Furiously Happy

by Jenny Lawson

  * * *

  But this was not the only sign.

  Several months after moving in we were finally able to fix the pool. One particular morning I was enjoying the pool alone, as Hailey was at drama camp and Victor was out of town.

  The tall red-tips behind the pool blocked out the sun and they rustled in the breeze. But there was no breeze. And still there was rustling. I peered into the dense, ten-foot foliage directly behind the pool and then I realized that someone was in the bushes. The red-tips shook hard and there was a cracking sound of branches breaking. I was trying to back away from the bushes when suddenly I heard something tumbling and saw that an enormous squirrel was desperately clinging to a mostly broken branch. Then I realized that the mostly broken branch was hanging directly over the pool. Then I realized that the squirrel was, in fact, a goddamn wild possum.

  My first instinct was to scream, “Possum!” which was unhelpful because he already knew he was a possum and also because it just succeeded in freaking him out more. He desperately tried to scurry back up the limb but it wasn’t happening. I fucking hate possums but I suddenly found myself rooting for the little guy. Mostly because he was clinging frantically upside down on a branch looking almost identical to the way I did the time I was hanging upside down on the monkey bars in second grade and realized I didn’t have enough ab strength to lift myself back up. I’d had to rely on Mrs. Gilly to come and rescue me, but no elementary school teacher would be coming for this frantic possum as it did its furious acrobatics. It was as if the possum was part of Cirque du Soleil, or a frightened BASE jumper, and I was unable to look away.

  I reached over for the net I used to skim bugs off the surface so I could use it to help the possum regain its footing but it was too late and in an instant I saw a look on the possum’s face that said, “Fuck. I’m comin’ in, lady.” And then the possum was like “CANNONBAAAALLL” and it dove in with fairly good form, and I thought, “Shit, now we have to boil it.” (The pool, I mean. Not the possum. Possum tastes awful. It’s not even great for giblets, and giblets are sort of the end of the line for food.)

  I screamed and jumped out of the pool and the possum scurried out behind me toward the bushes but then it flopped over suddenly as if it were there for a tanning session, but I suspected it was just playing possum. I called Victor on the cell and screamed, “There’s a possum in the bush!” and he paused and asked, “Is this your idea of phone sex? Because, I gotta tell ya, it’s not really working for me.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was more scared that the possum was still alive or that it was dead. Victor suggested that I nudge it with my foot but I was afraid it might maul me so instead I poked it gently with a pool noodle while saying, “Hey, possum. Are you dead? Hello?” But it just lay there and I thought it was either really, really talented or really, really dead, and it’s weird that those things are either/or. Honestly, it could only have been better at playing possum if it’d had some intestines in its pockets and spread those around, because that’s how you know you’ve got a possum who is really committed to the role. I went inside to look for a shovel and when I came back the possum was gone. It’s possible that it was resurrected like Jesus. Or that it was playing dead and wandered off when I left. Or that it was taken by a mountain lion. Or eaten by a swan. Anyone’s guess really.

  Regardless, I sat there for a minute and realized that the fancy neighborhood I’d felt so alien in had just dropped a possum on me and it’s fairly hard to respect the snootiness of any neighborhood that drops possums1 and that’s when I started to think that maybe we’d fit in anyway. Or that we’d just play dead until the country club members left. It seems to work for possums.

  The Big Quiz

  Today I wrote a post on my blog. It wasn’t particularly well written but I was struggling and I needed help, so I asked for it.

  The post:

  Okay. This isn’t a funny post so feel free to skip it. I just need to know something and I need you to tell me the truth rather than just make me feel better, so please be honest.

