I recently started reading a book called No one belongs here more than you. It’s a collection of essays and short stories by Miranda July, whom I had never heard of before but who I’m starting to think might be my alter ego – the version of me that chose grad school instead of music, writing instead of performing. Not every story is dead on what I would have chosen to write about or say in those situations, of course, but there’s this underlying pathos, this feeling that she is constantly trying to see the world from an optimistic and witty point of view but everything she has ever experienced in her life is telling her that it’s not possible to go on that way.

It wasn’t until I read the brief essay “This Person” that I grasped this about our connection, and was finally able to voice it accurately. It is just under 4 pages long, and I am sincerely tempted to spend the next half hour typing the whole thing in so that you can all read it and appreciate exactly why I’ve fallen in love with this author, much like my obsession with Jeanette Winterson that began in college and continues to this day.

For now, though, a few of the lines that caught me the most:

“…a long, laughing, rambling phone message in which every person this person has ever known is talking on a speakerphone and they are all saying, You have passed the test, it was all just a test, we were only kidding, real life is so much better than that.”

“…but it would be so like this person to become depressed on the happiest day ever, and so this person bucks up and joins the crowd.”

I know these lines on their own don’t have the desired effect, so I highly recommend picking up the book – at least in a library – and reading the whole essay. Buy it, though, if you can, because there’s more. I found these in the first story:

“Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the earth again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet day after day, alone.”

“Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is worth the trouble? Look at the sky; that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing.”

P.S. Next time you’re having a shit day – the kind when you just can’t imagine yourself feeling anything but sad or angry or, worse, empty, for the rest of your life – buy a box of berry-flavored Mike & Ike’s and eat a few handfuls of them. Even if you don’t like Mike & Ike’s. Or go get a blue slushie.

Because it is impossible not to smile, even if only for a millisecond, when you realize that your cheeks are stained with mascara and your eyes are unrecognizably puffy, but your tongue is the bright festive blue it used to be when you were little and carnivals and lollipops were the highlight of your week. Back when you didn’t even wear mascara or know that crying made your eyelids and cheeks puffy and cemented your contacts to your irises. Back when it was easier.