This isn’t going to be a blog where I try and make you laugh with a series of funny jokes.  I also do not want this to be a blog where it comes across like I’m trying to persuade you about how funny I am.  To be honest, I don’t care whether you think I’m funny or not.  However, the point of this piece is to state to everybody how laughter has helped save my soul.

Years ago, I once had a taxi driver refer to me as Del Boy(that iconic hilarious TV character from Only Fools and Horses) and you know what, it made my entire year.  You see, just as jokey, mickey-taking banter is part of who Del is, humour is also integral to who I am as a person too!

I have suffered with a serious mental health condition since I was sixteen years old(I’m now forty-one).  There are times when I’ve self harmed and there have been times where I wished to no longer be on this planet of ours.  Believing in HOPE got me through the dark times but also did those moments when seemingly out nowhere, I would just crack a joke or make an amusing life observation to my friends or loved ones.  Laughter is my release in life, laughter has and still remains my saving grace.

I can be serious and intellectual when I want to be(and a bighead), however I like myself the best when I am playing the fool.  In therapy I have discussed this side of my personality and we decided to term it as ‘funny Andy’.   I love being him because he doesn’t take life too seriously.  Nobody can annoy me when I’m in ‘funny Andy’ mode and I even make myself laugh when I’m in this persona.  That implies though that it’s an act with me but it never feels like one.  I can’t consciously turn ‘funny Andy’ on and off, like say with the flick of a switch inside me.  Being happy-go-lucky is who I am!

I think if I couldn’t laugh at myself then life would not be worth living, it would be soooooooooooo dull.  On Twitter I refer to myself as @ScarfmanAndy, the one and only scarf superhero(makes me laugh if nobody else).  I went to a local supermarket recently, very nervous because of my OCD, and said ‘thanks mate’, as a fifty-odd year old checkout woman wished me a merry Christmas.  This utterance from me seemed stupidly inappropriate somehow and really made me laugh afterwards.

My OCD has been a bully in the past which has been unrelenting and unforgiving at times.  I have never laughed at my panic attacks because it’s too cruel an illness for that, nevertheless I can’t lie and say I have never laughed about the way I am with my OCD at times.  Seeing the funny side to my mental health suffering, strips the condition somewhat of its power to devastate my life.

I need the pause, the energy and the life fulfilment that having a good sense of humour gives me as a sufferer from a mental health condition.  Take last Thursday for example, I walked into my physios worried sick that I had dog poo on my trainer.  To get through the appointment with my anxiety, I just had to momentarily put this out of my mind and within minutes ‘funny Andy’ was thankfully to the fore again, saying something humourous as is my way!  ‘Funny Andy’ had come to the rescue and boy was I grateful to hear him.

This feels like a rambling blog with no clear direction but I just wanted to express my gratitude to my sense of humour, for helping me get through testing and embarrassing situations in my life.  For example, I can remember making the nurse laugh as she put a new dressing on my hernia wound.  I can also remember always being ‘the funny one’ on student nights out.  Life would be boring without laughter.  Laughter has most definitely saved me!