How to Be Happy Read online

  David Burton is an award-winning playwright and theatre director from Brisbane. He is best known for his plays April’s Fool, Orbit and The Landmine Is Me (co-written with Claire Christian). How to Be Happy is his first book.

  daveburton.com.au

  textpublishing.com.au

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  Text copyright © David Burton 2015

  The moral right of David Burton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published in Australia by The Text Publishing Company, 2015

  Cover and page design by Imogen Stubbs

  Cover illustration by Louise Lockhart / Offset

  Typeset by J&M Typesetters

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication:

  Creator: Burton, David J., author.

  Title: How to be happy : a memoir of love, sex and teenage confusion / by David Burton.

  ISBN: 9781925240344 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9781922253156 (ebook)

  Target Audience: For young adults.

  Subjects: Burton, David J.

  Men—Australia—Biography.

  Depression in adolescence.

  Adolescence.

  Happiness.

  Dewey Number: 920.71

  All the events in this book are true. Only the names of the people have been changed.

  Contents

  I’ve Lied to You Already

  1: Angel Faces

  2: Smeghead

  3: The Swimming Carnival

  4: Self-sabotage

  5: Sweet Sixteen

  6: Yoo-hoo!

  7: Bruises

  8: Doctors and Depression

  9: Getting Out of Bed

  10: How to Survive Year Twelve

  11: Out

  12: All the Feels

  13: Fluids

  14: Grown Up

  15: Turning Inside Out

  16: Lost and Found

  17: Gutless Wonder

  18: Too Far Gone

  19: How to Be Unhappy

  Now

  Acknowledgments

  If You Need Help

  I’ve Lied to You Already

  I don’t know how to be happy.

  Yeah, sorry. Awkward.

  Okay, let me rephrase. I don’t know how to make you happy. But I have a pretty good idea what would help. Trouble is, my tips sound fairly lame. It’s like when you ask someone about the secret to losing weight and they answer ‘eat well and exercise’.

  True, but profoundly unhelpful.

  Also, I’m not a doctor, nor do I have any qualifications in psychology. I have qualifications in the arts, which means I can tell you how to critique a post-feminist interpretation of Shakespeare and how to fill in a Centrelink form.

  Given all of this, if you’re still feeling like you’ll read this book, you’re an incredibly trusting person. I like that about you. Seriously. You’re friggin’ lovely.

  I’m writing about happiness because I’m obsessed with it. There are whole swathes of my life that have been completely absent of joy. I’ve been diagnosed with clinical depression on and off since I was a small child. As I grew into adulthood, I started to acknowledge that I had a pretty serious problem, and I sought ways to make myself happier. I guess you could argue that most of us are doing this all the time anyway—looking for happiness in all sorts of places: good marks, new friendships, booze…

  But of course, as most of us know, true happiness and unlimited contentment are always available. You see, young padawan, true happiness is only ever found within yourself.

  Yuck.

  Lame. But true.

  Here are some other big, broad things that research tends to point towards helping with happiness:

  Sunlight. Go outdoors. Sunlight raises serotonin in the brain, which makes you happier. It’s a natural antidepressant.

  Exercise. Now look, I’m with you on this one. I’ve got plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that exercise makes you quite unhappy. It makes me grumpy and constipated. But once you get over that stage, you do feel unmistakably brighter. I’m reluctant to admit it, but exercise does make you happier.

  A healthy social life. This one’s always been tricky for me. I’m a fairly introverted guy at heart. But having a close network of friends and good relationships means you have a community to support you in times of need. I didn’t have that, outside my family, for ages. Then I found it. More on this soon.

  Eat well. Healthy in body means healthy in mind. Again, I can argue with this one. McDonald’s three times a week makes me very happy. In the short term. But not in the long. Most of the time, a balanced diet helps a balanced brain. Bummer.

  Okay, those are out of the way. You knew them anyway, right? They’re common sense. I think we all know how to make ourselves happier, it’s getting there that’s the trouble. It’s always been the trouble for me.

  The only completely true, solid, non-lame advice I can offer is my experience. There have been times when I’ve been happy, and times where I’ve been dangerously unhappy. How can our stories ever be split into those two categories? Happy. Sad. My life, so far, has had an abundance of both, but never in a clean-cut fashion. I can’t begin to separate the two out and try and tell you how to be happy just from my happy moments, or how to avoid sadness just from my sad moments. I have to tell you the whole darn thing.

