Free Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson

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 taken 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