Please Like Me (But Keep Away) (Nothing Like I Imagined)
Turning forty has a way of making even the most recognisable faces in Hollywood stop and take stock. For Mindy Kaling, writer, actor, director, and New York Times bestselling author, that reckoning arrives with characteristic wit and surprising vulnerability. In this essay from her collection Nothing Like I Imagined, she turns the lens on friendship, the peculiar terror of wanting to be liked, and the social anxiety she traces all the way back to a nine-year-old's birthday party and some deeply unfortunate white cheese. Some fears, it turns out, age rather poorly. The woman who cheerfully photographed herself twelve times at a single Oscars party is also someone quietly bracing for judgement at every turn. That tension is where the real comedy lives. Kaling writes with the kind of honesty that feels like a confession whispered across a dinner table, warm but slightly mortifying for everyone involved. Short enough to read in one go yet substantial enough to stay with you, this essay is a genuinely funny, quietly touching look at the cost of keeping up friendships and the instinct to flee from them entirely. It's a small piece, but it lands well.
- Author: Mindy Kaling
- Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
- Genre: Literary Fiction
- ISBN: 978-1542017213
- Pages: 25 pages