actually, why do you do that - make fun of your own past, your own pain. make fun of yourself.
you recently told a story to a friend; prefacing it with it's actually kind of funny but - and then you accidentally spilled out a whole narrative, one of the bad things that had happened to you. she had looked at you like you were suddenly made of stone. it was horror. what was on her face was abject, heartbreaking horror. you'd laughed - wait was that funny or was that just a traumatic backstory kind of thing.
of course you're aware it's likely a simple equation: if you make fun of it first, nobody else can get the jump on you. it's already a joke, a punchline. you can't be taken by surprise that way.
but it actually hadn't even been that bad of a story. it had been barely a corner of the entire blanket; barely a stitch. you thought it was funny because it was one of the only places that have cooled down enough now that you can hold them up to the light and analyze them. sure, the rest of the weaving was alight. but against the heat of the rest of it, you had felt like: of course this one fraction is so funny. it was just so stupid, so incongruous with reality.
you felt bad about it immediately. started babbling about anything else. tried to shift the conversation to any-other-topic. it wasn't like you meant to "trauma dump" (which, in your case, happens any time you even vaguely refer to your past or to your mental health or to your family or to any of the other one million things you survived quietly). and you did the thing you always do - you made light of it. you made it seem easy to carry. you tried to buoy her mood; worried you upset her just for - for what? telling the truth?
the rest of the picture - of the story - that stuff is obviously traumatic. but there were these times where it felt like clarity would come down and suddenly strike everything into a strange contrast; chiaroscuro that accented the banality of evil. there were places where the simplicity of it - the sheer cruelty, the neglect, the bald-faced and insipid betrayal - it suddenly made the entire painting feel weirdly absurd. these small, precise details where you would just have to laugh to withstand it; to grasp the strange impossible notion that you saw that and you lived through it.
you huffed out a breath and waved it away and tried to people-please and walked it back and tried to fawn and felt bad about the way you'd overstepped and felt bad about ruining the moment. a part of you had quietly whined that it really was funny, when you look at it, when you take in the scope of the thing, really. that there's a good amount of humor in irony.
because what else is there? if you just let the truth be the truth, if that moment isn't funny - then it's all just real. you have no power over that. it will sear through you into the bone. you have no idea how else to get out. and besides, isn't it sort of powerful? you're making a mockery of what hurt you. you're able to still feel glee and joy, which you revel in because fuck 'em. you will be funny and kindhearted and sweet. you are a blade that outshone the fire of your forge. you are a court jester in the face of the king's awful wrath.
you tell your therapist about this moment. and you can't help it - you let out a little laugh.
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