Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

"What's the point of living if you never learn to laugh?"

I think I read that somewhere once, but I can't remember where. I don't think the "where" matters, really--it's all about the "what," and that "what" has stuck with me for God-knows-how-many years. What's the point of living if you never learn to laugh?

It's a policy I live by, I've realized. I don't know what happened somewhere in my past (what's your childhood trauma?!?), but in that mess of butchered Barbies and scribbled scrawlings it dawned on me that laughing is really one of the best things in the world. I want to do it all the time. I can't be around people who don't know how to.

It's served me pretty well so far. I've gotten through my life a bubbly person, even if I am sarcastic. By being able to laugh, I've allowed myself a self-dependence that I wouldn't have been able to have otherwise. Most of the time, laughter allows you to yank yourself up by your bootstraps. Shoelaces. Whatever.

The flipside of this--the awful, stunted flipside--is that I think I've come to depend on the laughter. And that's no good. That's no good at all. I'm at a total loss in situations that demand serious thought (I avoid serious thought like the plague, as Lord Peter Wimsey once said...oh, you crime-solving, British, fictional genius, you). Someone breaks out the Feelings--and there I go, up shit creek without a paddle.

I'm not a sociopath, no matter how I may seem (that's especially for you, boy in my Spanish class). I understand feelings. I just don't always enjoy talking about them. There's definitely still that stereotype out there that girls are all touchy-feely about shit, that they have long, drawn-out conversations about their innermost secrets, most often between sexual experimentation and underwear-pillow-fights. Because that's what girls do on sleepovers.

Nope. Not so into that. I'll listen--I'm a great listener, and I enjoy listening and helping. But I don't really have much to share. I wish people would stop expecting me to share! When I have something to say, I'll say it! But I won't say it to someone I don't know very well, and I won't say it unless I mean it!

I guess my point is that I don't have a childhood trauma. There's nothing lurking in the dark recesses of my soul that yearns to be set free through...what? Therapy? A trip to the ice cream parlor? Friendship? A man? I have no impenetrable depths. I am a straightforward person. Sometimes I feel like I should be more tortured and dark, but most of the time I'm perfectly happy with who I am. My issues are about as bland as I am: boys, sure. Homework. Worries about grades and the future and my family and my friends. But no smoldering brands of resentment and anger that I've carried throughout the years deep within my chest. Haven't got any of those.

The song that's currently stuck in my head is "My Sharona". I don't know if that's relevant or not.