  1

  Angel Faces

  Meet Cameron. He has his hands around my neck, holding me splayed across a table in visual arts. The class is full of noisy kids who aren’t really fazed by the fact that I’m about to die. It’s only a couple of weeks into high school, but they’re used to Cameron’s antics.

  The bohemian art teacher has only worked at the school for six months. In fact, she’s only worked in teaching for six months. At the end of the year she’ll throw in the towel on a career that was obviously never her idea in the first place. But right now she’s standing on the opposite side of the classroom, uncertain what to do, as Cameron’s hands grind tighter and tighter around my neck.

  I provoked this attack when I said that Cameron was an idiot. In my defence, he was. Or, at least, he was acting like one.

  I had muttered it in a cowardly manner, jeering back at him when he called me a faggot. In his defence, I was. Or, at least, I was acting like one.

  Unlike Cameron, I couldn’t catch a ball and I wasn’t interested in the quantity of froth that could be produced from shaking a coke can for five minutes. I had proven adept at understanding some things that Cameron couldn’t, however. Like basic maths and English. And so I was a faggot.

 
‘I could snap you like a twig,’ he slurred into my face.

  I was used to bullying, and Cameron was the typical bully in every way. He was tall, had spiky hair, and he had received an extra kick of testosterone before a lot of the other thirteen year olds around us had. He even had a sidekick: Trent. Trent was the weakest kid in the whole of our year level. He was round, he feigned stupidity and he hero-worshipped Cameron. Unlike me, he had made a wise choice, early on, to make himself Cameron’s best friend to prevent the inevitable arse-kicking that he would receive if he didn’t.

  Who had I made my best friend in the high-school game of thrones?

  Dearest, darling Ray.

  On the very first day of high school, I was standing outside a classroom, waiting for class to start or for someone to give me orders.

  ‘Do you like cheese?’ said a deep voice from behind me.

  I turned around and met Ray. We proceeded to have a ten-minute conversation about cheese. We resumed it over lunch. And then we picked it up again the next day.

  I would come to both despise and love Ray. He was my instant ticket to the bottom rung of the social ladder, but he didn’t judge me. As long as we were talking about cheese or Pokémon, I was an amazing friend.

  It took Ray slightly longer than most people to get his sentences out. He had long, greasy hair, which he tied in a messy ponytail. His skin was shiny and unwashed, and his clothes sat on him like they’d been thrown on from a distance. There were no lockers at our school, which meant that we carried the day’s textbooks around with us. So the new students were weighed down by a bag almost as heavy as themselves. But Ray seemed more weighed down than everyone else.

  Ray had Aspergers. I diagnosed him within seconds and immediately felt comfortable. I knew Asperger’s Syndrome intimately through my younger twin brothers.

  I suppose I should try to explain Aspergers. It’s not easy.

  Have you ever been a sober person at a really messy party? Around you are loads of people having fun, singing and making out, occasionally stumbling over to you and slurring nonsense in your ear. There are moments of lucidity, maybe even enjoyment, when their drunkenness doesn’t matter and you’re able to feel part of the fun. There are other times where you feel completely alienated from the madness around you. You might even feel that you’re in significant danger, and you’re being driven towards an anxiety that no one else can understand, as they’re too busy riding high on something that you’re not a part of.

  That’s kind of what being Aspergers is like. It’s not a brilliant explanation, but it’s a start. There are countless others.

  My favourite is an unconfirmed story I heard long ago that originates in the nineteenth century somewhere. It’s said that people with Asperger’s Syndrome tend to have innocent features, with gentle contours and unblemished skin, sometimes described ‘otherworldly’. (It helps to think of the elves from The Lord of the Rings here.) This, combined with their general demeanour, led them to be called ‘Angel Faces’. This title is still around today. Search ‘Aspergers’ and ‘angels’ and you’ll get a myriad of sites that claim theological proof that people with Aspergers are reincarnated angels.

  I like this bizarre deduction, not for its validity (although whatever floats your boat is fine by me), but for the idea that there is nothing inherently wrong with Aspergers kids. It’s not them who need to learn from everyone else; it’s everyone else who should learn from them.

  But I fear I’m not getting any closer to an explanation.

  Asperger’s Syndrome is, fundamentally, a social and communicative disorder. Asperger’s Syndrome kids have a great deal of trouble connecting with the world. They find it extremely difficult to read emotional or social cues. The subtle signals that we use everyday to demonstrate how we’re feeling can be completely lost on them. To survive, many learn to mimic emotional states.

  Aspergers folks have a low threshold for stress and anxiety. So things need to stay in a strict, predictable routine. If that routine is broken even slightly it can lead to an unforgettable trauma.