  I realize that I’ve accomplished a lot in life and deep down I know that, but it doesn’t change the fact that I only have a few days a month where I actually feel like I was good at life. I know I’m a good person (as in “not evil or intentionally arsonistic”), but I’m not very good at being a person. I don’t know if that makes sense and it’s not me fishing for compliments. Please don’t tell me the things I’m good at because that’s not what this is about. It’s just that at the end of each day I usually lie in bed and think, “Shit. I’m fucking shit up. I accomplished nothing today except the basics of existing.” I feel like I’m treading water and that I’m always another half day behind in life. Even the great things are overshadowed by shame and anxiety, and yes, I realize a lot of this might have to do with the fact that I have mental illness, but I still feel like a failure more often than I feel like I’m doing well.

  My pride that Hailey is the best speller in her class is overshadowed by the embarrassment that I don’t have the energy to be a PTA mom. I’m happy my first book was so successful, but I suffer with writer’s block so much that I’m always sure I’ll never write again and that I’ll never finish my second book. I feel like from the outside looking in I seem successful and happy, but I can’t help but think that if people looked closer they’d see the cracks and the dirt and shame of a million projects that never get done.

  Part of this is me. I have depression and anxiety and a number of disorders that make it hard for me to see myself correctly. Part of it is that I judge myself by the shiny, pretty people I see at parent-teacher meetings, or on Facebook, or Pinterest, who seem to totally have their shit together and never have unwashed hair. They never wait until Thursday night to help their kid with the entire week’s homework. They don’t have piles of dusty boxes in corners waiting to be opened from the move before last. They have pretty, pastel lives, and they are happy, and they own picnic baskets and napkins and know how to recycle, and they never run out of toilet paper or get their electricity turned off. And it’s not even that I want to be one of those people. I fucking hate picnics. If God wanted us to eat on the ground He wouldn’t have invented couches. I just don’t want to feel like a failure because my biggest accomplishment of the day was going to the bank.

  I just need an honest assessment to see if this is just me (and if I need to just find a way to change, or to increase my meds) or if this is just normal and people just don’t talk about it.

  Please tell me the truth (anonymous answers are fine). How many days in a month do you actually feel like you kicked ass, or were just generally a successful person? What makes you feel the worst? What do you do to make yourself feel more successful?

  Please be honest. Because I’m about to be.

  I feel successful 3–4 days a month. The other days I feel like I’m barely accomplishing the minimum or that I’m a loser. I have imposter syndrome so even when I get compliments they are difficult to take and I just feel like I’m a bigger fraud than before. I feel the worst when I get so paralyzed by fear that I end up huddled in bed and fall further and further behind. To make myself feel more successful I spend real time with my daughter every day, even if it’s just huddling under a blanket and watching Doctor Who reruns on TV. I also try to remind myself that people like Dorothy Parker and Hunter S. Thompson struggled as well, and that this struggle might make me stronger, if it doesn’t first destroy me.

  I’m hoping that by writing and posting this it will make me face this head-on and make some changes, either in forcing myself to change the way I see success, or in forcing myself to get shit done and stop feeling such dread and anxiety every day. I’m hoping that I’ll get hints from you guys about what you do to feel like a good, successful person or what you avoid that I can try to avoid as well. I’m hoping to stop the voices in my head. At least the ones who don’t like me very much.

  Your turn.

  PS: For those of you who are new here, I’m alre
ady doing cognitive therapy and I’m already on a lot of drugs for anxiety, depression, and ADD, but I’m really fine. Honestly. I just want to be better. I’m just struggling with being human and I could use some pointers. My guess is that a lot of us could.

  PPS: The Oxford dictionary says the word “arsonistic” doesn’t exist, but it totally does. It’s the same thing as being artistic, but instead of being sensitive to or good at art, you’re just really good at arson. Then again, this is the same dictionary that just added “twerk.” I question everything now.

  PPPS: Sorry. This post is all over the place. My ADD drugs haven’t kicked in yet. I’m failing at writing a post about how I’m failing. I think I’ve just set a record. A bad one.

  And then I sat back and waited for people to say, “Oh, you’re not bad. Cheer up, little ninja!” But they didn’t. Instead, thousands of people responded with “Me too. These are the things I whisper at night to my husband, or to my girlfriend, or to my cat. These are the scary things that I know are true. These thoughts are the monsters in our closets. You might be a failure. But we’re right there with you. Failing.” And it was amazing. And a little depressing. But mostly amazing.

