Lauren Martin - The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

A comment from my mother

Loud trucks

A bad photo

Strangers telling me I look like Claire Danes

Missed trains

Delayed planes

Long days at the office

Aggressive emails

Instagram stories

My face

My hair

My weight

Loud groups in small restaurants

Unreturned text messages

This book is a collection of every bad mood Ive ever had. Every fight, every breakdown, every moment lost. A map of every place I lost control because of some insignificant bumpa look, a comment, a thought. A list of every night I wasted in stress, in tears, in hate, in judgment, and every morning I squanderedmissing the sunrise, the smell of the coffee, the warmth of my husband, the simple blessing of waking upbecause something didnt feel right. Its a collection of all those moments, all those emotions, all the tiny, insignificant triggers that pushed me into them, and what I learned from it all.

After five years, a finished book, and hundreds (thousands?) of bottles of wine, I am still a moody woman. A woman who feels things deeplythe sting of a remark, the bite of a bad day, the pain of an unflattering photo. I am still passionate and sensitive and, at times, fragile. I still want to turn back some days, scream into the void, and smash the life Ive constructed in a fit of anger. The difference now is that I am no longer controlled by these urges, these feelings, these thoughts. I am no longer a woman ruled by her moods.

I am no longer a woman who walks through the door ready to burst. A woman who assumes the moods of others, absorbing them and passing them off as her own. A woman who reacts and retaliates and rewinds scenarios like worn-out cassette tapes. No. None of that anymore. Now I expel. I radiate. I pass through. I know what my moods arewhat provokes them, irritates them, and assuages themand because I know what they are, I know how to transform them. Into love. Into compassion. Into good moods that collect and gather and make up a good life.

Five years ago, when I was younger and blonder and on track with the idea I had in my mind of where and how things should be, life was not good. It didnt get good, and I mean really good, until about six months ago, when this book was almost finished and I was sitting in my bedroom in my apartment in Brooklyn and realized I hadnt fought with my husband in over a year. I mean really fought, the way we used to, when I felt attacked and would say something so unnecessary, so wounding, I was surprised he never left me. And when I realized I no longer spent hours fretting over an unreturned text message or a cyst on my chin. When I went home for my twenty-ninth birthday and didnt spend the Amtrak ride back obsessing over a comment my mother made. It took a while because I had to go through each mood, find out what it was telling me, and practice on it, again and again, but I finally did it. And as I sit here now, reveling in the newfound comfort of knowing myself and the feelings that pulse through me, I cant stop thinking about how I would never have gotten here if it hadnt been for a stranger in a bar.

* * *

We met by chance on a cold, wet night in the middle of January. I was twenty-four, had just moved in with my boyfriend (now husband), and was miserable. Not sad. Not depressed. Just full of a white-hot agitation. There was something stirring at the bottom of my soul. Something had latched on and wouldnt get off.

I couldnt go back to the apartment this way. Not after last week, when Id felt the same heaviness, arrived home under the same cloud, and yelled at Jay over the dishwasher. You unpack it so aggressively, I said. Wed only moved in together three months earlier and I was already sabotaging it. Whats wrong with me? Why cant I just be happy? These were the questions that plagued me as I walked up from the fluorescent underground of the subway onto the dark streets of Brooklyn. I needed to find something to soothe me, to knock off whatever had clamped itself to me. The only solution I could think of was alcohol, and the only bar I knew was five blocks past our apartment. Walking past my building, head down against the cold and the possibility of running into Jay or the doorman, I opened the heavy metal door with the neon sign above it, and thats when I saw her.

She had auburn hair, short and curled. She wore a mauve skirt and black pumps and was sitting alone nursing a martini. She wasnt beautiful in a traditional New York, supermodel way. I dont even remember what her face looked like. All I remember is that I couldnt stop wanting to catch a glimpse of her. She had what people describe as an aura. She was one of those women you pass on the street and momentarily transplant your consciousness to and imagine going home to their world. Their beautiful house. Their handsome husband. Their perfect life.