  My brothers were born two years after me, and diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome some time before they were five years old. The doctors originally thought they would never speak. This turned out to not be the case, and the twins have grown up to be, in most ways, functioning members of society. But it is unlikely that they’ll ever have jobs, and they stay at home, full-time, with my parents.

  What makes my brothers effortlessly charming is their coping mechanism. They can, at will, recite any of the following television programs in their entirety: Family Guy, most of The Simpsons, Thomas the Tank Engine, Friends and The Adventures of Lano & Woodley. In addition, their video-game library spans an entire wall. Ask them to recite any scene from these and you’ll be met with an incredibly enthusiastic monologue.

  For a long time when they were growing up, ninety-nine per cent of what the boys said came directly from a film or television show. Their dictionary was pop culture.

  Feeling angry? Their voices would flatten, deepen and take on the exact intonation of Homer going off at Bart. Disappointed in somebody’s naughty behaviour? The Fat Controller would suddenly possess them, and they’d give a lecture to a ‘very naughty engine’.

  Over time, they’ve found their own voices. These days they can articulate their inner-emotional states without resorting to television shows. It’s the result of a lifetime of hard work.

  So I grew up with Frank Woodley, Colin Lane, Peter and Stewie Griffin, Chandler Bing, and the Fat Controller. Somewhere in there are Andy and Chrissy, my brothers.

  Cue sentimental indie acoustic guitar, and enjoy the following montage of my life, growing up.

  Chrissy is six when he collapses in the backyard. He is breathing and his eyes are open, but he’s completely unresponsive. Desperately worried about some kind of brain failure, Mum throws him in the car and we rush to hospital.

  Upon arrival, Chrissy wakes up from his catatonic state and immediately goes back to playing. Mum nervously interrogates him, and Chrissy mildly replies, ‘I was Superman, affected by Kryptonite.’ His commitment to the role was stunning.

  Mum plans an innocent surprise for Dad. A professional photograph of his wife and three children for his desk. It’s a nice thought: Andy, Chrissy, Mum and me all beaming at him. But the teenage photographer lacks the social skills to deal with the twins, who are not up for being told where to sit and how to smile or being ordered to keep still. They’re only six or seven. The result of half an hour of failed photos is a tantrum from both of them. It’s exceedingly public. Mum eventually gets them into the car. Just before she drives off, someone knocks on her window.

  A woman smiles condescendingly as Mum rolls the window down. ‘Hi,’ she says to Mum, ‘I couldn’t help but notice you were having some trouble. I wanted to let you know that Jesus may be able to provide answers for you.’

  The boys chastised Mum for swearing so much at the young woman.

  At a primary school concert, Andy and Chrissy become the stars of the show. Their flawless rendition of a Lano & Woodley skit is met with wild applause. When they sit down to watch the others perform, however, they turn into harsh critics. They can’t understand why everyone else isn’t capable of perfection. A pre-teen amateur girl band squeaking out the Pokém
on theme song is met with a particularly disgusted sneer from Andy.

  When the girls bound up to him to ask him what he thought, he doesn’t pause before responding: ‘You sounded like crap.’

  We have a conversation about manners on the way home.

  ‘But they sounded like crap!’ Andy argues, his skin becoming red and itchy in frustration.

  In his defence, they really did.

  We’re very young when we’re playing in the backyard of a friend’s place. Desperate to be liked, I’m doing my best to join in. One of the older boys suggests that we grab some tomato sauce and trick the twins into thinking we’re bleeding. The plan goes like this: we’ll run into them, fall over, and then blame them when blood starts going everywhere. The plan goes off without a hitch. The twins are confused and distraught. The older boy thinks I’m a hero. I hate myself.

  Woolworths. The deli counter. In an effort to encourage life skills, Mum asks Chrissy to order some meat.

  ‘Hi,’ Chrissy says confidently to the girl behind the counter, ‘Can I have a dozen chicken vaginas?’

  It’s a line from Family Guy.

  The girl quietly calls her manager.

  We’re at a party shop buying balloons in bulk. Chrissy grabs a fake rubber bum and proceeds to the counter.

  ‘Hi,’ Chrissy says with a smirk to the young girl behind the counter, ‘Can I have a new butt? This old one’s got a crack in it.’

  It’s a line from Family Guy.

  I grab Chrissy before the girl can call her manager.

  The weird thing is, this is my normal.

  Reactions vary when I tell people about the boys, but a common feature is pity.

  ‘Oh,’ they say, ‘that must have been so hard for your parents.’