomach’s knotted. I have so much adrenaline coursing through my system that further farther further sleep is impossible.

  I’ve experienced much higher stakes in the past few decades, but none have felt as anxiety provoking as waiting tables.

  I came to understand that I couldn’t hold a job catering to people’s most basic needs; the stress of it would eventually destroy me.

  So it behooved me to understand the landscape of human needs, if only to avoid the terrifying responsibility. The “basic needs” concept comes from psychologist Abraham Maslow. In 1943, Maslow theorized that people are moti
vated by an escalating series of needs. In 1954, he organized those needs into categories and called the whole shebang Maslow’s Hierarchy, leading me to believe that one of Maslow’s needs was to slap his name on things. Admittedly, I can’t find a source that says he intentionally named it after himself, but who could blame him if he did? He created a clear picture of what drives the human race, and presented it in a clever format that would go on to look terrific on generations of slide decks, so he deserves the credit.

  I can’t state this clearly enough: basic needs are a bitch and a huge anxiety trigger. In my adult professional life, I’ve done everything from negotiating multimillion-dollar contracts with humorless hospital administrators to being interviewed by Charlie Rose on national television, yet what still wakes me up in a panic is that damn forgotten side of ranch dressing.

  Over the past few years, my anxiety levels have skyrocketed. My waitressing dreams have become so frequent that my concealer can barely keep up, and I’m already using the industrial stuff that can cover tattoos. This is it; I’ve reached the end of cosmeceutical science.

  Here’s the thing—I’m not alone when it comes to stress. So many of us feel like we’re living in trying times. I’d give anything to go back to the innocence and ease of my 1970s childhood, despite growing up in the golden age of serial killers. With Gacy, Bundy, and Dahmer out there, none of us were safe, yet no one seemed bothered. I lived in New Jersey, just over the bridge, during the Summer of Sam, and my family’s chief takeaway was that Berkowitz couldn’t have been so bad if he liked dogs.

  I’m desperate for that less panicked approach, for an uninterrupted night of sleep, to uncover the root of my growing anxiety.

  How did I get from there to here? Something has changed in terms of my relationship to my basic human needs, and if I can pinpoint some of those changes, I hope that I can start to relax, to disengage. So I’ll work my way up the hierarchy. I’ll look at each brick in Maslow’s pyramid and examine it in the light of our anxiety-riddled world. How else can I find self-actualization, especially if I’m too preoccupied by spackling the trenches under my eyes?

  If Maslow and his pyramid could help me figure my way out of an eleven-year tenure at Purdue and into my adult life, I’d wager he’s skilled enough to be my guide to work through it again at the crossroads of middle age.

  THE STATE OF OUR STRESSED-OUT UNION

  The plane was going down.

  My father was midflight on his way home from Atlanta when the 747 hit a pocket of turbulence so severe that the plane shuddered and plunged. The abrupt altitude change caused luggage to burst violently from the overhead compartments. The beverage cart rocketed down the aisle, spewing cans of Canada Dry Ginger Ale and tiny bottles of Dewar’s, before it slammed into the cockpit door. The cabin depressurized and passengers scrambled to secure their oxygen masks as the emergency Klaxon reverberated through the cabin.

  Then, an engine failed.

  It was a total nightmare scenario.

  The pilots struggled to right the aircraft, to win a losing battle against gravity as the ground loomed ever closer. I imagine the passengers around my dad panicking and praying, their lives flashing before their eyes. Mothers clinging to their children. Strangers grasping hands. Religion suddenly rediscovered.

  Faced with his own mortality, my father focused on what was most important to him—finishing the sports page. He figured if he was about to die, he’d better read faster. The tragedy of departing this mortal coil before checking box scores was more than he could bear.

  Fortunately, the pilots prevailed and brought the plane down safely. My father disembarked on unweakened knees. He whistled on his way to the baggage claim to retrieve his vinyl Samsonite suitcase, packed with his favorite goldenrod-colored short-sleeved oxfords and tasteful plaid polyester ties. Then, he located his Ford Maverick in the airport parking garage, plugged in an eight-track of Scott Joplin, and drove home rocking out to ragtime.

  My father was entirely unaffected by the events as they unfolded. He’d forgotten about the whole thing by the time he reached our home on South Prospect Avenue. The incident was barely a blip on his radar.

  I didn’t even know about his near-death experience, as he didn’t find it germane to mention it, until decades later. How is that possible? A child vomited on my last flight, and I gave my forty-two thousand Twitter followers a real-time update. And boosted that to another twenty-six thousand on Instagram.

  My dad’s clinical detachment is a marvel. He kept his shit together on that faltering jet without distress, without trepidation, without the benefit of a vest-clad emotional support duck. He didn’t spend my childhood dragging himself—or the family—down the what-if rabbit hole, obsessively imagining what could have happened.

