THE LACE OF HUMOR

Some things are hard to talk about.  Read the book The Glass Castle and you will find the difficult subject matter of child abuse, neglect and the after effects it leaves well into adult life written from a first person account. I highly recommend it.  I had coffee with a friend this morning.  Amongst the subjects we talked about, we discussed writing.  I shared the project I was working on and my inner battle to say certain things that are hard.  I told her I have vacillated between not saying them and then back to saying them.  My life is my life.  I cannot change it.  Living life has happened and not openly writing about it doesn't mean it never occurred.  My desire is to not glamorize the hard, make others think I am somehow more unique than them or wear it like a badge of honor.  Rather, I want this project to evoke thought into the things we all think, why we make the choices we make, the effects that living out who we are has on us and others - the mixed bag that has created who we are.  I want to deliver all of those things cloaked with some self-deprecation, sarcasm, humor and the grace to see pain and pleasure as equal cohabitants in life.  Since I can be no less than I am, I tell her I have decided I will say the hard things laced with humor.  Humor makes uncomfortable things a little easier to hear.  She remarks to me what a difference there is in me from a year ago; that my presence is lighter, my spirit freer.  She says a year ago the grief I held was large and now love has taken it away.  I couldn't agree more with her.  She has known me in my previous marriage and saw my silent struggle.  She watched me go through a life altering divorce.  And probably not knowing how to take it from me, she watched grief eat at me like a vulture.  Our conversation turns to sex, boobs, kids, alcohol, close minded people, whether she and her husband want to meet us in the Bahamas, the medicine we take, saying what we feel in life. Over the years we have shared heartaches and also laughed until I thought we might both pee our pants.  She reminds me every time I see her that she rejoices in the happiness she sees in my life.  Always does she tell me to keep seizing the days!  I definitely have and continue to.  Cheers to you Sharon!