  A few people commented that this seemed to be an American problem, because the places where they lived (mainly Europe) judged success less by things and accomplishments and more by feelings. Happiness came from spending time with people, and more non-Americans seemed to think that spending a few hours watching TV with the kids on the couch was something to celebrate and enjoy, rather than feel guilty about.

  Then more comments came in; some were platitudes to help to remind people that they aren’t alone. They were helpful, but I come from a place of deep and abiding sarcasm so I internally tacked on my responses.

  “Comparison is the death of joy.”

  I liked this one so much that I looked it up and found out it was Mark Twain who penned it and then I felt like shit again because all the best quotes are from Mark Twain and he’s used them all up so now I feel bad in comparison to Mark Twain regarding his quote about how comparison makes you feel bad, so I’m basically just proving Mark Twain more right for making me feel like an asshole. I’m caught in a Mark Twain shame-spiral.

  “Don’t compare your insides to someone else’s outsides.”

  This makes sense because I’ve seen my insides and they are disgusting. It’s mainly fat and gristle and blood and a liver that would probably cut its way free of my body if it had a sharp knife. People almost never look as bad on the outside as I do on the inside, but that’s sort of nice because it reminds me that even when I’m having a bad hair day my ponytail is still more aesthetically pleasing than Gwyneth Paltrow’s bile duct. In fact, I think the whole quote should be rewritten to say, “Even the ugliest person’s cellulite is more attractive than the most beautiful supermodel’s lower intestine.” I’d put that on a T-shirt but probably Mark Twain already said it.

  “Don’t compare your behind-the-scenes look to everyone else’s highlight reel.”

  This one makes sense because the DVD commentary is never as good as the actual movie, but my first response was, “EVERYONE ELSE HAS A HIGHLIGHT REEL? I don’t even have a goddamn blooper reel.” Conclusion: I ruin everything.

  “The only person you need to be better than is the person you were yesterday.”

  This is nice because the bar is set super low since all I did yesterday was eat a lot of Funyuns. Like, a crazy amount of Funyuns. It was almost sort of impressive. But basically the thing I got from that is that if I have a really good day I’m setting myself up for failure because then I have to be better tomorrow and so maybe I should just continue to be an unsuccessful shut-in who is only proud of her Funyun consumption. Or maybe just murder a village and then the next day murder one less person and keep getting better until your idea of being successful is just kicking three blind people in the face. This is probably how serial killers and tyrants start.

  But I noticed something in common with each of those quotes. One was my ability to fuck all of them up. The second was that they were all better quotes than anything I’d ever write. And the third, and most important, was that perhaps I was judging myself by the wrong sets of standards.

  I started to think about the way that I viewed success and realized that I didn’t really want to lower the bar (because the bar was already so low that I kept tripping on it) but that I wanted to take the bar and throw it like an Olympic spear into the leg of Mark Twain and all of the other shiny, successful, imaginary people I was judging myself against. And then I realized that this would be illegal and would also require me to go outside and have better aim and get a lawyer and so instead I said “fuck it” and decided to stop even looking at the shiny people (who were possibly only shiny because they were hiding very dark secrets that I would pay good money to hear) and instead just change the way I define success. And you can do it too.

  Are you successful? Let’s see. I’m a big fan of self-tests. The ones where you end up a dog, or a tree, or a Game of Thrones character. Let’s do one now:

  The Very Important Quiz

  Are you reading this or listening to this on tape? That means that you care about being a better person, or that you want advice on how to spear people in the leg. Either way, you’re attempting to better yourself. Give yourself 10 points.

  Now add 10 points for every time you accomplished the following:

  • Didn’t kill a spider. (Double the points if you helped it outside by shooing it and talking to it. Triple point score if the spider got on you and you didn’t automatically smoosh it.)

  • Didn’t punch an asshole in the neck even though you really wanted to.

