The Upside of Being Down How Mental Health Struggles Led to My Greatest Successes in Work and Life - Jen Gotch Page 0,2

been thinking about that sorority performance a lot since I started writing this book, since here I am living the examined life. It really does feel worthwhile. I never thought that, in my forties, I’d be garnering wisdom from a rush week talent show, but I don’t turn my nose up at a good life lesson, no matter how unlikely the source—proof that I too am old and wise. And if you squeeze me really hard, I swear dust appears.

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My goal with this book is to share my story—of growing up and finding myself and success and failure and self-doubt and family and dancing and eating and aging—because it probably isn’t that different from yours. We all eventually live some version of that narrative. So this is not a cautionary tale; there is nothing to pity. Life happens—and you look at it and you learn from it or you don’t, and you enjoy it or you don’t. At forty-seven, I am enjoying it more than ever, and I hope you will too. And if reading this book helps you skip a couple of these chapters in your own life (specifically the darker ones), and you walk away with increased self-awareness and strong emotional intelligence, then I’ll call that a major win.

My dad, on the other hand, will only consider this book a major win if it gets him more Instagram followers.

Chapter 1 It’s Not Easy Being Green

I remember having the distinct feeling, for at least two days, that my skin had changed color. It went from my healthy, normal flesh tone to green. Not bright green, but green-tinged. More lip stain than lipstick. Regardless, it was green enough that I was really confused when no one in my family seemed to be concerned about my health, because I WAS GREEN, and going from a normal human color to green should probably at least provoke an “are you okay?” from the people who claim to love you. But nothing? Were they ignoring me… again?

You’re probably wondering why I was starting to veer into Shrek territory—or at least why I thought I was. Let me give you a little backstory.

I graduated from Florida State in December 1993, a year and a half before the skin incident, and made the bold decision to move to Atlanta to start my life as a full-fledged grown-up. (At the time, when you graduated from FSU and wanted to head to the big city, that big city was usually Atlanta.) I wanted to be excited—this was the beginning of the rest of my life—but in reality I was scared. I was not emotionally, mentally, or professionally prepared for the real world, and deep down I knew that.

I was smart, but I had a limited professional skill set and a degree in literature and philosophy—a degree the job market was not begging for. My first plan was to get by on temp work, an incredibly specific and effective form of torture. No, seriously, if you’ve never done it, just for fun, try walking into an office full of strangers who are well trained in their jobs and know each other’s names and how to work the copy machine, and then quietly, without making any sudden movements, sit yourself down at the front desk—the FUCKING LIFELINE of the office—and start answering the phones. It’s a hoot, a real hoot. I did not last long as a temp, and instead of responsibly looking for another job, I sat alone in my room for what felt like days at a time (my friend Forrest, who lived with me in Atlanta, says it was more like hours at a time, but it sure felt like days), interrupted only by weekends when I would travel back to FSU to get drunk and make out. The bulk of my time in Atlanta was spent speed-eating cereal because we all know what a total letdown soggy cereal is. In retrospect, the most productive thing I did during those months was learn all the lyrics to “Shoop” by Salt-N-Pepa. (I can still sing it to this day. People find it really cool; no, I made that up, most people are annoyed by it, but one person found it cool.)

Adding to this quarter-life crisis was the fact that a few weeks before graduation, I made what would be a pivotal decision to go on the birth control pill. Today that might seem like a really small thing, but in the early nineties the pill was