Nora McInerny on What Makes Life Worth Living After a Lot of Heartbreak

I am Nora I work from home with a six month old and a shih tzu so I am a weirdo do not even try to talk to me afterwards because I would just latch on to you you will give me social cues that say I'm done talking like this is my friend I won't care okay like I won't care you were stuck with me for possibly the rest of your life ask my mailman he is in my basement just kidding he doesn't even come to the door anymore he literally leaves my mail at the end of the driveway and is like please tell me she's not home anyways um why am I here the producers of WNYC are wondering well they looks at their little like vaudeville hook good luck I hit it one a year okay we need to get some facts together for my life so these are some fun facts when we were to start in the year 2014 this was my October 3rd this was October 8th and then this was November 25th so now that I have successfully really brought up the energy in the room like after like all these other like who's that guy like whatever he's like good-looking nobody here even noticed like whatever it's like death a fine like whatever um you know I'm done with my work here I can just probably go you all want me to anyways a couple months ago my sister who's older than me and that's an important detail she's nine years older than me literally in another decade of life and people often are like which one is older that hurts my sister's nine years older than me she's in her in over 40 solidly she said this to me and I was like oh my god Megan have we met like are we in the same family like are we related do we share like most of our DNA should I call Maury because if we were and if you knew me you would know this about me and this is an excerpt from a diary age ten on my birthday okay I couldn't just like give you a shot of the whole page they said some uncharitable things about my mother that I'm not ready to walk back but I'm also not ready to like share with everybody like they should tell you like did I belong in therapy at age 10 like likely and also that I am a person Geraldine should study because I had spent my entire life in pursuit of perfection and it has been a relentless one and often I would say a fruitless one until I was 27 years old and I found it and it was just where I thought it'd be in a boy just like everyone tells you but you know it's true and I deserved it just like you do if you are in New York City and dating you know I'm going to tell you it's out there for you it's not here and this help is this place I'm sorry it's in the Midwest all right it is just come on back because there's guys like this for the first time in my life I was not trying to convince like the wrong dude that I was the right girl I just had something wonderful and fun and easy and Aaron and I had an entire year that was honestly perfect and then this happened and if you don't have an advanced medical degree like your name is it like dr. Gerald E and you're not married like dr. B like you know so that's a picture of Aaron's brain it's like a picture of the inside of it not like it wasn't taken the camera's taken with an MRI and the big gray part is like his brain hard to explain this maybe you already know that see that other parts a grey shadowy part that kinda looks like a smudge I thought it was turns out I was wrong which is why I'm not a doctor but Aaron's doctor pointed out that it's a brain tumor and the kind of brain tumor it is is Stage four glioblastoma which he explained is a medical term for you are like truly like don't google it it's the pits and it is just about as far from perfect as you can get but for the first time in my dumb little life I didn't care Aaron and I took ten days to plan our wedding in this coca-cola commercial huge mr. brand opportunity for them okay we had a baby like a year later the old-fashioned way where you just lay down close your eyes and a nurse just puts a vial of your husband's sperm in you and you just go to work at your ad agency and are like I hope it takes I can't tell what's going on everything's fine nothing happened today and when Aaron died his obituary went viral like what's more viral than BuzzFeed I don't know the whole internet it was seriously everywhere that I looked on the internet was Aaron smiling face and not because it was like 100% factual but because it was true Aaron and I wrote this together and this was true to who he was and how he wanted to be remembered and after he died I had you know the small task of trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my dumb little life and how I wanted to be remembered I'd watched the person that I loved the most in the world the person who was more alive and honestly better than anybody I've ever met sorry present company included I'd watched him die at 35 35 is so young at the time I was 31 so I was like that's kind of old no okay that is that's very young that's quite young and I'd watched him take all of his unrealized potential and its unrealized dreams with him and I knew in my heart that if I did anything except everything it was going to be the biggest regret of my life so I took inspiration from Aaron and for my dad was also a nurturing figure in my life as you can tell and I turned their deaths into my midlife crisis right on time my dad died at 64 so just click and I decided that I was going to do everything I was going to do everything but the first thing I had to do was quit my job which is like anything are there financial professionals here yeah okay no of course I know okay like are they interesting never they don't go to things okay they're busy like figuring out what you should do with your money and you're supposed to do with your money is like not quit your job in your widowed mom of one but okay I wrote that book des I was talking about and it killed a year ago today which is bonkers yeah and if you if you have a phone I'd like to use to just take the time right now to take your phone it ignore me and just order it like I don't know if my four-year-old is college material honestly I don't think he has based on some of the stuff he's brought home from six twelve but if he is this is this is how it's going to happen I started this organization where self still kickin you sell these shirts and then we give the money to people who need it and so I did that for like eight months and it turned out that's like not a business like so it's a non-profit now and I have a new accountant so good for me and I started this podcast called terrible thanks for asking with American public media unlike my book it's free it's also available for download again while you have your phones up while you're listening to everything I say well you're going to do whatever you know I want text me your social security number your mother's make names download this podcast then I fell in love this a family photo it's like current ish the guy that I've my arm around I just went do a little audience participation he claims on his driver's license should be 511 I'm six feet tall I want everyone here do you agree he has five pan on a good day okay thank you I'm bringing that feed back home to