I had high hopes to finish this review yesterday, but I had one of my “bad days”, which is fitting in a totally weird, Bloggess way. My bad days are the days where my depression and anxiety win and my emotions take a fun ride to Overwhelming Sadness Valley, Rage Inducing Irritability Town and Petrified by Intrusive Thoughts Commonwealth. I am cursed with dysthymia, which is a.) a genus of moth, b.) a form of chronic depression (but ONLY MILD depression, if you are judgy Google) and c.) too reliant on the “sometimes ‘y'” rule of vowels. (Of course, with any mental illness, the names gets rearranged every few years, so I think now I have persistent depressive disorder, which just makes it sounds like the clingy ex-girlfriend of mood disorders.) Sometimes I even have what’s called “double depression” – the worst type of daily double in Jeopardy. (One of the first things Lawson lays out in Furiously Happy is that mental illness needs to be treated like any other disease. So I’m going to do my bit of erasing the stigma by [mostly anonymously, it is the internet] announcing that I am a person that has struggled with a real disease for 60% of my life. We are real, we hurt, and we are still here and could maybe use a hug.)
Lawson bravely takes us with her on her own journey of survival. Mental illness is a lot of things, but one thing it usually isn’t is funny. Lawson casts a Riddikulus spell on her struggles, because sometimes laughing is the only thing that gets you through a bad day. Seriously, don’t read this one in bed because you will wake the other person up. Or all your pets.
