Comedians live by the mantra tragedy + time = comedy—hence Jessica Holmes’s refreshing and hilarious new memoir about depression, “the cold sore of the mind.” She takes us on her journey— sometimes laugh-out-loud, sometimes cringe-worthy—from successful performer to someone who was basically living the life of a house cat. She muses about:
- the chicken and the egg of depression and comedy
- marriage counselling (a.k.a. tattling on your spouse)
- where jokes come from
- living on the sofa, which now looks like a tornado hit a 7-Eleven
- her kids’ take on the perks of having a depressed mom: “We don’t have to clean up anything. Yesterday the cat barfed and Mom just put a cushion on it and went back to playing on the iPad!”
- the obnoxiousness of anti-depressant commercials: “I never noticed the ocean before!”
Holmes shares her two cents on how to play it cool when your medication makes you hear Kate Hudson’s voice, and why you don’t sneak pepperoni into the movies. It’s a validating read for anyone who has suffered from depression a little (“I get sad every January”) or a lot (“My psychiatrist doesn’t have a name for what I’ve got”) or who just thinks real life calls for levity and understanding.