Minneapolis to somebody who insist on lying on a government document that's neither here or there and then we had a baby that just like that came out of me recently it's very graphic and I won't get into how he was made it was gross so maybe this is why my sister's like Nora's just so like nut she doesn't give a darn about what anybody thinks like maybe that's what maybe it's cause like I pierced my ears when I was 32 I don't know got a tattoo those are edgy nobody else here has lon like like here on the fringes of society with this crazy stuff I'm doing I don't know why my sister thinks that like lord knows I'm not going to ask her but like I can tell you the truth about everything that I just told you which is that I know for a fact a scientific fact Geralyn do not challenge me on this do not okay that I am NOT special like I am NOT special and neither is anybody in this room all the things that I told you about the good ones but most importantly the bad ones are things that happen every day they happen to everybody is always something that happens to someone else until you are that someone else and I also know that I have not filled up my punch card unlike personal tragedies all that bad stuff could just happen again except for my dad dying because I only had one which is tragic so I've been such a good product of two gay dads anyways the scariest thing I did since Aaron died was falling in love again I was not so much concerned what other people would think if people are decent and I'll say it behind your back which I loved but I won't say behind my back like I say it right to me and I was like Nora who do you think you are like do you think you deserve gets struck by lightning twice it's bad now do you think you deserve to strike gold twice do you think you are the kind of person who deserves like being I'm like sad about this guy's dead but also I kind of want to French this one like you think you can just be in love with two guys at the same time like I know you came of age in the late 90s you're not Joey Potter alright that's the kind of talk I gave myself like you listen you know what I know like you're really into like your haircut and like your mob lipstick you are not Buffy the Vampire Slayer you could be you know why she fell in love with two guys who were already dead alright okay nothing bad was going to happen to them unless they stuffed into the Sun or got like stabbed with like Oh what in spite but like Buffy was not going to let that happen she could protect him in a way that you can't protect this dumb mortal guy who lies about being 511 like he for sure is going to die again and guess what like so will your baby you know there's like that weird thing about like oh like don't on you in you're pregnant chapter 12 weeks because like the baby does his best if you just hold that inside to yourself instead I was like what if I just never told any when I was pregnant and I just just never told anybody because the truth is like your baby can die just like any time sorry you're pregnant like doesn't have to be 12 weeks or 40 that baby's going to die like maybe 55 he might be 500 I don't know these for sure gun die so let's just not tell anybody that I'm pregnant and Matthew is like maybe that sounds like so mentally healthy just like whatever you want to do just keep wearing keep wearing your weird big clothes and avoiding social interaction whatever you got to do whatever you got to do he's a saint and I wrote a book which is awesome and it feels so good it's not all just like standing in front of like really attractive like New Yorkers like who can see like they have this weird would sit there stuff like this new ignore why are you showing us an Amazon product review of a snow brush why am I doing this it's not about the snow brush okay it's about Lisa D let me tell you a little story about Lisa D she's like to Amazon reviews in her life one despite start glowing review the Hopkins 532 Malory 26 inch snow brush it's got one reviews from Lisa shoot she's love the other ones a two-star review left for my book now there are couple ways of like looking at this like one nor what if you just read the good reviews get out of my face geraldine not not what I'm here for and like or like nor couldn't you just be happy for the snow brush like he did what it was supposed to do like couldn't you just be happy for Lisa she found the snow brush she's been looking for her entire life like awesome you're wonderful people the next one is like who is this who's like so in love with the snow brush but like the book that I wrote about my beautiful that husband she was like - I'm sorry just - not even up great just to max max and like the final way of looking at it is one that is more approved by my therapist who is also like hey Nora I take your chill pill like friendly reminder there daily and that point of view is basically like I wonder if I should be focusing more of my energy on getting five-star reviews from people named Lisa D or living my life in a way that would have gotten a five-star review from the best person I've ever met who lived life in the best way possible who if you were here right now would be in the back being like you told me you'd stop I'll never stop he also like on is definitely please stop picking your nose and I was like I'm not I'm not absolutely whatever this is Aaron's obituary that went viral this is my reminder every day that one I'm married to the funniest dude in the world and to that I have a choice about the way I live and the way that I'm remembered and one are the facts which I just told you and prove that I'm a little touch-and-go okay I'm a mixed bag I contain multitudes and the other is the truth and the truth is that I have never been perfect and I wasn't meant to be the truth is that I did get to fall in love with a wonderful person and that now I'm in love with another wonderful person one of them is dead and one of them will definitely die the truth is really uplifting as you can tell so that your visit I tried a lot of things and I wasn't good at all of them but I tried anyways when I am start anything new like I just think of it this way like what's the worst that could happen Nora what's the worst it's not this this is just a guarantee usually I'm like oh god I'm going to fail Geraldine is like oh new new science coming out of this evening I'll be like really embarrassed like that is literally not the worst that could happen and neither is this this is also just a guarantee in life the worst that can happen is not that you and your loved ones all die and that you die of maybe embarrassment or failure the worst thing that could happen is that you end up living a life that is all facts but no truth a life that you never intended to live because you wanted to make Lisa D happy instead of the people who mattered to you or because you were so concerned with trying to be perfect but you just forgot to let yourself be happy Thanks [Applause]

Channel: The Greene Space at WNYC & WQXR

Views: 18,851

Rating: 4.9058824 out of 5

Keywords: Nora McInerny, #heartbreakers, love, loss, wisdom, cancer

Id: eP2mPgPkKJc

Length: 14min 33sec (873 seconds)

Published: Thu May 25 2017