  We had my mother for that.

  Perhaps you wonder, Did I inherit my father’s ability to manage stress with grace, with panache, with nerves of steel? Did he pass down his preternatural calm, his dispassionate and unflinching disposition, along with his flat feet?

  Spoiler alert? I am actively afraid of bread.

  Carbs aren’t the only thing that frightens me, not by a long shot. I live in the emotional rabbit hole. Lately, I fret about every damn thing, from the effects of fluoride in tap water to my Uber driver possibly down-rating me for being a chatty drunk. I’m a bundle of nerves, swaddled in a blanket of panic.

  Anxiety is my constant partner, right there by my side like a bad college roommate, second-guessing my choices, disrupting my concentration, and causing low-level chaos on the reg. Sometimes my GAD (generalized anxiety disorder) manifests as a gradually tightening band of tension around my chest. Occasionally, it takes the form of an ice pick stabbing a sharp pain into my frontal lobe. Fun stuff.

  When I’m able to slough it off, when it’s not causing physical symptoms or putting me on edge, my anxiety still pops up out of nowhere to spoil nice moments. I fear good things happening because I believe something bad is sure to follow. Yin and yang, as comedy can’t exist without tragedy. In my universe, pleasure and pain are opposite sides of the pendulum.

  Frankly, I’m sick of it. Jane, get me off this crazy thing!

  I’ve kept my rampant GAD on the down low; it’s contrary to my nature to air my internal angst. Honestly, I’d rather livestream my mammogram than show vulnerability outside my immediate circle. I suspect this tendency is typical of my Generation X compatriots. We came up in an era that embraced privacy, that discouraged us from sharing our problems. I learned to stuff my fears deep down until they form a little ball, keeping the feelings buried under liberal handfuls of cheese and glasses of moderately priced Chardonnay.

  For me, it’s a strategy that works remarkably well . . . until the pressure builds up too much and I blow, losing my shit in front of a random stranger in the produce aisle, yelling, “Actually, yes. I am the grape police!” (In case you’re reading this, hungry shopper, my apologies.)

  What’s sad is that I represent the majority of Americans; I’m not alone. So many of us suffer from anxiety. The cheap seats are packed with good people who’ve grown accustomed to denying that we’re quaking with fear inside, racked with worry. Many of us compensate by raging on the outside.

  When I was growing up, my family slept with our windows open. If we bothered to lock the front door, our spare key was ingeniously placed right under the flower pot on our porch. Our house was robbed back in 1984, and the thieves didn’t even need to unearth the spare key; the back door was already unlocked. Yet we were shocked when it happened.

  A stranger prowled our house at will, a clear violation, but neither of my parents were too shaken up, largely because they considered insurance payouts akin to winning the lottery. I wasn’t privy to the claim, but I suspect we lost a lot of Picassos and Fabergé eggs that day, and not just an ancient, broken Rolex and a carbon-flecked diamond ring.

  Years later, my family started speculating that my high school boyfriend, who hadn’t been in school that day, was
involved. We didn’t have proof, but there was the small clue that he’d been sentenced to prison for armed robbery shortly after we’d broken up.

  The point is, our behavior didn’t change. The key remained under the flower pot. We continued to ignore the lock on our back door. We weren’t cautious, because we weren’t afraid of anything, unlike now when I’m afraid of freaking everything.

  The worst part is that the world is safer than it’s ever been. Humanity’s on an upswing, from long-term trends in health care to access to food. We’ve made tremendous strides in increasing literacy and vaccination rates. Child mortality? Incidences have plummeted.1

  Global poverty is half what it was twenty years ago. Violent crimes have abated dramatically in the US, declining from 1993’s high of 79.8 victims per thousand people to our current level of 23.2.2 Per the American Journal of Epidemiology, DUIs are down, likely thanks to chatty drunks opting for rideshare services.3

  Bottom line? The data supports that these are the best of times.

  So . . . why the hell does it feel like the end of days?

  Why does it seem like it’s about to rain locusts? Why am I cuffing my pants for the coming rivers of blood? What happened to make us masses suddenly so afraid of everything? How did the USA become shorthand for the United States of Anxiety?

  Despite all indicators pointing people toward happiness and contentment, so many of us are paralyzed by angst and weighted down with unnamed dread, largely because we’ve been conditioned to believe that danger lurks around every corner.

  Since my blissful childhood, when my fear was encased in a calcified shell and nestled somewhere next to my pancreas, one of the biggest cultural shifts has been around mass communication. Thanks to technology, we’re connecting quicker and cheaper than ever before.

  Decades ago, my dad strictly forbade our family to make out-of-town calls before ten o’clock at night, when long distance hit the off-peak rates, and even then, only if one of us were bleeding or ablaze. Communication was a luxury. As my mother’s whole family and social circle lived outside Jersey, this led to some epic arguments.