PREMEDITATED HOLLY GOLIGHTLY

Does Optimism Stink as Bad as Pessimism?

You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?

I’ve always been an optimist. I thought I was supposed to be an optimist. It’s my defense against the dark mood. I believed that if I could be cheerful enough, I could talk depressed people out of their moody slumber.

What a ding dong I’ve been. How naive. How self-important. I’m so sorry to all of you people who were trying to be depressed as I vomited my Holly Golightly all over your sweater.

It wasn’t premeditated. Okay, it was premeditated, but I premeditated it way before I met you. I was stomping all over people’s depression with my smiley emojis way back.

When I was younger, my unbridled joy got me a lot of attention. I was hooked. She’s such a happy child, my public said. Alas! Light bounces right off of her.

In my defense, I’ve got some addiction in my family, and blowing sunshine up other people’s asses had some attractive qualities.

Also, I had no other skills. I could read but not for any length of time. I could do math but when geometry showed up and gave me the finger, I was out. Fuck those shapes. I could swim, but I wasn’t headed to the Olympics unless I could get an Olympian to date me. I hear they’re too busy to date anyway or do you think he was letting me off easy?

Being insanely jolly came naturally mostly, but maybe my therapist was right when she said I was shoving so much down there, I was one denial short of spontaneous combustion. But it was working for me. People told me bad news. I flipped that runny egg into a sunny side egg.

People with SAD said they were depressed by a gloomy day. I pointed to a sliver of light eking its way through the horizon. So much hope. You couldn’t hold me back. No matter how bummed you were, I was there to unbum you.

I’m sorry.

I was like a missionary who showed up to a country that had embraced its own religion and said “Christian time!”

I didn’t know the value of mucking around in the sludge. Or repeatedly banging one’s face into a wall until it was good and bloody. I did not respect someone's capacity to endlessly weep. I was always there to intercept sadness with a knock-knock joke. I’m so ashamed.

I’ll do better from now on. The next time you want to fall into a puddle of your self-induced abyss, I’ll allow it. It might kill me. I might lose my fucking mind, but I won’t try to make you smile.

How do you feel about tickling? Too invasive?