It behooves you to have read Lindy West’s previous works, especially her most famous, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman. The memoir was turned into a TV show on Hulu that ran for three seasons, West got married, and life seemed like a big success, even as West continued to fight against those who are prejudiced when presented with a fat body like hers. However, in her new memoir, Adult Braces: Driving Myself Sane, West admits she fudged a little. Not outright lied, but definitely filtered her life for readers. That’s how we begin.

The biggest omission is that her husband, Aham, is polyamorous, which West knew when she married him, but figured that if she were “enough,” he wouldn’t want to love anyone else. Then, a fan of West’s work DM’d her, claiming they saw Aham kissing another woman. West called her husband and confirmed it was true. What followed was a book so familiar regarding anxiety, self-hood, independence, and fat bodies as to almost be a mirror for me in many ways. Of course I want all of you to read it.

Due to her untreated anxiety, West clung to her spouse like a life raft, demanding he praise her to reassure her she’s a worthy human. At her worst times, West ate and ate and ate as a method of self-soothing, one that made her gain weight and feel worse about her body. Later, when she sought therapy, she began self-soothing in other ways, causing her weight to drop, which is when her fans noticed her smaller body and criticized her. The main arc of Adult Braces is West deciding she would rent a camper van in Seattle, Washington, and drive it to Kokomo, the fabled place in the Beach Boys song. Reality sets in: “Kokomo isn’t a real place????? Kokomo isn’t a real place. Of course it’s not. Why would it be? I learned about it from a singing frog.” Instead, West decides on the Florida Keys, about 3,500 miles away from home, a trip that will take her one month in total.

As she departs, West knows her spouse will spend his time with his girlfriend, Roya, and West needs to either be okay with that or make some hard decisions. She hits the road, travelling the U.S. alone. Though her plan was to journal daily, that didn’t work, so West did a verbal journal as she drove. Clearly, she could edit these recordings later, but I took it on faith that she didn’t overly edit because West proclaimed that her previous memoir neglected the marital issues and severe depression and anxiety. The verbal journal demonstrates West’s “on the one hand/on the other hand” thinking, which indicates the point of the trip is reflection. When she gets home in one month, she needs to decide what to do about her marriage. Here is an example:

… That I’m ugly and disgusting and hideous and gross, and, like, um, a hell to gaze upon? And it planted this little question in my mind, like, am I like holding on to that as a weird point of pride almost? A part of my identity? Because some part of me knows that it’s not true, but believing it makes me interesting and tragic?”

Reading West abuse her body on the page is hard, especially since I’ve done a lot of work to rephrase any language that disparages myself and improve my confidence. West is a fat activist who can’t release her headspace from the trappings of the fat haters, despite knowing those people are wrong. In a similar fashion, West is pro-LGBTQIA, including vocal support of polyamorous people….unless it’s her husband. Acknowledging that she feels two ways isn’t hypocrisy, it’s honest because she’s speak the truth from her perspective. Her anxiety prevents her from wanting to share Aham’s love; her morals know you can’t shape another person into what you want them to be.

One reason West is so challenging to review is that she is wickedly funny, but you cannot capture the humor as a one-liner joke. Instead, the humor builds through stories, situational stuff that concludes in a punch line that isn’t funny without everything before, and believe it or not, publishers frown on reviewers quoting a page or two from their books. So, you’ll just have to read Adult Braces yourself and trust that West is hilarious. In between those crazy-antics passages is true, deep pain, a desire to be seen — until West realizes she has to see herself first. I remember my life coach saying she suspected my spouse and I were co-dependent, so to prove her wrong, I filled up a dozen nights and weekends with interpreting jobs. I think I only hurt myself on that one because there are a lot of driving-while-eating “car dinners” in my near future.

Sometimes, life is funny because it’s weird. While West drives toward Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is only an hour from me, to hang out with her dear friend Samatha Irby (gaaaaah!), she was in Indiana, land of corn and Christ. And then, that’s when West saw a sign from the universe:

I’d just passed a road sign so cosmically unbelievable, so on the nose, that it could only have been my wandering mind playing a trick. I’d simply misread the sign, and that had to be that, because to accept anything else would necessitate belief in a living god — and I was NOT going to let Indiana win that easily. But indeed, after a few moments, there it came again — rushing up to meet me out of the brown midsummer haze, a shiny green ghost, its impossibility belied by cold aluminum sheeting and steel.

EXIT 156
KOKOMO
1 MILE

Kokomo, Indiana, she learns, is famous for the Ku Klux Klan and expelling Ryan White from high school because he contracted AIDs in the 1980s from a blood transfusion. Sometimes, paradise isn’t what you want it to be, and you have to decide on what makes you happy and is good for you.

I highly recommend you get your hands on Adult Braces for its humor, sadness, rawness, feminism — and who doesn’t love a road story?