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// Step Six: Get a Perky Sidekick...I Mean Friend 
// Story: How to Forget Happiness 
// by LyraAlluse 
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Step Six: Get a Perky Sidekick Friend


For all of the time you spend repelling ponies, spend a smaller fraction of time letting one very special friend get close to you. This is crucial. This pony will be your lifelong mediator between life and death. Every time you mention suicide they will give you a book called “1001 ways to cheer yourself up” or else slap you until you snap out of your current state of distress.

The most important attribute this one friend must have is perkiness. I don’t mean the false perkiness that flight attendants have. This pony has to fart rainbows. They have to be like Mr. Neighbors after too many cappuccinos and a sex change operation. They have to tell you to “just keep swimming” and to “not go towards the light.”

You will often want to estrange yourself from this overly perky individual but hold onto them like you hold onto those Eriskay records. This person is your key to temporary (if not permanent) survival. You must read all of your Flourish Prose, Quilland Ink and Exmoor Altai Posh inspired poetry to this pony and anticipate their scolding with a smile. You have to endure the pain of them telling you to “buck up” and “look at the glass half-full” when you would prefer to be somewhere moping. It will be hard, but you must resist the urge to bury them six feet under a cactus in the middle of the San Palomino Desert every time they attempt to bring a smile to your face with one of their horribly executed knock-knock jokes.

Resist the urge to stuff them in their locker and make a break for it. You may think it will bring you joy to see their happiness destroyed by your sinister dreamed-up deed, but trust me when I say that it will just add to your remorse and bad conscience in retrospect. You don’t want to give yourself more reasons to be depressed about your life than absolutely necessary. No need to rush the process. You’ll want to end your life in due time.