My Happy Life: The Disturbingly Sane

by Nicolette Westfall

In My Happy Life, Lydia Millet takes the view that the members of society that do not fit in are insane to various degrees and turns it on its head. The main character, an unnamed woman, narrates her story from a room in an abandoned mental health building. She traces her life from the beginning, as an orphan, through extremely physically abusive school years and onto life being held captive and tortured by a wealthy man.

While presenting her story, she shows such love and humour, despite the atrocities that are committed continually against her mind and body. She experiences too many horrors that would make a “normal” person crack. In the end, she starves to death.

In clever writing, Millet is able to present society as the disturbed, insane landscape that it is. At almost every turn, regular people and children take advantage of the character’s innocence and acceptance of others. Trusting and patient, she loves and forgives. Despite her inability to differentiate between good and bad people, and the injuries her person receives, I can’t argue that she is insane—it is the perpetrators out there that abuse her which are disturbed.

While at first glance, the comparison between her and Britney Spears appears far-fetched, a closer look reveals that it really is we, the mass consumers, who are rather deranged. We are the ones that read sites like perezhilton and tmz and buy People magazine for the latest gossip on the pop wreck. There would be no millions if we did not buy into her over-sexed image and the post-fallout.

There is debate over how much influence the pressures of celebrity life and the hordes of photographers have had on Spears’ mental health. Even if Spears is in on the photography frenzy, the pressure of catering to the paparazzi is increasing in Hollywood. Celebs like George Clooney argue safety must come first, not photos.

Regardless of which came first, pre-disposed mental issues or the spotlight of fame, it is absolutely morbid that celebrities, especially Spears, are flanked by hordes of photographers wherever she goes, with masses of mindless consumers shilling out money for trivial tidbits instead of putting that money towards mental health research—just as it is quite disturbing that Millet’s character faces abuser after abuser until she is finally left behind to face a cruel death alone. While the contexts and factors involved in each woman’s mental instability are very complex and differ accordingly, both women display the damaging consequences of the predator in human nature.