Just As You (Horrifyingly) Are

Let's all hang out with Mindy Kaling and cry about stuff! That's what girl friends do when they hang out, right? I'm a little out of practice. How glad are you that Glamour.com and  Crown, the publisher and now NPR have excerpts of Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me posted? Now you can have all the fun for free that everyone else who has hard-cover-book-amounts-of-money gets to have! (Obviously you'll buy the book eventually, but you just can't right now and why do things have to cost money and not charm?)

So, in the NPR excerpt, "Non-Traumatic Things That Have Made Me Cry," Mindy confirms two things that I have always believed to be true: it is impossible not to have a huge crush on Colin Firth, and everyone gets misty at the part in Bridget Jones' Diary when Mark Darcy says, "I like you. Very much. Just as you are." But, um, the second thing maybe not for the same reason?

That supposedly romantic line is actually terrifying to me. Because I'm an Iceberg. Maybe it's because of my job. Maybe it's my past. Or maybe I'm just an insane recluse! Who can know these things. But when you're looking at me, chances are you're seeing about 10% of a person. So if anyone were to claim to like me just as I am, I'd be very suspicious who it was they liked. And what they'd do when they saw the rest.

But everyone is a mirage in their own way: the truest line in Bridget Jones' Diary is actually a few minutes before, where she tells the smug marrieds that so many girls are single because "underneath our clothes, we're covered in scales."

You really think you like that girl Just As She Is? Do you REALLY know what she is? And what about all the things you don't know, that aren't that awesome?

Sure, blue string soup and orange marmalade are cute, but how many days can you overhear someone tallying their calories, cigarettes, and alcohol points before you go mad?

Maybe she spends the last half-hour before getting into bed examining her pores in the close-up mirror? Or eats crackers for dinner over the sink while reading Vogue? Maybe she hogs all the covers like a sleep-burrito.

Maybe she still slides her feet about two feet over the side of the bed when getting up in the middle of the night because: Monsters?

Maybe she loves horror movies, but will only watch them from her bed, encased in blankets and pillows, in the middle of the afternoon?

Maybe she puts hot sauce on every single goddamned thing.

Maybe she does that weird cry-laugh thing when The Notebook is on, where she's crying because it's so, so sad and yet, the ironically detached part of her brain thinks it's funny that she's fallen for this stupid movie and its tricks AGAIN? And she's actually experiencing two separate emotions at the same time the way you only see alien monsters and psycho patients do in horror movies?

Are you sure you want to spend your life knowing that any peanut-butter jar you bring into the house will have very, very telling spoon marks in it?

Or something.

Look all I'm saying is that the whole "Just As You Are Thing" is very nice and all, and we know where Mark Darcy is coming from; but he might just want to cool it a little bit.