People have always said to me, "You are so funny." I think I'm funny too. But do they mean the same kind of funny that I mean? Or is it funny like, "I hope she has a day job," funny?
I've always thought it was easier to be funny for others than for myself, and that the true mastery of self awareness and courage is the ability to laugh alone. Lately I've been bent over in stitches. Alone in the car. Sitting in a cafe on my own. Down the shopping aisle. In my bed. I'm a hoot. I've on occasion apologized to strangers lest they think I'm laughing at them and not my private joke which I could never explain anyway. "You had to be there," I said to one lady. She seemed pretty okay with my particular kind of crazy actually.
It's more like the old adage about laughing to keep from crying. Crying might seem to be the more obvious option for me right now. But crying is really tiring, and people are really uncomfortable when you cry in the grocery store or the cafe. The car is okay.
Sometimes I find humor to be the easiest path to people's affections. Say, if I make someone laugh then I believe they like me more. And although I think I'm funny, I also think I'm far too serious! So serious.
When I go to write, for example, I sort of start swirling down the sink drain into morose seriousness. The kind of morbid introspection you might find in the journal entries of 15 year old adolescent girls. It's sort of laughable, for one page, and past that it is completely unpublishable. I'm sure you'll understand that this is simply unacceptable as a writer. I must be funny!
It's not as if I don't have anything funny to talk about. Let's see...I'm gay and a Christian. Okay, that's moderately funny if you set aside things like Focus on the Family, Boys Don't Cry, and the Crusades. Go ahead and make what you want of that. It's a freebee.
Something else that is funny is my mental health. God, I really want to laugh about the fact that my mental health has really sucked. I want to find humor in the fact that I'm in debt up to my eyeballs because I lost my mind 3 years ago. I lost friends. That's kind of funny if you factor in that I moved in with my parents and THAT kind of funny makes up for all kinds of heartache. I also lost my job. Hm, I think that might be funny but I'm going to have to find something funny to say about being "let go" for making a total ass of myself and not having the joy of remembering much of it. Sort of like your friends saying to you, "You were so funny! I've never laughed so hard!" the day after getting so drunk that the last thing you remember is dropping your last quarter in your plastic keg beer cup. Not that I've experienced THAT.
So, my life is rife with funny. I just have to dig for it. Or, maybe I just have to scratch the surface to find funny. No, maybe it's right there on the surface and I just need to see it. No....that's enough.
Thank God for humor. I know it doesn't seem like he has one. I actually can't recall a sitting with my Bible open during which I laughed outloud and it wasn't a case of being slain in the Spirit. Not that I've experienced THAT.
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Well Colonel Mustard just wanted to say hi. I think I must the butler. Because it is always the butler that did it. Just not sure if I used the candlestick or not. I can't remember.
I so relate to friends saying I'm so funny, but usually it's when I actually was trying to be serious. Sometimes my wacy humour is what it takes to keep me from crying too. It's hard to cry when your sides are hurting from a good belly laugh. (Usually at my own expense) And know one really knows you are crying on the inside, except our Father in heaven.
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