Suck on this, depression

On a day when my antidepressant was getting back up to speed, a friend provided me almost all the energy and good feelings I needed.

I told her yesterday that my Thanksgiving was good but had ended poorly. I forgot to take some medicine, I told her, and felt horrible. She asked if I was OK and I told her yeah, except for my throbbing head.

She said she never knows how I feel because I always seem happy, more or less. I didn't hear her that well. I could not believe this, not because some was saying I seem happy (well, not just that) but because I has been meaning to talk to her about this very thing.

I was reading something she wrote last week about superheroes. She was talking about how we all have so much capacity for saving others, how there is courage in love.

The next night one of the aunts on "Pushing Daisies" talked about the heroism of a smile. "Daisies" probably strikes some people as hokey; I love it. Everyone is nice and kind, and Chuck is one of the cutest dead girls I have seen. It is a tossup between her and George. Why do cute dead girls have guy names?)

I told my friend I would rather have a cooler superpower than appearing happy but you take what you can get.

When I struggle with unhappiness, Mom tells me to smile even so. Not to ignore my feelings but for practice, she says, and who knows I might get used to it.

I guess I am getting used to it.

"I have never seen you not make the most of a day," my friend wrote me when I IM'd her to thank her. It was like when another friend called me "vibrant." These people see in me more than I realized was there.

Pretty astounding.