Monday, January 16, 2017

Feelings Though


I read Meaty by Samantha Irby at just the right time. I ran across her blog 'bitches gotta eat' years ago but didn't pay too much attention. I saw the cover of the book and dismissed it. I really thought it would be about food and I didn't consider myself a 'foodie' so it couldn't be for me. Like I said, I wasn't paying attention.

And then one night, for some reason I'm not ever going to remember, I tried the first chapter. I pressed click to buy immediately. I mean the first chapter is titled "At 30" so how wasn't that going to speak to me? Side note: I was previously obsessed with turning 30. I am now at best preoccupied with being 32 but I won't dally on that. I found Irby delightful, funny and candid. It was amazing. I'm not usually one for memoirs or non fiction but I felt like she got me. During this time, I was also going through a period when I hated my body. I felt betrayed by it and there were days when I felt unique in this disgust. At best, I was bitter and worst I was lonely. Reading Meaty however, allowed me to face that and laugh. This was a shock for me because I usually go to books for escape. This book wasn't a escape. This book was a confrontation.

The chapter titled "My Mother, My Daughter" affected me the most. It's the story of the role reversal between herself and her mother. Her mother needed to be taken care of by her young daughter after a car accident exacerbated her MS. I hadn't been expecting that. Plot twist: I was recently diagnosed with MS right before reading this book. Irby had been describing her own autoimmune disease (Chron's) up until this point. I remember feeling a couple of different emotions. The story is angry, sad and beautiful. It's everything and it's perfectly placed in the book. I thought that I would be too fixated on her mother's diagnosis to really get into it but the overall story was too compelling to get hung up on a detail. It was almost as if the story wouldn't allow my feelings of self pity. 

I am now officially a fangirl of Samantha Irby. I read her blog on the regular. I followed her on Instagram. I followed her Twitter. We live in the future and I suppose this is what you do when someone writes something that touches you. Meaty touched me right when I was feeling numb. It also got me interested in memoirs again. There are few books I read that fill me with gratitude and this was one of them. So, thanks. Also, I definitely recommend it. Meaty isn't just an awkward quirky gal's stab at life. Yes, she's both awkward and a little quirky but she's also more than that. This book is more than that. 

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