Furiously Happy

by Jenny Lawson

  VICTOR: FINE. WE’RE NOT FIGHTING.

  ME: THEN WHY AM I APOLOGIZING?

  VICTOR: I have no idea. Everything after George Washington’s dildo was a blur.

  ME: You can say that again.

  VICTOR: No, actually. I never want to have to say that again.

  ME: Deal.

  VICTOR: Huh?

  ME: I promise to never make you say anything about George Washington’s dildo if you promise to stop getting mad at me about fights we aren’t actually having.

  VICTOR: Do you ever wish we had normal fights like normal couples?

  ME: Never.

  VICTOR: Huh. Me either.

  Winner of the argument: Neither of us. Or possibly both. Hard to say.

  I’m Not Psychotic. I Just Need to Get in Front of You in Line.

  This year my doctor prescribed me antipsychotics.

  “To … keep the psychotics away?” I asked, jokingly.

  She was not joking.

  She promised me that this did not mean I was psychotic but assured me that in small doses this drug—made for schizophrenics—could decrease the length of my depressive episodes if I used it as a sort of a side dish to go with my antidepressants.

  So of course I took the drug. Drugs are magic. You take a pill and feel happy. You take another and feel less hungry. You take another pill and have minty breath. (That last pill was actually a Tic Tac, but you get the picture.)

  There is nothing better than hearing that there is a drug that will fix a terrible problem, unless you also hear that the drug is for treating schizophrenia (or possibly that it kills fairies every time you take it).

  Frankly, I think it’s the word that scares me.

  Antipsychotic.

  I dare you to find a drug that will freak people out more when they’re rifling through your medicine cabinet during parties. Unless maybe it’s medicine for contagious explosive combustion of the urethra, but I don’t count that because it doesn’t exist (I hope). Surely the people naming antipsychotics could have come up with something less hurtful. After all, we don’t call Viagra the “floppy-dick pill” and hardly any of us refer to anger-management therapy as “maybe-just-stop-being-such-an-asshole class.” I honestly can’t think of any drug that has more of a stigma than antipsychotics.

  Truthfully though, there are some advantages to being on antipsychotics. First off, you can say you’re on antipsychotics. This might seem silly but when you go to the pharmacy and you’re standing in line with twenty germy people sneezing all over the place you can honestly say, “Would you mind if I went first? I have to pick up my antipsychotic meds and I REALLY needed them yesterday.” This tactic also works for grocery lines, the DMV, and some buffets.

  The second advantage of being on antipsychotics is that they can actually help. In the time I’ve been on them I’ve hurt myself less. I feel more stable. The blue men who live in my closet try to sell me fewer cookies and most of those squirrels plotting against me have disappeared. (That last sentence was a joke, but only people on mild antipsychotics will laugh at it because everyone else is afraid it’s true. It’s not. Squirrels are real and they don’t disappear no matter how many pills you take. Frankly, I’m shocked at how often I have to explain this.)

  Some people say that drugs are never the answer, and I respect their opinion, but sometimes drugs are the answer and I think you need to be flexible. In fact, if you ask those same people, “What was it that Nancy Reagan said you should always ‘just say no’ to?” they will all say, “Drugs,” and then I’ll say, “Correct. Drugs are the right answer.” So technically we’re both right. Then I point out that drugs are often very bad for you, and that you have to do your research first and realize that there’s a difference between “drugs” and “medication.” You can tell the difference because the first ones are ironically much cheaper and easier to get than the latter, and also because use of medicine requires constant doctor supervision, treatment, and blood work.

  Being on medication for mental illness is not fun, nor is it easy, and no one I’ve ever known does it just for kicks. Kids don’t buy black-market Prozac to take to raves. People don’t use B12 shots as a gateway drug to heroin. The side effects and troubles with taking medication are very real and (if you have a chronic mental illness) are something you have to deal with for the rest of your life. Even if a drug is working for a while, it might stop working and you’ll have to start all over again with something new, which can be incredibly frustrating and disheartening. And then you have to deal with the side effects of the new drug, which can include “feeling excessively stabby” when coupled with some asshole telling you that “your medication not working is just proof that you don’t really need medication at all.” I can’t think of another type of illness where the sufferer is made to feel guilty and question their self-care when their medications need to be changed.

