Sometimes the funniest people are hiding the darkest demons.
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I’m pretty good at making people laugh. I pride myself on quick wit and sarcasm, and my humor ranges from biting to self deprecating. I think I like to make other people laugh because I’m not sure I remember how myself.
I chuckle frequently enough. Sometimes it’s just to be polite but most often it’s genuine. The true laugh though? The kind that seems to well up from within your soul? I don’t really get too many of those. This depression has been kicking my ass for longer than I want to admit.
I don’t really know why I want to make people laugh so much. I feel like I NEED to be funny. It isn’t something I want to do, but something I’m absolutely driven to do. I think I may understand how some of my generations comedic geniuses felt. Since they often couldn’t do it themselves, they used their audiences as surrogates.
I can’t really prove it, nor do I have interview proof or testimonials. I have only the feeling that happiness is somehow inexplicably within my grasp when I’m able to help others experience it. In those moments, it doesn’t seem to matter that I can’t be happy. In those fleeting instances, instead of feeling morose or just existing, happiness seems a little less abstract to me.
No matter how far I’ve fallen though, when the opportunity comes to make other people laugh, I become a mere passenger in this pudgy white body.
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Maybe it’s the carrot dangled in front of the beast of burden. Perhaps it’s something more akin to people watching “The Kardashians” on television. Just getting to watch something we’ll never experience ourselves, the need to feel it vicariously, even if only for a short time.
I have so many things that help me cope with my depression. My friends and family, the support networks I’ve cultivated, my pets and this, the ability to write. No matter how far I’ve fallen though, when the opportunity comes to make other people laugh, I become a mere passenger in this pudgy white body.
Facebook the other day showed me a Robin Williams meme. I’ve always been a little envious of his ability to nudge an audience into a rousing belly laugh. The realization that he may have felt like me, only magnified, froze my envy.
What if his depression was deeper thus his drive to make people laugh was equally magnified? What if he were so far removed from happiness himself that, like an addict, he needed ever larger doses to keep him grounded? What of the fear that someday the carrot may not have been enough?
I don’t understand why I can’t experience happiness the way most people can and do. I don’t know where “I” begin and where the “mental illness” begins.
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In the past couple of years I’ve been through a self awakening of sorts. The process has been painful, traumatic, enlightening and cathartic all at once. I spent most of my life stuck hidden in the fog of war. I kept my head down and I trudged dutifully along, existing out of some misguided habit and belief that happiness was for other people.
Fog of war. If you haven’t experienced the voices in your head, belittling you constantly, encouraging you not to try, proudly proclaiming your worthlessness and solitude, it’s probably not possible for me to make you understand. I want you to understand. I need people to see that we aren’t just making this up almost as much as I need them to laugh. Hell, most days I wish I understood.
I don’t know who or what I am. I don’t understand why I can’t experience happiness the way most people can and do. I don’t know where “I” begin and where the “mental illness” begins. How much of my actions are the depression and anxiety affecting my ability to interact and make decisions and what part of them is me?
I do that. Me. That’s my spark in the darkness.
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Such is the identity crisis I suffer daily. Important decisions are hashed and rehashed until every possible scenario is played out. Self doubt rules the day and I find failure where others see success. I am unable to see the positive in anything because I don’t know what I’m truly responsible for.
Somehow, if I do see success, it’s because I was lucky and stumbled into a positive situation. The only thing I know for sure is that I make people laugh. I do that. Me. That’s my spark in the darkness. It’s the only part of my identity I can truly say belongs to me and not the devils in my mind.
I think, maybe, because it’s the only part of me I truly feel is me, it has become an intrinsic need. Perhaps it isn’t so much that I want to make people laugh, to make them happy, to witness their elation. Perhaps it’s driven by the inability to experience it myself. Whatever the cause, I clutch that part of me like a child to a magic stone that chases the monster under his bed. When it’s all you have, it’s all you do.
Also by Shawn Henfling
Inside The Prison Of My Mind | I Refuse To Babysit My Children | I Think Of Suicide Like You Think Of Changing Jobs | The Suicide Note I Never Left |
Photo credit: Boudewijn Berends/flickr
Hi Shawn. You don’t know me, so there’s no reason for you to just do whatever I suggest, but I have depression and have watched both my sister and oldest daughter battle bipolar. Talk about some war stories. Whew! Their stories would sound really familiar to you, as would mine. So there’s no reason to repeat it all again. But I did want to mention that if you’re not current doing a DBT or CBT of some kind, all three of us HIGHLY recommend this in addition to the correct medication or medications. This type of talk therapy can be… Read more »