Author turns dismal childhood into laughs

Are people who need people really the luckiest people in the world? Not a chance, according to Lane Moore, author of the memoir“How to Be Alone (If You Want To, And Even If You Don’t).”Moore is a New York-based comedy writer.

Are people who need people really the luckiest people in the world? Not a chance, according to Lane Moore, author of the memoir “How to Be Alone (If You Want To, And Even If You Don’t).” Moore, a New Yorkbased comedy writer, former Cosmopolitan editor and creator of Tinder Live would insist she’s both the neediest and unluckiest; but hey, maybe the scrappiest, too?

Moore had a decidedly dismal childhood. She doesn’t divulge details, though she alludes to abuse and neglect, stretches of feeling unsafe, a father who slept in the basement and “grow[ing] up without real parenting or boundaries.” Her essays explore the personal aftermath of such an upbringing: forming “anxious attachments” that have sent lovers and friends fleeing; a postrunaway stint spent sleeping in her car; and breaking down in tears at otherwise benign moments, like having to identify an emergency contact. “It makes me feel as I have always felt, very deeply: that I belong to no one,” she writes.

Moore doesn’t speak to her family, but the damage is done, leaving her both hardened and ever on the verge of breaking. Without a familial safety net, she spirals into existential panic when exposed to things both horrendous — like her first Brooklyn apartment, a roachinfested drug den — and utterly well-meaning, like an invitation to an “Orphan Thanksgiving” frustratingly comprised not of orphans, but of peers who couldn’t find cheap flights home.

Moore vacillates between being hopeful and defeatist, between seeking movie-worthy romantic love and darting off on exhaustive emotional sprints. In each case, all roads lead back to the family she didn’t have — and the feeling that behind every door but hers were the luckiest people in the world.

Moore’s writing often reads like an angsty teen’s diary: sometimes overwrought, sometimes comically self-pitying, sometimes dismissively breezy, and sometimes prone to triumphant swells of self-approval.

Still, Moore’s story offers insights about the effects of childhood trauma and our capacity for resilience. An admission that her creative success has amassed her “a lot of internet friends with whom I trade voice memos and GIFs … [but] I do not have anyone I would call if I were dying,” is a sobering statement on our culture — and a reminder that we could all use a little more connection, familial or otherwise.