The Unlikeliest Extrovert

or returning to the kid I was before all the rest

I have seen exactly one home video of myself as a kid. I didn’t grow up in one of those camcorder families, and although surely there are videos of me on stage in decades of performances, I wouldn’t know where to find those, I’m not convinced they still exist. It’s sad, actually, the actor self I was for so long is a bit lost to time. I sing in the car and to my kids and I think about joining and then decide not to join a local chorus. I feel a pang of sadness when Christopher Durang dies— he wrote one of my favorite plays I was ever in— THE MARRIAGE OF BETTE AND BOO, where I played off-beat, spacey, grieving, quirky, clueless Bette my senior year of high school, stunning myself at my ability to be funny and bold and something other than the more comfortable Ophelia parts I was used to playing. Used to being. I played Ophelia in Hamlet. I was Laura in The Glass Menagerie. I was morose and panicked in a trashcan in a Beckett play, of course. I was tortured. I was pitied. I was haunted and sweet. I was small and sad and deep.

But the video I saw of myself as a kid (a video I think was perhaps of my best friends’s birthday party, though when and why I watched it is another mystery lost to time) was not the Ophelia I was in high school. She was something else entirely. Brash, loud, clamoring for attention, bossing people around, being silly, taking up space. Probably, some people would think she was kind of obnoxious. They would definitely think she was too much.

That video, when I saw it years ago, embarrassed me. I was not that person anymore, and I needed people to know that. In my adolescence I quieted. I went inward. Things fell apart in multiple parts of my life (I later wrote a book about it), and I lost track of who I was in the chaos of those shatterings. I lost a group of friends who berated me, (and then later also wrote a book about that), I stopped trying to be seen, except for on stage, where I wanted to prove myself spectacular and special. And in the midst of it all, I clung mostly to the biggest personality I could find— a boy at school who was a huge extrovert, running for class president, wearing cartoonish ties, befriending everyone, keeping me small and scared and uncertain.

I have always liked big personalities. That long ago boyfriend in spite of all his other flaws. My best friend from childhood, my best friend from high school, my best friend from college— all big personalities. Smart, confident, brave, unafraid of the reality of being themselves. Taking up room. Friendly. Talkative.

Things I seemed to have been in that video. Things I stopped being for a great long while. I hung around those personalities but convinced myself I wasn’t one. I got nervous at parties, I shut down meeting new people. I let myself fade out of fear of being too much. Even though all evidence pointed to the fact that perhaps I actually liked too much.

I’m not sure what exactly changed it, but at some point in the last ten years, I started to be too much again. Or, as I should now call it simply much. I started to be much. I started to resemble less myself at seventeen, and more myself at eight. Writing helped— when I first made the shift from acting to writing I found that for a writer, I was pretty extroverted. No longer lining myself up against shiny, charismatic actors reset my understanding of myself. Parenting helped— I found I wanted to connect with other moms so badly, and I surprised myself by being a joiner in meetups, and moving on swiftly and compassionately when the fit wasn’t right. On instinct, I took my baby to everything— yoga and music and park meetups and cafe meetups and playground meetups and any kind of meet up at all to help us both get through the long days of early parenthood and wild toddlerhood.

I haven’t been able to detangle myself entirely from the judgment part of being much. I leave interactions worried about what I said and did, scared of how I am being perceived. It was easier, sort of, to say nothing, to be a haunted and small and sad Ophelia. It was safer.

But I was never that girl, not really. I was a pretty good actress, though, wasn’t I? I made a perfect Ophelia. For as long as I could.

Just like I wrote a book about the ways families struggle and the ways friendships fall apart, and the way I may someday write about that one boy and the way he took up all the space so that there wasn’t any left for me, I wrote about being too much.

(spread from A PLACE FOR FEELINGS, art by Geeta Ladi)

I am always writing about myself but also never writing about exactly me. The best part of writing, in my opinion, in the way you can put distance between yourself and your characters, the way you can explore the things you are bothered by or curious about or plagued by, but with some space. I am not a memoirist. I add magic, closet doors that open to new universes, libraries of blank books, cakes that refuse to be baked, mythological ladders to the sky, magic stored in jars, a collection of snow globles, a tea set with missing cups, a monster with a pizza-flavored backpack.

In the midst of all that magic, I’m safe to say things that feel otherwise uncomfortable, to be people I might otherwise judge. I’m not an actor anymore, but the one biggest thing I learned from those years, from that conservatory training, is the art of not judging a character, but taking their side. I don’t always know how to take my side, but I have a literal BFA in taking someone else’s.

A PLACE FOR FEELINGS comes out on Tuesday. It is my shortest book, of course. My only picture book. It is under a thousand words when I usually struggle to stay under 80,000. But it’s funny what picture books do. They make you get to the point, they let you focus on the truest thing. I’ve been writing books about the striving for perfection, the wanting to be an impossible thing, for over ten years. But in this picture book, I found the real embracing of being too much, and it is an ode to my kids, myself, everyone who has tried to be smaller, to feel less, to fit in.

It is easier to love the picture book version of yourself than the fumbling adult one, but I’m dong my best to accept us both. Mara and me. And our much-ness.

News

• A PLACE FOR FEELINGS comes out Tuesday, April 23rd and received this lovely review from Booklist: "Ladi's digital illustrations render the child's feelings as impressionistic bursts of beautiful swirling colors, patterns, and shapes that enliven and enhance the entire community when allowed to be released and shared. A fable-like social-emotional conversation starter."

• If you are in NYC there are a few opportunities to see me! On Saturday, May 4th I’ll be at the 6/15 Green Spring Festival at noon. The garden is located on 6th Ave and 15th Street in Park Slope.

• On Sunday May 5th at 11am I’ll be doing a storytime at Books Are Magic on Montague Street

Recommendations

• The influencers are right. Tommy John Pajamas are amazing. I’m obsessed. They are pricey, but I am known for buying pricey pajamas because honestly I just want to enjoy every second of sleep to the fullest extend imaginable.

• After YEARS of running to and being annoyed by the drying rack the took up our entire hallway, I discovered MOUNTED DRYING RACKS. Like murphy beds for drying clothes, these are so sleek and perfect and I honestly feel so relieved every day to be rid of our rickety wobbly annoying rack.

• A mom friend told me to watch Anatomy of a Fall, and while it took me literal weeks to watch the whole thing because I have about 20 minutes of downtime a night, it was worth every second. The performances are stunning, the story is urgent and exciting, and there is so much about writing and creating and what it is to be in a relationship with a fellow artist (something I gave up a long time ago), and I just loved it so much.