Random Thoughts: Forgetting to Laugh

This is going to be a short random post.

Yesterday a friend of mine and I went down to DC to go to the National Zoo (what can I say I love otters and red pandas) and to see John Hodgman of the Daily Show talk about his new book at Politics and Prose.

You might be asking yourself, “What does this have to do with bipolar disorder or depression or whatever else this crazy gentleman discusses on this blog?” Well I guess what it comes down to is that John Hodgman is hysterically funny. Absurdly so really and I laughed during about 90% of the 90 minutes he spoke for (yes, I laugh at John Hodgman at the same rate that Sen. John McCain votes with George Bush). This was important to me because I’ve been forgetting to laugh lately.

Life isn’t terribly funny when the majority of your time is spent absorbed in the memory of your all-time most painful experience. I don’t laugh all that often when I’m writing. I don’t see my friends very often and even when I do the conversations trend serious. For a couple weeks it was excusable because I was depressed…and nothing is funny when I’m depressed, but when I’m not it’s incredibly important to experience, you know, a whole array of human emotions. I’ve been starting to think lately that either my emotional growth was stunted growing up or my medications leave me completely numb. I try to envision scenarios that I would find particularly painful or enjoyable and never come up with anything. Some people like living like that in a protective bubble where painful experiences are blunted by anti-depressants and excitement is tempered by mood stabilizers. I don’t. I recognize the importance of medication and never plan on going off of it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it right?

That’s all for today. Thanks for reading.