I Need a Laughing Couch

That laughter where your mascara runs down your face and you are gasping for breath and the sounds, good god the sounds you are making don't even sound human, THAT is the secret.  The inappropriate shrieking, snorting, belly laughs that you have no idea where they came from.  Those giggles that sound like a 3 year old and yet, are full of wisdom of knowing really dark shit. 

I pretty much need a fainting couch but I would call it a laughter couch.  You get the idea.  I fall on the floor from laughing a lot.  It would be a hell of a lot softer to fall on a beauty like this.....

THAT is the laughter that will keep you going through the shit.  If you don't have that laughter, you best find it and find people who make you laugh like that right quick.  It's the secret. 

It's what makes a room full of miserable undesirables be able to move on and forgive themselves for the terrible shit we've all done.  Over and over and over and we laugh our asses off when we hear horrible stories about how awful we were and then what we did to fix it.  And we laugh.  We laugh when we hear someone come in and tell our story and we shake our head with that knowing laughter that IT GETS BETTER.  It gets so much better. 

It's what makes giving shots of hormones to your wife more bearable when you see her bruises and rashes and see her tears but she's laughing through them because you two have more fun together than should ever be allowed by two consenting adults.  When your husband calls you on the phone and reduces you to snorkgiggling with just a sound he makes?  Congratulations.  You are with someone truly great for you. 

Even when you are in knee deep in the shit, you laugh.  Because you know.  You know the depths of despair and darkness and this today?  Is not it.   This is the good stuff.  Even when it's really bad, when you feel fearful of what is to come and what you don't have, you laugh.  Because you are just so damned grateful for all you DO have. 

Sometimes I post shit, and it is so cheesy, I want to slap myself.  But then I know that it's absolutely what I believe to be true, and I just say screw it.  I mean this.  I am writing and sharing this.

I've been to hell.  I know what it is to be without hope.   I'm scared of being here on earth without laughter and without love.  That is my hell today.  That is the place that takes me to drinking.  Dark and broody and angry and bitter do not suit me today.  They are my old self.  I found the light.  I work to keep that light.  It's not natural for me.  My natural state is dark and cynical.  So I dork out and I embrace my spaz dancer within.  And just like anything else, you practice enough, it becomes habit.  For this, I am responsible. For my happiness, I am responsible.  Nothing and no one else can give me what I can give myself. 

Laughter.  It's not medicine.  It's way better.