First up, I love the Smiths. So here are the Smiths singing ‘That joke isn’t funny anymore*’
I’m not an earnest person. In fact I’m probably whatever the opposite of earnest is. I don’t take anything particularly seriously, which by the way, is not to say that I’m irresponsible or feckless**.
I laugh a lot (more often than not at myself), I poke a lot of fun at things (again, more often than not at myself) and I tell a lot of jokes – not knock-knock, boom-boom type jokes though; I always mess the punch lines of those up. I like funny things – not necessarily shiny-happy-people funny things, but funny things nonetheless***. Maybe that doesn’t sound like somebody who suffers from depression, but I’m yet to find the rule that says somebody with a mental health problem has to have a compulsory sense of humour bypass.
I often make a joke of my mental health difficulties because they are quite heavy enough without me adding a ten tonne weight by being oh-so-serious about them. That’s not to say I don’t know that they’re serious, or that I think it’s funny being me: they are and it isn’t – I think I try to use humour to get a bit of perspective when it feels like the sky is falling in. To be honest, I think laughing at myself might just have saved my life, so, in celebration of that fact, I’m going to end this post by telling you something that I thought was funny…..
Last night I was having a ‘bit of a moment’. I knew I was heading for trouble because I started doing the whole pacing/curling up in a ball thing. Thankfully I was mindful. I tried to find somewhere to put the thoughts, but the ‘shelf of stuff Wee Gee can’t think about’ was full so I decided to distract myself with something positive by writing a list of ‘all the reasons Wee Gee has to be cheerful’. In reality, there are a few reasons for me to be cheerful but last night the single solitary thing that I could think of to put on my list was:
“I don’t have one of those stupid Jimmy Hill moon shaped chins”
Why on earth did I think of that?! Where did it even come from?! It’s not as though I’ve anything against people with moon shaped chins by the way…..
Anyway. I gave up making the list and I didn’t do any more of that pacing/curling up in a ball thing.
Take care, Wee Gee x
*Granted, it isn’t the most cheery song in the world, even by the Smiths’ standards, but it is at least marginally more chipper than ‘Last night I dreamed somebody loved me’ and ‘I know it’s over’….
**All of the time
***I like to think I am witty and rye**** but I might just be sarcastic and sneering.
****Of course I meant wry. I was just testing you there. Ahem 😉
How do you eat an elephant? 
I agree with the laughing at yourself thing. I do it all the time with my depressed mentals. I think it used to offend my friends quite a bit when I first “came out” and called it “the mentals” instead of depression, but now they just laugh too. Yay happy depression!!
My science teacher used to have a moon shaped chin. It was rediculus but he was very good at science. xox
Happy depression…. I like that. x
That actually made me LOL. It probably shouldn’t, but it did. I think it’s some dry, warped sense of black humor 😀 xox
Do you mean “wry”? Or are you likening yourself to a type of bread? 😉
I actually am quite earnest, but I agree with a lot of what you say. Sometimes I think laughing at things saves me . . . otherwise I would sink too far. I tend to laugh at a lot of things, even during the worst period of my life. I don’t think being depressed means you can’t find things funny.
Ha ha! I did mean wry. If I could be any type of bread I’m not sure what I’d pick but it probably wouldn’t be rye 🙂
Wee Gee x
If I were a type of bread, I think I’d want to be cinnamon raisin. I’m not even sure why, since it’s not even close to my favorite…
Here’s to being wry – and rye!
😉