Hannah Hart - Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded

H ello!

My name is Hannah Hart. Some of you may know me from my superglamorous life as an Internet demigod who is so unavoidably famous and successful that it borders on the obscene. Were living in an era of such constant output via social media that all you need is a phone and a Wi-Fi connection to start creating a public persona. Got an opinion? Blog about it. Somebody said something rude? Blast em across all platforms. Took a cool picture of a snail? POST THAT SHIT.

Others of you may not know me at all. Maybe youve never even heard of me. But somehow you ended up holding this book. (Isnt the cover neat? What pulled you in? Was it the gold foil? As I said, SUPERGLAMOROUS life.) And that means you are about to get to know me really well . Almost too well .

And while I am a proud social media titan operating in the age of the overshare, its only natural that I might need some privacy too. Which is why Ive never shared anything quite like this before. But its not because I didnt want to. Its because I simply wasnt ready. Some things just take time to process, and one must have healthy boundaries of time and space in place in order to do so. Simply put:

BOUNDARIES + PROCESSING = BUFFERING

Buffering is that time you spend waiting for the pixels of your life to crystallize into a clearer picture; its a time of reflection, a time of pause, a time for regaining your composure or readjusting your course. We all have a limited amount of mental and emotional bandwidth, and some of lifes episodes take a long time to fully load.

Youre probably wondering, Hannah, what are these deep, dark, until now unshareable episodes you speak of? Well, youll have to read on to find out, but theyre mostly things like:

Schizophrenia

Sexuality

Questions of faith

Questions of fame

Psychedelic visions in the desert

Self-harm

Sex

Spiders

... and more!

I called this introduction Trigger Warning because I wanted to give you guys a heads up that there wont be any other trigger warnings in this book. I did this intentionally because I dont think that there are many trigger warnings in real life. Whats important is to learn how to identify what triggers you, and to set up your systems to cope after the incident has occurred. So get a cup of tea, read near a friend, or do whatever it is you do to comfort yourself should the need arise.

Now, without further ado, lets go behind the scenes (screens?) of this life that I call mine. I think Im ready to start. And thank you for reading. Selfishly, I wanted to write this to feel less alone. Selflessly, I hope it helps you feel less alone too.

Love,

P.S. Follow your @harto.

The names and identifying characteristics of several individuals featured in this book have been changed to protect their privacy.

Glamorous life = drinking Merlot and making fancy frittatas in front of a camera in my kitchen.

The Uses of Sorrow

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.

Mary Oliver

First Id like to thank everyone for putting up with my pretentious ass inserting a poem at the top of my acknowledgments.

Next I would like to thank my publisher, HarperCollins, and the two editors who worked with me to make this book possible. You showed me a great deal of patience and understanding during the creation of this book. Thank you for letting me miss so many deadlines and helping craft this book into the creation it is today. I am very proud of it, and very proud of us.

Thank you to my manager, partner, and friend, Linnea Toney, for taking on bearing of the brunt of my anxieties with such strength and compassion. You made this book possible. Thank you for creating the space Id need to finish it, and showing such belief in me during my times of exhaustion and doubt.

Id like to thank my literary agent Jodi Reamer and my team at UTA. Together we do great work. Im excited for future projects to come. Id like to thank Helen and all the Have a Hart Day City Captains who volunteer each month and bring joy to the lives of those around them. I am honored to be in such good company as yours.

Id like to thank my friends, family, and lovers who I have had the privilege to walk beside.

Thank you to Naomi, my monk, sister, and friend.

Thank you to Maggie, my sun, sister, and friend.

And lastly, Id like to thank my mother, Annette, for being the bravest person I know. You inspire me each and every day. You taught me right and wrong and the flexibility in between. You taught me forgiveness and compassion for all Gods creatures. And above all, you taught me to never give up. I cant thank you enough for that.

My Drunk Kitchen:
A Guide to Eating, Drinking, and Going with Your Gut

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My mom, Annette, as a young woman.

I guess we should start from the beginning.

I was born on November 2, 1986. I grew up in Burlingame, California, a city nestled into the Bay Area just south of San Francisco that smelled like roses and chocolate, divided between the affluent hills and the low-income part of town where we lived. Its called the flat-part. Our house was by the railroad tracks and a sound wall that led to the freeway. We faced a car repair shop and could hear the almost constant noise of things being taken apart and put back together.

On Christmas Eve 1987, when I was a year old, the cops knocked on the door and took my mother, Annette, to the hospital for fourteen days because shed had a nervous breakdown. Some told me it was because she had called the cops saying my dad was attacking her with a knife. Others told me it was because she had attempted suicide. From that day forward the world seemed to paint my mother as an unreliable source. A liar even. Because no one could tell if what she was saying was true or not.

The truth was that she was never a liar. My mother is one of the most honest people Ive ever known. My mother is so honest, in fact, that shell tell you about the things that no one else can see or hear. She calls this her vivid imagination, and its what enables her to be such a talented artist. Once, as a kid, I asked her to draw me a bath. She put pen to paper, and without ever lifting the tip from the page she drew and shaded a claw-foot bathtub. I thought she was magnificent.

Between 1987 and 2003, there were fourteen incident reports filed by Child Protective Services (CPS) that led to to my younger sister and me being removed from the house. In 2003, just after I turned seventeen, I was emancipated and my six-year-old half sister, Maggie, was placed into the foster system. The next year, I got into UC Berkeley, took out student loans, and was awarded some need-based scholarships so that I could attend. My life had been a case study in charity and gratitude.