Fun and silliness

Recently I sent a package of silly things to a friend who is having a hard time.  Making it was really fun and tapped into a part of my brain that has been quiet for a long time.  It reminded me of my university days.  There were four of us that had been friends when we were in high school.  Once we were all in different places we would send each other newsletters.  These were full of inside jokes that most people would think were not funny.  (A lot of them came to be early in the morning when we had been up all night).  We thought they were funny though.  I really used to look forward to getting the newsletters in the mail and also to making them up to send off.

This got to me thinking about my adult life.  When did that sense of fun and silliness disappear?  When did I decide (is that even the right word) that I needed to be grown up and serious?  Or did the depression just get so bad that I was no longer able to find that side of my self?  When did fun get replaced with something else?  Someone else?  Someone I am not?  When did the mask become all that there was?

I remember being at grad school when we were supposed to be serious business students who would be able to function in the "real" world.  We were certainly encouraged to be a certain way.  It didn't really feel right then, but depression was really starting to take over at the time.  Then I went to work in my first business-type job.  Again, no room for people who didn't fit a certain mold.  I remember feeling like the person I was at work was not me at all.  But, by the point it no longer mattered.  The depression was so bad, there was no way I had any way to handle the situation other than to just try to survive everyday (which I barely did).

The thing is that that kind of fun is life giving for me.  I makes me feel good about things.  It's creative as well and uses a side of me that doesn't come out very often, and yet it's a vital side of who I am.  I am not an artist or a musician or a sculptor etc...  But I do like to create fun.  I often find that I have a twisted sense of humour and find a lot of things funny that others don't.  This is a side of me that has been buried for so long it's taking a lot of work to discover it and find ways to express it.

This journey of learning to live with depression is tough a lot of days.  Finding those sides of me that feed my soul is worth the effort though.