I Don't Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star (26 page)

Now, I love my husband, he is the greatest person out there, as far as I’m concerned, but I am totally humiliated that I am one of those girls who needed the right man to straighten her out. And by the way, it’s not like Dean Johnsen did anything specific or intentional to get me to shape up. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence. But as I read my old journal entries, I am appalled at my lack of growth. They start out with me, as a kid, making lists of what I bought when I went shopping with my mom, what boy I had a crush on, and who my current best friend was. As I got a little older, there were lists of what I bought when I went shopping with my friends, what boy I had a crush on, and who my best
friend was. Once I left home for college, the entries turned into rants about boys. I devoted entire books to different boyfriends. Just going over and over my relationships, how I was going to be better, love more, stop him from treating me poorly, that I wasn’t going to take it anymore, yet, I noticed, never do I write about ending these dramatic relationships, just changing them and myself. There will be two pages about how much I love a particular fellow, then three about how awful he is to me. It’s ridiculous.
I
was ridiculous. I can’t help but think, why didn’t I read these sooner? What if I would have read them immediately after writing them? Would I have realized how stupid I sounded? God, my friends must have hated listening to me.

When I was younger, before I was boyfriend crazy, there were endless entries about who my best friend was and why. In addition to list making, ranking was clearly really important to me, knowing who was who and where they fit into my life. But the worst part of these entries is that I don’t even remember some of the names! I called my mom to help me remember, but she didn’t either. There is an actual blank in my mind, no face to name, it’s freaky. Tracey Vitkay, if you’re out there, do you remember me at all? Apparently, you and I were on-again/off-again best friends in the mid- to late 1980s. Do you remember why we couldn’t keep it together? According to my diary, you really kept me on my toes, but I don’t know what happened to us. Perhaps if I had gotten Facebook, you would have reached out. Maybe not—maybe the past was too painful for you too.

When reading through these diary entries, I seemed obsessed, at a very young age, with finding some contentment with who I was as a person. This is why I think I was into ranking and categorizing everything all the time. I wanted to always know where things stood. What my passions were, what I was devoted to, and how I was devoting myself to these passions. It seems that if everything was in its place, I would find that contentment I
craved, yet I never, ever wrote about why I wasn’t content. On February 3, 1988, I wrote:

I was twelve
.

When I was out of college and living in L.A., in addition to the pages and pages devoted to whatever failing relationship I was committed to, I started to add notes from therapy. Yep, I did the L.A. thing and got a shrink, because I was determined to quit making such horrible mistakes, and if I didn’t develop new patterns on my own, I was going to spend money I didn’t have finding out why I was making these terrible decisions in the first place. When I look back, it seems so easy now. I could have saved myself thousands of dollars, hundreds of hours, and so many tears … if I would have just broken up with guys sooner. Here’s a tip I have gleaned from the past: if you’re not married and you’re writing about him in a blank notebook and spending money talking about him with an accredited psychologist, you should probably just break up with him. Seriously. It’s only going to get harder as time goes on, so save yourself the money and the time. Get a trainer instead and dump him. God, if I had followed that advice, I’d have the most rockin’ body right now. I know I’m simplifying things a bit, but I bet, for most cases, I am right. How long would you spend trying to fit a puzzle piece into a puzzle where it didn’t fit? More than a minute? Why do we spend years and hundreds of dollars on therapy and last-ditch-effort vacations trying to make relationships work out that just aren’t ever going to? At least I did. Hopefully, you are smarter than me.

Another obsession that seems to be a running theme throughout
these entries and my life thus far is my addiction to simplification. I’m always striving to make my life simpler, yet I consistently add complications to it. I bought a book on how to simplify one’s life when I was in high school, and I have entire notebooks devoted to different ways I am going to get it down, once and for all—that once I do this closet clean out, things will change, life will be different, I will finally be a better person. Yet, in my journals, I never seem satisfied. There is a billboard I pass every day here in L.A. that says, “Be happy with nothing and you will be happy with everything.” It bummed me out because I realized that I have always been so preoccupied with changing things in order to enjoy my life that I never just enjoyed it. Maybe the real secret to simplifying is to stop buying shit. I should paint a billboard for my driveway that says, “Don’t bring home any more crap.” There, simplification complete.

So I have forty-two stupid books filled with my discontent and three years of extreme happiness with no record of it at all (OK, there’s a lot of Instagrams and a wedding album I will hopefully have paid for and own by the time this book gets released). But some comfort I can find in it all is that I was always trying and willing to be the best me possible, that I wasn’t lazy and I didn’t give up on people easily, even when I probably should have. And Jeff Hunt, if you’re out there, thank you for not ever getting a restraining order, though I wouldn’t blame you if you had.

PEOPLE TALK A LOT ABOUT GOALS. HAVING GOALS
for the day, week, month, year. Five-year goals, ten-year goals. You get it. I have always been a very goal-oriented person, not because I like them, but because I learned a long time ago I need deadlines. I need to have dates by which I have to accomplish things. I need structure. So I have a particularly difficult time with the life I’ve chosen. I hate not having a job—not awesome for an actor. I hate the constant changes that come with my lifestyle—especially not awesome for an actor with stepchildren and two permanent residences.

I’ve heard nine-to-five jobs called the daily grind. But parts of it seem nice, to know how much money you will make all the time. To be able to take time off to see your friends and family get married or buried. The work clothes have really tempted me—cute skirt suits and mixing up pants and blazers. Unless I have an audition to be a lawyer or business lady, I have no need for a suit in my life. I have an almost unhealthy addiction to
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
, her work looks were just the best, and I can lose myself in the spreads in fashion magazines that detail how to go from work-appropriate to going-out-sexy by just changing from sensible pumps to sexy stilettos, adding a red lip, and switching
out your briefcase for a disco bag!
Et voilà
, you’re ready to go from cubicle to cocktails. Happy hour is another mystifying fantasy of mine. Not to say that I don’t go to happy hour, because, like, duh, four-dollar drinks and three-dollar apps? Yeah, I hit up a happy hour, but my reasons for doing it are financial, not because I just got off work and wanna get a few cheap well drinks with the cute guy from HR.

