Humor Me

More and more recently, I have been examining a tendency in myself that goes like this: I laugh at everything. Ok, let me qualify that. Of course there are lines that I do not cross. But as far as my own life, my own heartache, my own failure, my own stress goes? Yeah ... there's some good, comedic material there. Probably enough to last a lifetime. Research says (no, don't be ridiculous, I'm not ambitious enough to look up the articles) that humor has always been used to combat tragedy or things that make us uncomfortable. Racist jokes, woman/man jokes, political cartoons - it's all a defense mechanism. It's actually an aggressive reaction meant to combat the discomfort. It crosses a line when it's not aggressive enough to effectively fight the discomfort - that line is drawn by different people at different times. For me, there are subjects that cannot be dealt with by laughter - I always thought it was just inappropriate to laugh at certain things (i.e. Holocaust jokes, 9/11 jokes, dead baby jokes, etc.) but I realize that my line of when laughter is an aggressive enough response is just drawn sooner than others. Scaling it down back to a personal level, though, I have to look at the things in myself that I have to find funny. My weight, Polycystic kidney disease, my clumsiness, my own lack of social grace, the constant stream of people disliking me or finding me annoying ... ew, just writing the list makes me squirm in my seat. The same things that fuel my humor fuel my insecurities. So do I use laughter as a defense mechanism? Yes. Is that unhealthy? To be honest, I really don't think so. I don't feel like my humor or laughing at myself is a facade. I'm not hiding my baggage behind comedic walls. I simply twist situations that I find to be disheartening into ones that make me laugh (something I dearly love to do). I can recognize this as an aggressive response, an effort to keep myself secure, but were I not able to laugh at these things, I have a dangerous feeling that I would be one of those wince-worthy facebookers that always make you want to send a kind message detailing content that is and is not acceptable to be posted. I'm dramatic as is. Humor may be a silly defense mechanism, but I can also see that it has become my saving grace. Had I decided so many years ago to take myself too seriously, I have a sneaking suspicion that I would have ended up one of those tortured artist types. Laughter has saved me. (That's not dramatic at all). Sure, sometimes I use it too much as a crutch or an escape to avoid dealing with things that I should. More often than not, though, I'm simply allowing laughter to balance out my intense tendencieos towards the overly passionate and rather scary. Not to mention, my charm and wit are unparalleled. What can I say - I have a gift?