Laughing at Tragedy
Tragedy happens, life sucks, it's not fair, and no one enjoys the hand that they're dealt. Everyone doesn't like what they're going through, but some are gifted with the ability to come out the other side of a tragedy laughing about it and seeing humor in the horrible things that have happened to them. You and your brother get diagnosed with terminal cancer and you watch as they die from it while you're still alive? Sure, some people can still find humor in that.
I am not one of those people.
When things go bad, when things get icky, and you want to do anything but laugh, I don't find the possibility of ever laughing. I'm sure I could try to lighten the mood and get a laugh track going on in the back of my mind to all of the funny things that I could talk about, but I can't help but see it as more tragic than it is funny.
Sentenced an 8 month pregnant woman to go back to jail because she broke her parole and couldn't hold a job? Tragic, not funny.
Getting my masters so that I could get a job and then being strapped for cash and unable to pay bills because I can't find a single company that is willing to hire me? Ironic, but not in a funny way.
Marrying me best friend who I trust with everything in my life, but coming to the realization that she does not trust in me. Sad, without a hint of funny.
Spending two years of my life in hopes of it being my 'best two years' but coming out the other end with close to nothing tangible to prove from any of it. Depressing, a good waste of time, but it still can't be funny.
I just don't see the funny. I really wanted to try to take any of those stories and try to make them funny for this post, try to make myself smile as I thought about them, but as I drafted different versions of this, trying to think funny, trying to show humor, trying to get the audience at the Un-cabaret in my head to chuckle along with me as I told my sad story, I just couldn't get it done. I could go into tragedy and just pray that timing would save me, because let's be honest, a lot of the radio show as really tragic, but just said with a forgiving audience and a comedian that knew timing, but I just can't convey that through words.
As fun as it would be to dig through the memories and try to tell stories about growing up, my family then, or my little family now, I just don't think I can get humor to ever come across in something that is by it's very nature not funny. No matter how hard I try, my wife telling me that if I take a job that we'll most likely be divorced in under a year isn't funny. Having her point me to that job telling me it's an option, and THEN telling me that isn't funny. My life, from what I can see of it, doesn't have comedy in it; it has anguish. I wish I had the ability to laugh my way out, to see the funky shaped forest through the trees but I just can't. Tragedy is tragic, it does not matter how long you wait for time to go by, it never becomes humor, and to think that it does only degrades and minimizes whatever you have gone through in your life.
Sorry for the downer post, the more and more I run through these radio shows the more I realize that I must actually live from a 4-6 because I just can't do some of them.
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