I Miss You When I Blink: Essays by Mary Laura Philpott

I didn't know before I started reading this that this was Philpott's description of basically how she got out of a depressive cycle in her life, where she wanted to escape from her (perfect) life and couldn't figure out why she was depressed. Some of the essays have nothing to do with that--they are just funny stories about her life. But as a whole, the overarching narrative of this collection of essays is about how she came through this realization that she didn't love her life, and how she could fix that.

These essays were beautifully written, and I felt like I could relate to Philpott on a lot of levels. I related to her perfectionism and overachiever status, and she seemed like such a normal person that I wanted to get to know her.

I feel like I could have read this book 10 times slower and gotten a lot more out of it. As it was, I read it pretty fast, and enjoyed it and giggled at times and felt feelings at other times, but I think I missed some of the deep stuff that Philpott was writing about. I wish I'd kept better mental notes about which essays I liked and which ones stood out to me, but I don't ever do that very well when I can't fold a page over (this was an e-book). So there were definitely really good moments in this book that I wish I could reference, but overall, it was a good read.