Meghan Rienks - Youre Not Special ; A Memoir (Sort-of Memoir)

Note to reader: Certain names and other personal details have been changed.

Gallery Books

An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2020 by Meghan Rienks

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books hardcover edition May 2020

GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or .

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

Interior design by Michelle Marchese

Jacket design by Emma A. Van Deun

Front cover illustration by Shutterstock

Author Photographs by Taylor Krause

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020934868

ISBN 978-1-9821-1010-9

ISBN 978-1-9821-1012-3 (ebook)

To my younger self, you always wanted a reason for the shit you dealt with.

This was it (I think).

I was born on August 4, 1993, at 8:32 p.m. in a suburb outside San Francisco. Which means Im a Leo sun, Pisces moon, and Aquarius rising. Not that you asked. I grew up as an only child in a town of fewer than eight thousand people without a Starbucks in sight. (Cue the gasps of quirky relatable tweens everywhere.) I was raised by two hippie parents who deprived me of refined sugar and showered me with way too much information about STDs and safe sex. Ill be blunt: I had a weird childhood. I grew up at protests and Grateful Dead concerts wearing tie-dyed T-shirts and Bob Marley beanies. I was basically a stoner baby.

Most only children will tell you that they werent spoiled, that theyre great at sharing, and that their adolescent years were not comparable to Eloise at the Plaza. Most of them are lying. I mean, maybe not about the Eloise thing, cause I dont think kids really grow up in hotels, unless your life is sweet and your name is Zack or Cody. Dont get me wrong: not having to fight over the last hot dog and being able to watch whatever cartoon you want on TV was an awesome perk of having no siblings, but ultimately it was really, really, really lonely. In order to stay entertained, Id talk to myself. My options for social interaction were limited to adults (yawn) or the cast of characters I had created in my head. I chose the latter. Id like to say that its a common trait among only children, but I dont know that. Maybe it was just me and my flair for the dramatic. Which was pretty much cemented when I wasnt even three years old and my mother caught me practicing crying in front of the mirror. In that moment she decided that her toddler was expressive, not emotionally unstable. From there she made the pivotal choice to enroll me in theater instead of exorcising me. This begins the era that I like to call Meghan Has No Concept of Failure and Lizzie McGuire Changed My Life.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to grow up to be a superstar. Im pretty sure I got this term from the iconic feature film Life-Size, starring Tyra Banks. Like Eve, I would be a model, actress, singer, dancer, and any other form of performance where I was the center of attention. By the time I was in elementary school, I was enrolled in singing classes, where I belted Christina Aguilera songs in crop tops that showed off my belly rolls. I was in various dance classes, all displaying some form of cultural appropriationas I was a plump blonde sporting a bhindi and a sari. (My white parents really fucked up on that one.) Finally, I did theater, wheredespite that I longed for the lead role in every productionI also had crippling stage fright. The entire week of dress rehearsals, I would sleepwalk to my parents room every night until they woke up to see their chubby-cheeked ten-year-old daughter looming over their bed, mumbling something about a three-legged cat named Frampton. Through school plays, community theater shows, countless dance recitals, talent shows, and an unimaginable number of singing showcaseswhere I refused to perform anything but Avril Lavigne and EvanescenceI found that the arts were my calling. Surprisingly, my parents were behind me 110 percent when I told them I wanted to pursue a career in acting in college. You might think it stemmed from their unwavering love and support, but the truth of the matter is that my only above-average SAT score was in English. My other option was to be a poet, which is just as lucrative as acting.

Now, dont get the wrong idea about my parents. Despite their love of polenta, homeopathic medicine, and their political affiliation with the Green Party (Go, Ralph Nader!), theyre academic folk. My mother has her PhD in social psychology, and my father works with juvenile delinquents across California (which directly hurt my teen dating life). I was the child of two save-the-world bookworms who cheated her way through high school and whose biggest ambition was to be on Disney Channel. I know that it sounds like Im calling myself dumb, and while I favor self-deprecating humor, Im also aware that Im not stupid. But Id be lying if I said I didnt struggle with school more than my peers did. This was largely due to my battle with ADHD and my parents ignoring a middle school teachers concerns and desire that I get fully tested for it. I think my mother chalked it up to my need for attention rather than my inability to pay attention. Some of her friends kids were socially inept, homeschooled, or shoplifting from Mervyns, so I think she just wanted to keep up the illusion that I was better than them.

While I didnt inherit my parents natural passion for education, Marin County as a whole was pumping out Ivy League kids left and right. The standard of academic excellence was set pretty high. All my friends had private tutors, and their extracurriculars seldom had anything to do with genuine interests but rather how theyd look on a college application. I, on the other hand, had a tutor because my parents refused to treat my ADHD with anything other than a Just focus more and a (superhot) twenty-two-year-old college grad. He basically just did my math homework for me while I entertained him with stories of the drunken debauchery I had gotten up to the previous weekend.

In Marin, the summer before your senior year of high school is typically spent in a precollege program at a university you hope to attend the following fall. Ideally it specializes in the major youre planning to pursue. Has there been a more white-privilege sentence? Throw on an organic hemp sweat suit, a BPA-free thermos full of fair trade coffee with almond milk, and finish it off with a pair of Birkenstocks, and youve got a pretty good picture of the Marin-ites. We did VSCO girl before iPhones. Despite my lack of interest in school, forgoing college was not only not an option, it wasnt a conversation or even a thought I thought I was allowed to think. Plus, I couldnt ignore the fact that the TV show