☹️ TREE 526: The secret to unhappiness

What if you really don’t know how to thrive?

• Maybe the things that are supposed to work don’t work for you because you have undiagnosed autism, dyslexia, foetal alcohol spectrum disorder or something else.

• Maybe you have an autoimmune disease and the treatments don’t help or don’t exist.

• Maybe you are living with trauma and the way forward is blocked for you.

• Maybe you have depression and everything feels hopeless even though you know it shouldn’t which makes everything feel even more hopeless.

• Maybe you are living in an impossible situation and you don’t know how to get out.

Maybe my cheery posts about being lucky and changing your environment and changing your story feel like mockery bombs lobbed from a happy land you can’t get to because you. don’t. actually. fucking. know. how.

If that’s where you are, I’m so sorry. It’s not fair. You shouldn’t have to be there.

I haven’t been exactly where you are. Where I have been is I have lost a child, raised children with various disorders, lived through mental illness and poverty. It’s much less that others have suffered, but it’s enough that I feel like I can tell you the only secret I know for that kind of unhappiness. It’s not really a secret:

Don’t quit today.

Because things always change. This is the nature of life. Your situation as you are experiencing it right now is not forever.

Because there are people who can and will help. You’ve probably experienced too many people who wouldn’t help or made things worse by trying. But there are eight billion people on this planet. Some of them know how to help you.

For today, don’t quit.

This isn’t your life forever.

I don’t know if I’ve ever drawn The Joker before. I can’t say with certainty that I have now.

This EP helped keep me afloat in some very dark water. The video is a bit cringe but I don’t care (Spotify).

Don’t quit
Jeff