Ya gotta laugh

Today was a rough day, which turned itself into a rough night.  I decided to go for a walk around the little lake at my apartment complex in hopes of clearing my head.  It was dark, though the lights were on so it wasn't too bad.  The sprinklers were on...the usual little sprayer ones.  Since it was dark, I couldn't actually see where the water was hitting, but I assumed they were set up so they wouldn't hit the trail.  I couldn't use the marks of where the water had landed as a guide, since it had rained earlier.  (The glorious logic of the sprinklers being on when earlier it had rained hard enough to practically flood the place is another story that will have to wait 'til another post!).

I got a little ways down the trail and got to a place where there were a bunch of sprinklers on in a small area.  I couldn't make sense of where they were pointing so I just kept walking.  Turns out, one of them was pointing right across the trail.  Actually 2 of them were, because when I tried to walk a little quicker through the first one I ended up right in the path of the next.

From there it was pretty much the sprinkler gauntlet.  I would step to the side to get out of the way of one only to find another attacking from the other side.  Then there would be a quiet space only to have one sneak up with the surprise attack.  There was just enough general sprinkler noise that I never had any idea when they were coming.  At one point I got lulled in to a false sense of thinking I was past the danger when BAM!  One hit me square in the face.  The rest of them hadn't been going near high enough to get my face!

I'd planned on a walk to do a little thinking and maybe make sense of things, and to relax and enjoy the fresh air.  Instead I was dodging sprinklers and laughing my ass off!  By the time I got back I looked like I'd been run through a car wash, but wow had my mood changed!  I saw a few of my neighbors who gave me an interesting look seeing me come back drenched even though the rain had stopped hours ago.

It seems like often what gets me out of a funk, at least temporarily, is something truly ridiculous like this....something that is just so random and goofy you can't help but laugh.  And when you're laughing, you can't help but feel better.

I remember one night in very early sobriety when I was having a horrible night.  The only thing that was keeping me from drinking is that I had an AA friend's dog at my house while said friend was out of town.  I figured it'd be pretty shitty to be getting drunk when I told her I'd take care of her dog.  But it was way late at night and I was having horrible flashbacks and I just wanted everything to stop so badly.  I figured since I wasn't sleeping anyway, I'd take the dog out for a late night walk.  So at about 3 am, he and I went out with a ball.  It was actually nice because I didn't have to worry about the bazillion other dogs that were usually out there during the day.  It started snowing HARD!  This dog who was so excited to chase the ball couldn't seem to actually track it in the snow.  So I would throw it and then we'd both end up running through all this fresh snow to try to find it.  If anyone had walked by they probably would've thought I'd lost my mind!  I was standing out in a blizzard throwing a ball and running after it through a blizzard, laughing hysterically with a dog who couldn't decide if he was chasing the ball or chasing me.  We ended up just chasing each other and basically giving up on the ball until every now and then when we'd find it.  I probably had pretty well lost my mind, but in that moment I wasn't having flashbacks, I wasn't thinking about my nightmares, and I wasn't thinking about a drink.  I was having fun and laughing hard at the completely ridiculous.

I never would've thought of walking through sprinklers or chasing a dog through a blizzard as answers to problems, but sometimes you just need random ridiculousness and laughter to get a break from the tough stuff.  I am so so lucky/fortunate/whatever that I'm able to find humor in the world.  I don't know how I would survive without laughing.  I remember a while back an AA friend said to me at a meeting, "It's good to see you laughing," since she knew I'd been dealing with some tough stuff.  My sponsor and I smiled at each other.  We both know that if I ever lose my ability to laugh you'd better be sending me to the hospital right away...cus something is seriously wrong!  Or I may already be dead! lol  A lot of people don't get my humor....especially because it involves laughing at cartoons and at really dark stuff that "normal" people just don't laugh at....but it's gotten me through a lot of ugly!

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I think I pretty well covered it, but I'm grateful for my ability to laugh, and the funny, absurd stuff that exists in daily life.  And I'm grateful for my apartment complex's complete incompetence with aiming sprinklers and with matching their use to the weather of the day.