laughter

When I was a young boy, coping with mental illness on my own I didn't have imaginary friends. Instead I had an imaginary therapist. Namely, Sidney Freedman. He was the therapist from M*A*S*H, and much like I had imaginary conversations with him, so did he write imaginary letters to Sigmund Freud.

In this context, he mentions a quote. "Comedy is anger turned sideways." A reference to the Freudian quote I mentioned earlier in my post about depression.

I think that's the best explanation for my own sense of humour. I deflect a lot of my anger with comedy, and it's when I hold it in, typically for posterity or at the demand of others, that I become depressed.

Often my jokes are seen as insensitive or inappropriate. Because to others they invoke anger, and they mistake my reaction as something else. Today I want to talk about how ableist that kind of thing is.

What really triggered this was when I was thirteen. I was sleeping in a chair next to a hospital bed. Inside it was my dying father. He had barely minutes left when I was shaken awake by my mother. "It's time now.", she said. I didn't need any explanation. Even mere seconds into groggy consciousness I knew what it meant. My father was in his bed, pale as a ghost, tubes sticking out of his nose and arms. Raspy breathing and crescent eyes. Each breath becoming more struggled than the last. He had been living on IV drip and nutritional substitutes for the last few weeks, and his ribs poked out from under his greying skin. Yet, in spite of looking so weak, he was holding death's door open as he waited for me to tell him I love him one last time. It was the greatest display of strength I've ever see a human commit. Once he had gotten that final hug, and heard those words, his eyes closed and his heart stopped. Just like that.

About a week later I was going to the corner store. The lady at the till had become a friend of the family almost, as we had been shopping there for over a decade. I never knew her name, but I knew her as a person. A familiar face I had grown accustomed to. She asked me how my dad was doing, and I just started laughing. It felt so absurd to have to tell someone how this person that was always there for as long as I had known existence itself, had been blotted out forever in just a day.

The first time I laughed after seeing death, was at death itself. Since that day I've never stopped. When there's injustice, cruelty, murder and atrocities, I laugh at death. I laugh at the oppressor. I laugh because they want me to cry. Because otherwise I'd never be able to wake up in the morning. Because that's how I express my anger.

That's my choice, and my habit. And I'm sick of having sleepless nights, sitting in the dark, smoking a cigarette feeling ashamed and self-conscious just because someone else felt entitled enough to dictate to me how I should express my emotions.

I'd yell at them, but alas, usually I just make it worse with another joke.

That's kind of my thing.