I Had A Panic Attack Reading Lena Dunham's Memoir

CW: Death + Me Being Drama For No Reason

OF COURSE I was excited to read Famesick by Lena Dunham.

OF COURSE I preordered it.

I’m addicted to memoirs, especially those involving celebrities, I’m a fan of Dunham’s work and I’m fascinated by wealthy white women’s relationships to their physical health (probably because I am obsessed with my own physical health, see recent tik tok search history below).

I picked up my hardcover copy of Famesick at McNally Jackson in Williamsburg on release day and I’m pretty sure the cashier, a fellow millennial white woman, mumbled “great choice” as she handed it over the counter. I smiled, eagerly running my bare hands across the pleasingly textured, Alice in Wonderland-inspired cover.

I planned to dive into Dunham World right away, bringing the book along to my gastroenterology appointment in midtown. It rested inside my tote bag on a bed of lip gloss stains and old receipts as my doctor brought a medical student in to witness my rectal exam. The medical student was, of course, a young attractive man who avoided eye contact as he handed me a wet paper towel to “clean myself up” (his vaguely erotic words) after the exam.

I complained sufficiently to the gastroenterologist that I keep a strict, low acid diet but STILL struggle with symptoms of GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease), so frustrating, UGH! Then I immediately went to a cafe and ordered my second coffee of the day, a fancy “Kyoto Latte” with regular milk and extra sweetener. I started Famesick on the M train ride home.

Dunham opens the book with the making of her first ever short film at age 20. She recounts flying to Park City after it was accepted into a critically acclaimed film festival. I thought of my own first short film, the one I made last summer, at age 33. Memories of the mistakes I made during production flashed into my consciousness and I felt my heart begin to sink. “It was your first short”, someone said. “Of course you made mistakes.” Well, okay, but you don’t get a “first short” at 33 the same way you do at 20, and this wasn’t supposed to even be a “first short” this was supposed to be IT. This was supposed to change my life, to finally prove to some showrunner somewhere that I should be hired as a writer instead of an assistant. This was supposed to……

I kept reading. Lena graduated liberal arts college and entered immediately into a chic community of A24-by-way-of-Mumblecore cool kids. At 23, her feature film premiered and earned prizes at Sundance and everyone who was anyone loved it so much that HBO bought her pilot on spec and she was showrunning a mega-hit, culture-defining, award-winning series by 25.

I tried ignoring my body’s signals as I turned the page. My chest tightened and sweat bubbled on my upper lip - probably the latte. Probably the acid reflux. Fine, I would stop sipping but I would keep reading. I HAD to keep reading. How else would I participate in the discourse? Or get the tea on Jack Antonoff? Then the nausea hit, a familiar swirling in my gut, followed by a sensation that I exist outside of my surroundings, disjointed from reality, like none of my circumstances are playing out at the same frame rate as me. I felt like the subway floor beneath my feet was moving in real time while my body was stuck in slow motion.

So……the first 40 pages of Lena Dunham’s memoir gave me a panic attack.

I’d felt these same symptoms emerge only two weeks prior, while taking an in-person writing workshop (could not possibly recommend this workshop enough and have taken it twice so if anyone wants the details please comment or DM me). The teacher prompted us to write “the story of our lives” in a succinct amount of time and I instinctively wrote “the story of wasting my life” at the top of my page. I wrote about being the only student in my high school biology class to receive a perfect score on the fetal pig dissection.

This perfect score haunts me due to the alternate reality I’ve conjured around it, in which I pursued my “perfect” dissection skills into AP Bio and then a pre-med degree and then med school (where I witnessed other people’s rectal exams yippee!) and then a surgical residency and went on to live basically INSIDE OF Grey’s Anatomy/The Pitt. In that reality, no one could ever question what I do because I’d be a doctor, goddamnit, that’s SOMETHING. You can’t be “a doctor, kind of” like you can be a “writer, kind of, or trying to be”. When you’re a doctor, people don’t ask where they can see some of your work, they just assume you’ve saved lives. They just know you are smart and worthy and you are good. You’re not waiting on a miracle when you’re a doctor, on HBO to buy your pilot on spec, on posting the right substack note at the right, most viral time, on convincing some exec over coffee that YOUR podcast idea is different and better than everyone else’s podcast idea. You don’t need a podcast, you don’t need a pilot, you don’t even need content, you’re a DOCTOR! I could have been a DOCTOR!!!!!!!!

