Furiously Happy (2 page)

There's something about depression that allows you (or sometimes forces you) to explore depths of emotion that most “normal” people could never conceive of. Imagine having a disease so overwhelming that your mind causes you to want to murder yourself. Imagine having a malignant disorder that no one understands. Imagine having a dangerous affliction that even
you
can't control or suppress. Imagine all the people living life in peace. Imagine the estate of John Lennon not suing me for using that last line. Then imagine that same (often fatal) disease being one of the most misunderstood disorders … one that so few want to talk about and one that so many of us can never completely escape from.

*   *   *

I've often thought that people with severe depression have developed such a well for experiencing extreme emotion that they might be able to experience extreme joy in a way that “normal” people also might never understand, and that's what FURIOUSLY HAPPY is all about. It's about taking those moments when things are fine and making them
amazing
, because those moments are what make us who we are, and they're the same moments we take into battle with us when our brains declare war on our very existence. It's the difference between “surviving life” and “living life.” It's the difference between “taking a shower” and “teaching your monkey butler how to shampoo your hair.” It's the difference between being “sane” and being “furiously happy.”

Some people might think that this “furiously happy” movement is just an excuse to be stupid and irresponsible and invite a herd of kangaroos over to your house without telling your husband first because you suspect he would say no since he's never particularly liked kangaroos. And that would be ridiculous because
no one would invite
a herd
of kangaroos into their house.
Two is the limit. I speak from personal experience. My husband, Victor, says that “none” is the new limit. I say he should have been clearer about that before I rented all those kangaroos.

The FURIOUSLY HAPPY movement sparked the Silver Ribbon concept, an idea that grew from a blog post and resonated with thousands of people, in spite of the fact that none of us ever actually
made
any silver ribbons because we were all too depressed to do crafts. Here's the original post:

When cancer sufferers fight, recover, and go into remission we laud their bravery. We wear ribbons to celebrate their fight. We call them survivors. Because they are.

When depression sufferers fight, recover, and go into remission we seldom even know, simply because so many suffer in the dark … ashamed to admit something they see as a personal weakness … afraid that people will worry, and more afraid that they won't. We find ourselves unable to do anything but cling to the couch and force ourselves to breathe.

When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive. We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker … but as survivors. Survivors who don't get pats on the back from coworkers who congratulate them on making it. Survivors who wake to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand.

I hope to one day see a sea of people all wearing silver ribbons as a sign that they understand the secret battle, and as a celebration of the victories made each day as we individually pull ourselves up out of our foxholes to see our scars heal, and to remember what the sun looks like.

I hope one day to be better, and I'm pretty sure I will be. I hope one day I live in a world where the personal fight for mental stability is viewed with pride and public cheers instead of shame. I hope it for you too.

But until then, it starts slowly.

I haven't hurt myself in three days. I sing strange battle songs to myself in the darkness to scare away the demons. I am a fighter when I need to be.

And for that I am proud.

I celebrate every one of you reading this. I celebrate the fact that you've fought your battle and continue to win. I celebrate the fact that you may not understand the battle, but you pick up the baton dropped by someone you love until they can carry it again. I survived and I remind myself that each time we go through this, we get a little stronger. We learn new tricks on the battlefield. We learn them in terrible ways, but we use them. We don't struggle in vain.

We win.

We are alive.

*   *   *

And we are.

I want this book to help people fighting with mental illness, and also those who have friends and family who are affected by it. I want to show people that there can be advantages to being “a bit touched,” as my grandmother put it. I want my daughter to understand what's wrong with me and what's right with me. I want to give hope. I want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, but without selling any Coca-Cola products.

This book is less a sequel to my last one and more a collection of bizarre essays and conversations and confused thoughts stuck together by spilled boxed wine and the frustrated tears of baffled editors who have no choice but to accept my belief that it's perfectly acceptable to make up something if you need a word that doesn't already exist, and that punctuation is really more of a suggestion than a law. It's called “concoctulary,”
2
y'all. I hope you will find it to be the perfect follow-up to my last book … strange, funny, honest, and more than a little bit peculiar.

But in the best possible way.

Like all of us.

—
Jenny Lawson
3

 

 

Furiously Happy. Dangerously Sad.

“You're not crazy. STOP CALLING YOURSELF CRAZY,” my mom says for the eleventy billionth time. “You're just
sensitive
. And … a little …
odd
.”

“And fucked up enough to require an assload of meds,” I add.

“That's not crazy,” my mom says as she turns back to scrubbing the dishes. “You're
not
crazy and you need to stop saying you are. It makes you sound like a lunatic.”

I laugh because this is a familiar argument. This is the same one we've had a million times before, and the same one we'll have a million times again, so I let it lie. Besides, she's technically right. I'm not
technically
crazy, but “crazy” is a much simpler way of labeling what I really am.