  When I went on my first antidepressant it had the side effect of making me fixated on suicide (which is sort of the opposite of what you want). It’s a rare side effect so I switched to something else that did work. Lots of concerned friends and family felt that the first medication’s failure was a clear sign that drugs were not the answer; if they were I would have been fixed. Clearly I wasn’t as sick as I said I was if the medication didn’t work for me. And that sort of makes sense, because when you have cancer the doctor gives you the best medicine and if it doesn’t shrink the tumor immediately then that’s a pretty clear sign you were just faking it for attention. I mean, cancer is a serious, often fatal disease we’ve spent billions of dollars studying and treating so obviously a patient would never have to try multiple drugs, surgeries, radiation, etc., to find what will work specifically for them. And once the cancer sufferer is in remission they’re set for life because once they’ve learned how to not have cancer they should be good. And if they let themselves get cancer again they can just do whatever they did last time. Once you find the right cancer medication you’re pretty much immune from that disease forever. And if you get it again it’s probably just a reaction to too much gluten or not praying correctly. Right?

  Well, no. But that same, completely ridiculous reasoning is what people with mental illness often hear … not just from well-meaning friends, or people who were able to fix their own issues without medication, or people who don’t understand that mental illness can be dangerous and even fatal if untreated … but also from someone much closer and more manipulative.

  We hear it from ourselves.

  We listen to the small voice in the back of our head that says, “This medication is taking money away from your family. This medication messes with your sex drive or your weight. This medication is for people with real problems. Not just people who feel sad. No one ever died from being sad.” Except that they do. And when we see celebrities who fall victim to depression’s lies we think to ourselves, “How in the world could they have killed themselves? They had everything.” But they didn’t. They didn’t have a cure for an illness that convinced them they were better off dead.

  Whenever I start to doubt if I’m worth the eternal trouble of medication and therapy, I remember those people who let the fog win. And I push myself to stay healthy. I remind myself that I’m not fighting against me … I’m fighting against a chemical imbalance … a tangible thing. I remind myself of the cunning untrustworthiness of the brain, both in the mentally ill and in the mentally stable. I remind myself that professional mountain climbers are often found naked and frozen to death, with their clothes folded neatly nearby because severe hypothermia can make a person feel confused and hot and convince you to do incredibly irrational things we’d never expect. Brains are like toddlers. They are wonderful and should be treasured, but that doesn’t mean you should trust them to take care of you in an avalanche or process serotonin effectively.

  I’ve never had a psychotic breakdown. I’m seldom delusional. I’ve never hallucinated anything that didn’t come from too much of a drug I probably shouldn’t have t
aken anyway. I’m just broken. But in a way that makes me … me. My drugs don’t define me. I’m not psychotic. I’m not dangerous. The drugs I take are just a pinch of salt. A little seasoning in life, if you will. Your baked potatoes would be fine without it, but anyone will tell you that a pinch of salt can make all the difference. I am your potatoes. And I’m better with salt.

  Maybe this is a bad analogy.

  How about this …

  My taking low-level antipsychotics is like using just enough rum to make a good slice of rum cake, but not using enough to get alcohol poisoning and choke to death on your own vomit. The first is medicinal. The second one is gross and unsanitary.

  And I know some of you are saying that cake isn’t medicinal. Really? Cake isn’t medicinal? Who’s crazy now, asshole? The whole world could be cured with enough cake and antipsychotics. Which actually makes sense because you can’t make a cake without salt, can you?

  Wait, can you make a cake without salt?

  I actually have no idea. I don’t know much about baking. I know there’s something white in there. Maybe it’s flour I’m thinking about. I just wrote “salt” because it brought all my metaphors back together. Sort of. Probably not. It’s hard to tell.