  • Fell and didn’t immediately yell at whoever was closest to you.

  • Didn’t use the word “supposably,” “liberry,” or “flustrated.”

  • Took care of an animal. (This amount doubles each time you walked a dog in the rain, rescued a stray animal who was in the middle of the road, or emptied a litter box. Emptying a litter box is basically like serving as a cat’s toilet. It’s the best way to humble yourself ever. Add 10 more points for being an awesome toilet.)

  • Showed compassion. (Double points if it was for yourself.)

  • Didn’t die. (This seems small but people die all the time. Cemeteries are full of them. Even Jesus died. Some might point out that Jesus was resurrected and you haven’t been, but to your credit, you haven’t actually died yet, so who knows. Unless you did die and were resurrected. Then give yourself another 10 points. Or maybe you’re a vampire. Give yourself 50 points if you’re a vampire. Subtract 40 points if you’re a sparkly vampire.)

  Now add up your results:

  If you scored between zero and 8,000: You are you. You’re more you than yesterday but not as much as tomorrow. Keep going. You’re on the right track. Also, your hair looks great today.

  In other words, stop judging yourself against shiny people. Avoid the shiny people. The shiny people are a lie. Or get to know them enough to realize they aren’t so shiny after all. Shiny people aren’t the enemy. Sometimes we’re the enemy when we listen to our malfunctioning brains that try to tell us that we’re alone in our self-doubt, or that it’s obvious to everyone that we don’t know what the shit we’re doing.

  Hell, there are probably people out there right now who consider us to be shiny people (bless their stupid, stupid hearts) and that’s pretty much proof that none of our brains can be trusted to accurately measure the value of anyone, much less ourselves.

  How can we be expected to properly judge ourselves? We know all of our worst secrets. We are biased, and overly critical, and occasionally filled with shame. So you’ll have to just trust me when I say that you are worthy, important, and necessary. And smart.

  You may ask how I know and I’ll tell you how. It’s because right now? YOU’RE READING. That’s what the sexy people do. Other, less awesome people might currently be in their front yards chasing down and punching squirrels,
but not you. You’re quietly curled up with a book designed to make you a better, happier, more introspective person.

  You win.1 You are amazing.

  Cat Lamination

  The Sixth Argument I Had with Victor This Week

  VICTOR: There’s cat fur all over the back of your dress. Like, it looks like you just shit out a cat and then did a bad job of wiping.

  ME: It’s because Ferris Mewler sits on my office chair all night. I bought a new pet-fur roller but it totally doesn’t work. I say we just nip it in the bud and laminate the cats.

  VICTOR: That’s … probably not a good idea.

  ME: But we’d leave their heads and paws and buttholes free, obviously.

  VICTOR: Obviously.

  ME: And a patch of skin so they don’t go all Goldfinger on us.

  VICTOR: So they don’t what?

  ME: You know … that lady that they painted gold in that James Bond movie and she suffocated because her skin couldn’t breathe?

  VICTOR: Yeah, that’s an urban myth.

  ME: Well, even better, because that means we can laminate the whole cat and not have to leave a small shaved patch of cat hanging in the breeze. Because that shit would look weird.

  VICTOR: I don’t even know where to start disagreeing with you on this one.

  ME: Does Kinko’s do laminating? Do you think they would laminate a cat?

  VICTOR: No. Plus, I’m not sure Kinko’s even exists anymore.

  ME: Probably because they refused to do cat lamination. You have to move with the times, Kinko’s. Change is coming. And by “change” I mean “my cat.” My cat is coming to get laminated. Open back up, Kinko’s. I’m about to save your business.

  VICTOR: No.

  ME: Then how about Saran wrap? DIY.

  VICTOR: Are you trying to punish me for something?

  ME: TINFOIL! Because they’ll be cool, and they’ll look like they’re wearing armor or like they’re tiny robots that run after laser beams. Plus, if we make them tinfoil hats the government can’t read their cat thoughts. EVERYONE WINS.