According to the many shrinks I've seen in the last two decades I am a high-functioning depressive with severe anxiety disorder, moderate clinical depression, and mild self-harm issues that stem from an impulse-control disorder. I have avoidant personality disorder (which is like social anxiety disorder on speed) and occasional depersonalization disorder (which makes me feel utterly detached from reality, but in less of a “this LSD is awesome” kind of a way and more of a “I wonder what my face is doing right now” and “It sure would be nice to feel emotions again” sort of thing). I have rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune issues. And, sprinkled in like paprika over a mentally unbalanced deviled egg, are things like mild OCD and trichotillomania—the urge to pull one's hair out—which is always nice to end on, because whenever people hear the word “mania” they automatically back off and give you more room on crowded airplanes. Probably because you're not supposed to talk about having manias when you're on a crowded airplane. This is one of the reasons why my husband, Victor, hates to fly with me. The other reason is I often fly with taxidermied creatures as anxiety service animals. Basically we don't travel a lot together because he doesn't understand awesomeness.

“You're not
a maniac
,” my mom says in an aggravated voice. “You just like to pull your hair. You even did it when you were little. It's just soothing to you. Like … like petting a kitten.”

“I like to pull my hair
out
,” I clarify. “It's sort of different. That's why they call it a ‘mania' and not ‘kitten-petting disorder.' Which would honestly suck to have because then you'd end up with a bunch of semi-bald kittens who would hate you.
My God
, I hope I never get
overly enthusiastic kitten-fur-pulling disorder
.”

My mother sighs deeply, but this is exactly why I love having these conversations with her.
Because she gives me perspective.
It's also why
she
hates having these conversations with me.
Because I give her details.

“You are perfectly normal,” my mom says, shaking her head as if even her body won't let her get away with this sort of lie.

I laugh as I tug involuntarily at my hair. “I have
never
been normal and I think we both know that.”

My mom pauses for a moment, trying to think up another line of defense, but it's pretty hopeless.

*   *   *

I've always been naturally anxious, to ridiculous degrees. My earliest school memory is of a field trip to a hospital, when a doctor pulled out some blood samples and I immediately passed out right into a wall of (thankfully empty) bedpans. According to other kids present, a teacher said, “Ignore her. She just wants attention.” Then my head started bleeding and the doctor cracked open an ammonia capsule under my nose, which is a lot like being punched in the face by an invisible fist of stink.

Honestly I didn't know
why
I'd passed out. My baseline of anxiety remained the same but my subconscious was apparently so terrified that it had decided that the safest place for me to be was fast asleep on a floor, surrounded by bedpans. Which sort of shows why my body is an idiot, because forced narcolepsy is pretty much the worst defense ever. It's like a human version of playing possum, which is only helpful if bears are trying to eat you, because apparently if you lie down in front of bears they're all, “What a badass. I attack her and she takes a catnap? I probably shouldn't fuck with her.”

This would be the start of a long and ridiculous period of my life, which shrinks label “white coat syndrome.” My family referred to it as “
What-the-hell-is-wrong-with-Jenny
syndrome.” I think my family was more accurate in their assessment because passing out when you see doctors' coats is just damn ridiculous and more than slightly embarrassing, especially later when you have to say, “Sorry that I passed out on you.
Apparently I'm afraid of coats.
” To make things even worse, when I pass out I tend to flail about on the floor and apparently I moan gutturally. “Like a Frankenstein,” according to my mom, who has witnessed this on several occasions.

Other people might battle a subconscious fear of adversity, failure, or being stoned to death, but
my
hidden phobia makes me faint at the sight of
outerwear
. I've passed out once at the optometrist's, twice at the dentist's office, and two horrifying times at the gynecologist's. The nice thing about passing out at the gynecologist's, though, is that if you're already in the stirrups you don't have far to fall—unless of course you're like me, and you flail about wildly while you're moaning and unconscious. It's pretty much the worst way to pass out with someone in your vagina. It's like having a really unattractive orgasm that you're not even awake for. I always remind my gynecologist that I might rather loudly pass out during a Pap smear and then she usually grimly informs me that
she didn't need me to remind her at all
. “Probably,” my sister says, “because most people don't make as much of a theatrical show about fainting.”

The
really
bad part about passing out at the gynecologist's is that you occasionally regain consciousness with an unexpected speculum inside your vagina, which is essentially the third-worst way to wake up. (The second-worst way to wake up is at the gynecologist's
without
a speculum inside of you because the gynecologist took it out when you passed out and now you have to start all over again, which is why I always tell gynecologists that if I pass out when they're in my vagina they should just take that opportunity to get everything out of the way while I'm out.