  I blame this whole chapter on the antipsychotics.1

  Why Would I Want to Do More When I’m Already Doing So Well at Nothing?

  Victor and I have different ideas about what we should do in our spare time. In my spare time I like to stare at shit. I mean, not literally. I like to stare at the TV, or the Internet, or a book, or cat videos. There’s a lot of sitting very still and not moving involved. I suspect in a former life I was probably a statue because I am profoundly good at it.

  Victor, on the other hand, spends his spare time creating new businesses, writing reference books, gleefully finding errors on financial forms, and telling me how I should spend my spare time.

  In Victor’s Type A world there should be no spare time. His motto is, “Time to lean, time to clean,” except replace “lean” with “sleep” and replace “clean” with “build a multinational business and pull everything out of the closet with the intention of organizing it but not actually follow through and just leave it for your wife to sort out.” My motto has always been “Time enjoyed is never wasted.” Except replace “enjoyed” with “drunk” and “never wasted” with “never not a good idea.”

  I think it has something to do with the fields we work in. For most of our marriage Victor has been a workaholic entrepreneur or an executive of successful companies. He really enjoys it, which makes him dangerously questionable, or at least mildly sociopathic. He easily fills empty time with specific tasks that have a defined start and end. His e-mails are always answered with quick, smart, and often vaguely condescending directives that make people want to never e-mail him again, so he’s always caught up with correspondence. My unopened e-mails often number into the thousands, and once every few months I’ll panic at how far behind I am and send a form letter to everyone that reads: “Hello. I totally suck. I’m just now opening this. Do you still need me? I’m so sorry. I am not to be trusted. Hugs, me.” Then I declare e-mail bankruptcy, delete everything, and start a whole new e-mail account and never ever go back to the last one. My old e-mail addresses are like bars I’ve been kicked out of and can never return to. It’s a ridiculous and assholish system but I’ve found that it works for me and I’ve never received a single complaint. Victor says that’s because it’s impossible to receive a complaint on an account I never check again, but I suspect it’s because everyone is equally behind and they appreciate my honesty.

  My job is to write ridiculous things on my blog, in books, and on used napkins that get misplaced almost immediately. It’s part of my job to be aware of the latest hedgehog-in-a-bathtub video. It’s research. There’s also a lot of behind-the-scenes work that non-right-brained people don’t see happening. For example, when I have writer’s block I sometimes have to “refill my creative cup.” This is an actual phrase my shrink has used and I made her write it down so I could show Victor that I had a doctor’s note explaining my behavior (but I lost the note in my stacks of used napkins and related flotsam so he just had to take my word for it, which he did not because he is sadly untrusting).

  “Refilling your creative cup” means different things to different people, but to me it looks a lot like watching Doctor Who marathons or reading David Sedaris books while screaming, “WHY DO YOU MAKE IT LOOK SO EASY?” Sometimes it looks like driving to pet stores so I can pull out all the ferrets from their bins and drape them over me to make them into tickly, freaked-out coats. Occasionally it looks like me drawing doodles of penises on the overdue tax forms Victor has passive-aggressively taped on my computer monitor.

  In summation, I spend an impressive amount of time doing absolutely nothing. Like, I’m at pro level. Because that’s how artistic genius works. And because I’m very, very lazy.

  Now, some people will say that if you have writer’s block you should just start writing anyway because then you’ll at least accomplish something. However, I’ve never liked anything I’ve ever been forced to write so I’m pretty sure all that accomplishes is a bunch of shitty writing, and I already have enough of that even when real inspiration hits. Good writing cannot be forced. This is why you don’t have any classic, beloved books filled with the begrudging and angry mandatory essays of students who didn’t want to write them, and why you almost never see college dissertations go viral on Reddit. In other words, if you spent most of the morning reading Twitter and then scribbling weird, indecipherable notes to yourself on your arm then you are probably on the right track to becoming a successful artist. Or to being homeless. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.

