Are you happy? I mean, Furiously Happy?

Everyone has human heads in their closet.

Do you have a happy book? You know, the kind of books you bring along everywhere, whose spine died when you opened it for the 3475th time, whose pages are colored by tea spills, tears, sticky fingers or the Mars bar that melted inside of your bag. You may have chosen it for the characters, for the story, for a quote. It does not have to be a real happy book, but it is a book that makes you feel better, that makes you feel less alone in the big weird world we live in.

I have a happy book. I found it on a sweltering Sunday. I picked it because of its cover, wondering about the meaning of its title.

Title: Furiously Happy
Author: Jenny Lawson
Publisher: Picador
Release date: October 1st 2015
Format: paperback
Rating: All the stars in the sky

Furiously Happy. My happy book.

If you have read my coming out post (here!here!) you already know that I suffer from different mental disorders. I have always found it hard to talk about it. Until now. Until Jenny Lawson taught me it was okay to be crazy, to want to cram your house with kangaroos, to compliment other people’s internal organs, or to suffer from something that most people don’t understand.

Whether you live with someone who suffers from a mental illness (or several, we are a very open club and there seems to have discounts when they hand in diseases, you often get two for one…), suffer from it yourself, or if you are only curious about what is life like when the world is against you, Furiously Happy is for you. I know I have been saying this a lot, I promise I don’t get any money for all the promoting! The reason why I am so enthusiastic about this book is because what’s inside those pages have made me feel okay. Really okay. With what I am and what I am not.

I supposed we’re all possessed in some ways. Some of us with dependence on pills and wine. Others through sex or gambling. Some of us through self-destruction or anger or fear.

Jenny Lawson is a very special woman. Yes, her anxiety levels go through the roof, she is on meds, and she is struggling against depression. She does not sugarcoat her story, she does not sweep under the rugs her most difficult moments, and she is not afraid of calling it what it is. Also, she is not perfect. But she tells it all. With humor. Lots of humor. You don’t have to go through lengthy overly graphic paragraphs containing sad complaints about her conditions. Jenny Lawson takes you all the way into one of the dark holes depression likes to throw people into, she switches on the light and she explains how it works for her. For someone who has always believed she was weird and stupid because she could not leave her house, it was a revelation to have a genuine story reminding her she is not alone. Because alone is what you hear in your head constantly when you are sick. When someone going through hell herself is telling you that it’s just a trick of the mind, it has more power than whatever nice things you can hear from someone who has never experienced it.

Jenny has found a way to share parts of her life in a refreshing and funny way while putting words on pains-who-must-not-be-named. In a society afraid and full of stigmas, she lifts the veil on what it is like to deal with all kinds of fears and dark places in her unique voice. This is in no way a gloomy and depressing book. Get ready for priceless arguments between her and her husband, fascinating discussions she has with herself, and the funniest stories. Some about her issues, some about her daily life, often both at the same time.

It will make you laugh, it will move you, I hope it will help you, just as much as it helped me.

“Depression is like… When you don’t want cheese anymore. Even though it’s cheese.”

Furiously Happy is available on Amazon

Known for her sardonic wit and her hysterically skewed outlook on life, Jenny Lawson has made millions of people question their own sanity, as they found themselves admitting that they, too, often wondered why Jesus wasn’t classified as a zombie, or laughed to the point of bladder failure when she accidentally forgot that she mailed herself a cobra. Her blog (www.thebloggess.com) is award-winning and extremely popular.

You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and her blog