In my writing workshop prompt, under “the story of wasting my life”, I wrote:

“I chose to give so much of my time to men. I chose to quit my really impressive TV job to move to the suburbs with this older guy who was starting a business. I know it’s your twenties and you’re allowed to make mistakes but I wish I made better ones and I wish I never quit that job. My peers who didn’t quit their jobs own houses now and have families and I have credit card debt and I still don’t get paid to write or to do anything interesting. I can’t shake the feeling that if I died tomorrow there would be nothing to celebrate. There would be no accomplishments to be in aww [sic] of. I will leave a note somewhere, somehow that they should invite my high school biology teacher to the funeral so she can tell them I could have been a scientist because I was the only student in my high school class to get a perfect 100% score on the fetal pig dissection.”

JESUS CHRIST. I know. I know! The DRAMA!!!!!

It’s like, TAKE A WALK! Eat a popsicle. Everything’s fine.

I did take a walk, after class, after a friend texted me through my lingering panic symptoms and told me she related and made me feel understood and safe.

Had the class been virtual, I would’ve quit that prompt halfway through, slammed my laptop shut and taken a Klonopin, then spent the remainder of the afternoon in a dark room. But I was paying to be there in person, so I stayed through the discomfort, the bubbling sweat, the tightening chest. When my surroundings started to go all whacky, I looked at my feet, noticed them on the ground. Noticed a chair against the wall in the corner. I tried to breathe a little slower and then I participated in the next prompt, which involved writing my own life story from the perspective of someone, or something, that inspires me.

I immediately thought of this scene, from Baskets:

“My life’s in disarray right now, Mama.”

“Whose isn’t?”

Thank G*d I stayed for the perspective shift.

I hate to sound exactly like the kind of millennial white woman that preorders Lena Dunham’s memoir from McNally Jackson in Williamsburg, but sometimes I am just so utterly overwhelmed by art’s power to melt my shame into gratitude for this wild experience of being human!!!!! Art can really have me wanting to print this Adobe stock image, frame it and hang it above my bed:

I’ve been panicking a lot lately about what my life SHOULD look like or what it COULD have looked like or what it WILL become once I achieve the thing that changes it forever. If the miracle happens, if my short film comes out perfect, if the right person sees it, if the right person reads this, if I manifest the right thing at the right time and if it goes off without a hitch, if I wake up early tomorrow and am somehow not tired or anxious at all and don’t open instagram right away and instead eat a meal and walk to the gym I signed up for a month ago but still haven’t entered once, if I finish, if I follow through, if I do what I said I would, if I stick to it, if I get a perfect 100%, if I, if I, if, if, if, if.

I remember envying my mom when I was eight years old, because she was already married (to a celebrity, no less) and had a house and kids and several cute pets, whereas I would have to wait YEARS before finding out IF I could even GET any or ONE of those things for myself. I wanted to know if I would be successful and happy and be loved. I wanted to know THEN and I want to know NOW!

Meanwhile, I was only 8. Meanwhile I’m only 34 and my life is unfolding in real time, often in disarray (whose isn’t), and I almost always have the option to notice it, breathe, try the next prompt, find a new perspective, keep the lights on, go for a walk, tell someone else how crazy I feel, and just live. Sometimes I don’t have that option and I really do need meds and a dark room. Sometimes I need to watch hours of colonoscopy footage and that’s okay too.

I haven’t picked Famesick back up yet. To be clear, I only read half of chapter one, which is titled “I Get Ideas”. Maybe if I’d continued on to further chapters like “Hostage Situation”, I could have recalled more quickly that chapter one never tells the whole story, it’s only the beginning.