I know I sound complainy, I know the grass is always … yeah yeah yeah. But I have my fantasies: I fantasize about performance reviews and office Christmas parties. Company softball games and calling in sick. Well, this is why I think I became obsessed with to-do lists and having specific goals. I was trying to get some more structure in my days off. I failed. I tried again. I failed again. Then I got (stole) the idea of writing a manifesto. A type of mission statement. I keep trying to pretend that I have a normal life, but I don’t. Like, at all. My life is confusing and crazy and busy and then boring, crickets. It’s all over the place. It’s hard to accomplish daily tasks when I get a call from my manager saying that I have to be on a plane tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. to go to Oakland for a meeting. I have bought countless plane tickets that don’t get used. Hotel rooms booked that get canceled. Wedding gifts getting sent because I couldn’t deliver them myself.
A lot
of canceling, days before the event. So, I have somewhat given up on having a to-do list, and that does not make me feel like a productive member of society. It makes me feel like a sloth.

But then, years ago, Isabella Rossellini, an Italian treasure, came out with a makeup line called Manifesto. When you bought something from the line (or maybe it was a promo freebie), they gave you a little empty notebook on which to write your own manifesto. I wasn’t totally sure what a manifesto was, even though I knew what I thought the word meant. But I figured if I was going to try to write one, I at least owed it to myself to actually look up the meaning. After all, I went to acting school, so a good, traditional
college education I did not get (another goal of mine was to educate myself, and
Vogue
does not count). Here is the
Merriam-Webster’s
definition of manifesto:

This word excited me! It is so much more inspiring than a goal. It’s like a goal, but in a better outfit. A manifesto is a mission statement. I want to be on a mission! Isn’t that so much better than having a lame to-do list? I think a manifesto should sum up how you want to treat your days, what your priorities are, how you deal with people, how you deal with the earth, and how you want to spend your time. It should be a document that teaches you how to slow down and when to speed up. It should inspire you when you read it. And you should read it often. I also feel that manifestos are allowed to change, to evolve. My life plan in my twenties was so different from my life plan for my thirties. Everyone makes New Year’s resolutions that last, how long? Really? But this is like a lifelong evolving resolution.

So I challenged myself to write a manifesto. To think about what’s important to me. Think about who I love. About what I love. What and who makes me laugh. When do I feel best about myself, and put all that into writing. How do I plan on leaving the planet? Do I care about the planet? What do I care about? If all of my things got taken away, what would still be meaningful to me, besides getting new things? So here is the latest version of my letter to myself.

I forget this stuff a lot, one thing is stolen from a Yogi tea bag, one I found on Pinterest, but if I did a fraction of this, half of the time, I’d think I was a real champion. But I’m a work in progress. I’ll probably never be on a company softball team, I have no cubicle in which to store my glittered evening bag, and my days are, if I’m not working, unstructured and disorganized. I have not mastered the art of time management, but I try not to beat myself up about it. There’s a lot of peaks and valleys in the life I’ve chosen, but my mission statement reminds me to focus on what matters most. When life is awesome, it keeps my head from getting too big, and when things are shitty, it reminds me that my life is still pretty awesome.

I am forever in debt to the following people—

Christina Malach. To quote our new favorite server, “You have the shit job. She gets all the fun, she gets all the recognition, she gets all the money.” Amazing. I hope this wasn’t a shit job for you, but if my first drafts didn’t drive you to the bottle, I don’t know what would. Thank you. I will never be able to stop thanking you for making my book a book, for making me seem like a writer, and for all the love and consideration you gave to all of my stories and thoughts. I loved this whole process with you. And thank the sweet baby Jesus they don’t have WiFi at Zara, or we wouldn’t have made one single deadline.

Cait Hoyt. This is all your fault. Thank you for watching all those Reluctantly Healthys and thinking I was funny and had a book in me. I didn’t know that about myself, but thank you for seeing it. And thank you for your work on my proposal, I would never have sold it without your notes and editing in the first place. So you see, this really is all your fault. (Hi to Penny!)

All the people I love at Doubleday. Bill Thomas, you said I was a writer. No one ever told me that before. Thank you, it still brings tears to my eyes. Suzanne Herz, Todd Doughty, Joe Gallagher,
John Fontana, Bette Alexander, and Pei Koay, you are my special effects department. Thank you for bringing this book to life.

My amazing team at CAA. Jeremy Plager, thanks for believing in me eleven years ago, believing in me today, and every day in between. Sean Grumman, I love that you never take no for an answer when it comes to my career. Jim Nicolay, when you get me a job, I get to go to work in my pajamas. That might be the best of all…

The rest of Team Judy: Fred Toczek, Eric Suddleson, Jillian Fowkes, Annie Schmidt, Tara Friedlander, and Lucille Selig. You guys are so wonderful, hardworking, and so fun to hang out with at all the weird events we have to go to, thank God.

Carter Smith. Thank you forever for shooting my book cover. Karla Welch, Kemal Harris, Erica Cloud, Traci Franklin, Harry Josh, and Dottie, I will probably never feel more beautiful and glamorous in my life. I cannot thank you enough and I want to take you all to the DMV with me when my driver’s license expires, if you’re in L.A. and have time? Please?