I AM GOING TO BE FURIOUSLY HAPPY, OUT OF SHEER SPITE.Jenny Lawson – famous as the internet's Blogess – is a hot mess: She is a high-functioning depressive who suffers from severe anxiety disorder, moderate clinical depression, mild self-harm issues, impulse control disorder, avoidant personality disorder, occasional depersonalisation disorder, rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune issues, mild OCD, ADD, imposter syndrome, and trichotillomania (pulling out her own hair). In Furiously Happy, Lawson is determined to fight back against debilitating depression with a fury, and through an assortment of essays, blogposts, and random musings, she presents a satisfying blend of funny and serious peeks into her mind and life. I'll let Lawson do most of the talking in this review. The serious:
Sometimes being crazy is a demon. And sometimes the demon is me. And I visit quiet sidewalks and loud parties and dark movies, and a small demon looks out at the world with me. Sometimes it sleeps. Sometimes it plays. Sometimes it laughs with me. Sometimes it tries to kill me. But it’s always with me. I suppose we’re all possessed in some way. Some of us with dependence on pills or wine. Others through sex or gambling. Some of us through self-destruction or anger or fear. And some of us just carry around our tiny demon as he wreaks havoc in our mind, tearing open old dusty trunks of bad memories and leaving the remnants spread everywhere. Wearing the skins of people we’ve hurt. Wearing the skins of people we’ve loved. And sometimes, when it’s worst, wearing our skins.The funny:
I’m allergic to latex and it makes me break out in a rash so most condoms are out for me because the last thing any of us wants is a vagina rash. The alternative is the ones made of sheepskin, but it always creeps me out because does that mean Victor and I are having sex with a sheep? A dead sheep, actually. So it’s bestiality and necrophilia. And a three-way, I think. I actually mentioned that to Victor and he immediately booked a vasectomy, which is sweet because it’s nice that he cares about me. He claimed it was less his caring and more “I’d rather have my nuts cut off than have to listen to you talk about having three-ways with dead sheep.” But now I have all these leftover condoms. They make great water balloons though and I bet they’d be really good for championship bubblegum-blowing competitions. Really chewy sheep bubblegum. That might be cheating. I don’t know the rules about bubblegum contests.And as that passage suggests, Lawson appears to have been really fortunate to find an understanding partner like her husband Victor. She provides the transcripts of many ridiculous fights she's had with him, and as a straight man, Victor always comes out on top; if slightly baffled. Being married to a Type-A “workaholic entrepreneur” means that, “It was my job to accidentally make money, and his job to make sure I didn't lose it while I was doing wobbly cartwheels in the parking lot after the bars closed.” And as a particularly fragile person who requires extra help and support from her partner, Lawson shares, “Last month, as Victor drove me home so I could rest, I told him that sometimes I felt like his life would be easier without me. He paused a moment in thought and then said, 'It might be easier. But it wouldn’t be better.'” Ahhhh.
So, after parlaying internet success into her first best-selling book, Let's Pretend This Never Happened, what would convince the anxiety disordered Lawson to go on speaking tours and book signings that leave her cowering behind the podium or too afraid to leave her hotel room in search of meals?
I have a folder that’s labeled “The Folder of 24.” Inside it are letters from twenty-four people who were actively in the process of planning their suicide, but who stopped and got help—not because of what I wrote on my blog, but because of the amazing response from the community of people who read it and said, “Me too.” They were saved by the people who wrote about losing their mother or father or child to suicide and how they’d do anything to go back and convince them not to believe the lies mental illness tells you. They were saved by the people who offered up encouragement and songs and lyrics and poems and talismans and mantras that worked for them and that might work for a stranger in need. There are twenty-four people alive today who are still here because people were brave enough to talk about their struggles, or compassionate enough to convince others of their worth, or who simply said, “I don’t understand your illness, but I know that the world is better with you in it.”As she nearly always has someone come up to her at events and whisper “I'm number 25”, Lawson understands that the self-help project she has started on her blog – and the FURIOUSLY HAPPY movement that it inspired – is something bigger than herself and she has founded a community, a tribe, that understands and mutually supports each other when all someone has the energy for is a few Tweets from the floor of a hotel bathroom.
Furiously Happy is a satisfying blend of laughs and learning and Jenny Lawson is just so likeable. I've seen some other reviewers complain that if you follow the blog and read her first book, there's not much new here, but as this was my introduction to Lawson, I have no complaints. Highly recommend.
It was just a quirk of my spots on the library waiting list that had me pick up both Furiously Happy and This is Happy this week, and although it would be obviously unfair to compare two people's mental illnesses, these two memoirs by women suffering depression -- and the ways in which they've fought for happiness -- seem to demand comment. Lawson is more descriptive about the actual effects of her depressive episodes, but what Gibb describes in her more guarded way sounds about equivalent (and I'm going to restate that I know it's unhelpful to compare the mental states of two unique individuals, but I'm just making the point that both of these women become completely debilitated and have impulses for self harm.) Where the women's experiences seem to differ is in the support systems they have enjoyed: not only does Lawson describe the long-suffering Victor's love and empathy, but she has a circle of long-time friends and close family members who are all available when she needs propping up (and since the success of her blog, she also has the support of the faceless hordes who follow her on social media). On the other hand, when Gibb's marriage broke up, she had to start from zero in building a support network (even her family members were unreliable in their help), and it seems like a minor miracle that she reached a happy place. Obviously, this makes Furiously Happy the funner read, but taken in tandem, these two books made for a fuller picture.
And another note: despite claiming the necessity for coining new words that her spellcheck and editor don't recognise, more than once Lawson calls out people who use the words "supposably" and "flustrated". I have mixed feelings about that.
The first time I heard "flustrated" was when my mother-in-law was talking babytalk to our first born. I remember thinking that it was a really sweet babytalk portmanteau (flustered + frustrated) and I figured it represented the way that her family talked to their babies; I liked it. (I didn't so much like when she said to Kennedy, "Why are you so hymie with your hugs?" When Dave and I heard that, we exchanged baffled looks, and when he told his Mom that that was a terribly derogatory expression, she was baffled in turn -- this was the way her family had always talked to babies and it had nothing to do with stingy Jews -- and she never said it again.) It wasn't until years later -- after living closer to his family -- that I realised that both Dave's mother and his sister always say "flustrated" and "supposebly".
I pointed that out to Dave once, and he had to admit that it had never registered on him before. What's more odd is the fact that Dave doesn't mispronounce these words (but then again, neither does his Dad; how is this divided by gender in his family?). And yet, even though these words always strike my ear wrong, if Jenny Lawson can insist on "overgravitated" and "concoctulary", then what's the harm in a couple of lovely women sounding a bit like yokels when they talk? It's more endearing than annoying to me (and most especially because my own kids know how to talk good.)
