Discovering laughter.

I love to laugh. I love to be around those who laugh.

Part of what I love about my “boys” is that they all love to laugh. And they make me laugh until I cry sometimes. And most of those I hang around with understand and appreciate the value of laughter.

I especially love to watch Chairman laugh because he laughs the way he does everything else – fully committed, every cell in his body participating. I also realized he and I laugh the same way (I think we were separated at birth in a previous life but that’s for another blog). And I love to make him laugh. One of the greatest joys in my life is when Chairman laughs at something I say or do.

I realize that this is because my ex used to laugh at something I’d do and then he would qualify it with “wow, I didn’t know you were that funny” or “wow, that’s clever, I didn’t know you were that clever.” Married that long and he didn’t know I was funny or clever. Every laugh, every joke, every quippy, clever remark was met with a qualifier. My joy, my laughter, my simple jokes were never accepted at face value. He always had to give them a value and a score. He could not simply let me be funny.

The biggest discovery and challenge of this time has been accepting and understanding that these people in my life do just that – simply let me be… whatever. There are no qualifiers when I make Chairman throw his head back and laugh that wonderful laugh of his. There are no scorecards when I do anything, whether it’s tell a joke or sing at karaoke. Like Monday night at Bigfoot, AJ and Amanda were there and I got up and sang. AJ’s smiling face grinned up at me from the darkness of the audience and when I sat down, he said, “It’s amazing how much you’ve blossomed in eight weeks.” (He’s been gone shooting a film). That was not followed with a “but you know what you should do…” or “next time, you might want to think about…” Just that I had done something worthy of commenting on without judgment being placed on it.

It’s hard for me to accept compliments because, so often in my life, they have been followed by that horrible “but” comment, something that makes me feel that I am less than. So much of my life in the past 15 years has been spent feeling less than.

Zadra says that she appreciates when I go through dark days like past few have been because she thinks these dark days lead me to discoveries within myself. I think she’s right. The past couple of days have been difficult as I have been spending a lot of time alone and I don’t do that well. The clowns started running loose in my head and baiting me with their usual pile of crap and making up things that have no foothold in reality – I’m going to lose my friends, I’m doing everything wrong, the most important people in my life are going to go away because I’m going to do something stupid.

What the past couple of days have shown me, after a couple of grey days, is that I no longer have to worry about everything I do being judged. These friends are not going to leave me because I do something dumb. Dumb comes with the territory occasionally. And my three guys are certainly not going anywhere. I’ve made an ass of myself quite frequently recently and none have run screaming from me.

We can laugh, we can sing, we can dance, we can do anything we want together and I will not find myself being on the short end of the judging stick. It’s so freeing not to have to worry that everything I do is being evaluated and rated. It’s so wonderful that these guys are the first ones in eons that don’t make me feel insecure, ignorant and, most of all, not funny.

I am not only finding my voice and my path, but I am rediscovering my laughter and I think that may be the greatest gift of all.