  You’d think after eighteen years of marriage Victor and I would be more accepting of each other’s working styles, but no. Victor spent most of this morning directing several conference calls, yelling at plumbers, and rolling over our 401(k)s into something that sounded even more boring than 401(k)s. I’d stopped listening at that point.

  I, on the other hand, spent most of the morning coming up with good names for cats that I don’t currently have. My current favorite is “The President.” It’s an awesome name because you’d constantly find yourself saying things like, “The President will not stop sitting on my keyboard.” Or “The President just threw up on the new rug.” Or “I like sleeping with the President but why do I always wake up with his butt on my face?”

  I tried to tell Victor about how awesome the President would be in bed on a cold night and he was like, “NO MORE CATS. YOU HAVE TOO MANY CATS ALREADY,” but then I just stared at him and said, “Too bad. Overruled. You can’t turn down a request from the President.” He disagreed but I’m pretty sure that’s considered treason. I called the pet store where I snuggle the ferrets to ask if they had any leads on patriotic-looking cats who need a new home, but they recognized my voice and informed me that the manager had just enacted a policy of “only one loose ferret at a time.” And that’s ridiculous, because the most you can possibly make with a single ferret is a small pillbox hat (which uses claws instead of bobby pins). I was a little upset and I may have said, “THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS. THE PRESIDENT WILL NOT STAND FOR THESE KINDS OF CUTS.” And then they asked what I was talking about and I considered explaining that ferret cuts were much worse than government budget cuts because everyone suffers when you cut ferrets. Especially the ferrets. But then I remembered that I hadn’t adopted the President yet and I thought it might be inappropriate to throw around the weight of my nonexistent cat all willy-nilly. Victor agreed that it was extremely inappropriate, although not for the same reasons.

  I told Victor that not having a cat named the President had already crippled me once today and that the President would probably get in all kinds of crazy shenanigans that I could write about. I argued that my buying the President was basically the equivalent of his buying office supplies, so it was fiscally irresponsible to not adopt a cat ca
lled the President. At this point Victor may have screamed, “YOU CANNOT HAVE ANY MORE CATS. I’M THE ONE THAT HAS TO CLEAN UP AFTER THEM AND I’LL BE DAMNED IF I’M GOING TO SCOOP THE PRESIDENT’S SHIT TOO.”

  He paused and shook his head at his own questionable phrasing but I smiled contentedly because he’d just proven my point, as that was exactly the kind of argument that would be gold on my blog. In fact, the President has already given me four paragraphs in this book and he doesn’t even exist yet. It’s possible he might be the most productive President we’ve ever had.

  Victor walked away before we could finish discussing the issue. So I wrote myself a reminder on the tax forms he’d taped to my monitor: “GET A LITTER BOX FOR THE PRESIDENT.” I suspected the IRS would be confused (and possibly not in a good way) so I added, “I’m not referring to your boss. I totally voted for that guy. Please don’t audit me. I’m kind to animals and small children. If anything, you should audit my husband, who thinks the President should just live in a cage rather than get adopted by my daughter, who would totally dress him up in old Cabbage Patch Kid clothes and snuggle him like crazy-cakes.” Then Victor came back in, saw the now-vandalized tax papers, and just stared at me in disappointment. I explained that it would probably be better if he just did all my tax papers in the future. He claimed that that would be illegal and I told him that if the President were here he’d be just fine with it and that’s basically the same as getting presidential approval on everything. Cats don’t give a shit about stuff, so basically the President would automatically approve of everything we did by default. Except for maybe Victor’s use of the Super Soaker to keep the cats off the kitchen counters. The President would probably not approve of that.

  Case in point? Just this moment Victor walked in and asked what I was doing and I told him I was writing about how much he hates the President, and he started yelling at me about using my time more wisely. Frankly, it’s not even that we disagree about my use of time. It’s more about how completely far we are from agreeing about what would be a credible use of my time.