I seem to have misplaced my laugher. My sense of humor. My ability to turn any tragedy into stand-up comedy.
For some, this may not seem like such a big deal. There is something inappropriate in laughing about misfortune, after all. But for me? This is a huge deal. A deal breaker, if you will. You see, my laugher is the thing that keeps me going day in and day out. It’s the coping mechanism by which I manage not to punch holes in the wall or rock in the corner whilst sobbing and eating my hair.
My laugher — my tendency to turn just about anything into self-deprecating hilarity — is my life.
The other day, something happened at work which really sent me into a spiraling vortex of suckitude. (To be fair, this work incident may just have been the straw that broke the Baby Bjorn’s back strap. I suspect it was.) Normally, after a couple hours I would have been cracking jokes at my own expense. But nope. Not even when I tried — tried really, really hard — could I think of a single funny thing to say about the situation.
Not a single thing.
Not even on my long ride to work the next day did a wisecrack come seeping through what little filter between my brain and mouth exists. Usually those things slip out before I’ve had time to process their origin. But not then. And not today.
Is it possible I’ve reached my cruddy-things-I-can-handle limit this early in life? There’s no way! I haven’t had a cruddy life at all, really. Worse, is it possible something has happened to me that supersedes my son’s tragic and near death birth experience, resulting special needs, and festering, ever-present mommy guilt over it? Or how about the nightmarish front row seat to my grandmother’s slow and painful death — a death in which she drowned from the fluid in her own lungs, but not before putting up a 3-day fight (3 days longer than any doctors said it would last after the decision to unplug her) while the rest of the family sat and watched her suffer? Because those two experiences are the most graphically unpleasant events to which I’ve been witness these 30+ years (excepting the time I was almost mauled to death by a canine, but I didn’t really witness that one as much as partake in it). It’s not scientifically possible that I can now make light of those things but not what’s going on presently, is it?
How can I not even have the slightest makings of a lone, mostly-cheesy one-liner up there in my brains? HOW?
This is serious, you guys. I feel like I should go out and buy myself a sports car or run away to Cabo with a younger model of my husband or get a face lift or whatever it is people undergoing crisis do.
I’m thinking of posting a reward:
LOST LAUGHER
FREQUENTLY INAPPROPRIATE AND FOND OF MAKING OTHERS UNCOMFORTABLE
RESPONDS TO “YOU’RE SUCH AN ASSHOLE”
REWARD IF FOUND: 100 PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SANDWICHES AND A PARTIALLY USED E-CIGARETTE CARTRIDGE
You know where to find me.
