I think, sometimes, when our world has coming crashing down around us, when things seem the most bleak, when we have suffered a tremendous blow - laughter can be the saving grace for our sanity.  When things are the most serious laughter can do wonders to ease the stress in the body and thoughts whirling about in the mind.  It can bring you up out of the dark place, especially after a loss. I believe that people who can't stop laughing at a funeral do so because its a defense mechanism to keep them sane, and keep them from being completely overwhelmed by their sadness.

When I was in my late twenties, I suffered from a long series of inexplicable convulsions after I had been given a medication.  The doctor's could find no explanation in my brain for this, nothing that would confirm seizures.  But I did learn that a small 1% of the population could react to this medicine by having these convulsive seizures.  I stayed on the medicine for some time before I found this information and pulled myself off the medication.

During this time, I was also in a very dark place, trying to patch together the pieces of my dismantled life.  I had suffered a series of set backs and was struggling to stay afloat financially and mentally.  I ended up living with my dad and step-mom for a while.  These convulsions were exasperating and scary as my parents repeatedly took me to the emergency room and dealt with my failing health.

One day, as I rested on the couch, my dad came in the room to let me know that he and my step-mom were headed out for a bit.  "Are you going to be ok?" he asked.  "Yes," I replied.  "Good," he said, "because I wouldn't want you doing the Aardvark dance while we're gone."  He then proceeded to flap his arms like chicken wings and wiggle his legs as he wobbled about the floor.  I stared at him inexplicably for a brief second then howled with laughter.  My dad joined in.  I relish that moment.  With all the seriousness going on in my life, and my depression, it never occurred to me how much I needed that laugh. And I remember feeling much better for the rest of the day.

October 7, 2005:  Now that was a horribly sad day.  I was driving down a dark country road on my way to visit my then husband.  He had relocated due to work and we were waiting for the time to be right so I could move to join him.  So I was headed out for the weekend to see him.

The winding country road was pitch black so it makes sense I didn't see the cow in the middle of the road till my head lights were on it.  I think I hit it at about 45 miles an hour, dead on.  It rolled up my hood, spider webbed my wind shield and then slid down the driver side of the car.  Within a moment of that crash, I was rear ended by the full-sized GMC Pickup that was following too closely.  It imploded the rear window.  A week later, I lost the child I was carrying.  I was just shy of 8 weeks along.  What a tragedy.

My co-workers were made aware of my situation and at my request, did not bring it up or discuss it around me.  I received a couple of condolence hugs, but that was it.  I wanted to be left alone at work with my grief.

One afternoon a mouse got into the building and caused quite a commotion.  One of my co-workers cornered it and placed a small box over the top of it to trap it.  Several of us stood in a circle around the box debating about how to get the idiot thing outside.  My co-worker Sarah said out loud for all the world to hear, "Put it in the parking lot and let Jenny run over it.  She'll try and run over anything."  There was a collective gasp at her audacity.  I blinked a couple of times as I stared blankly at her, then from deep inside, I began to laugh.  And as I did so, so did everyone else.  It was such a relief.  Then the cow jokes started.  It was nothing distasteful or crude, but it was enough to make me giggle.

That laughter was so healing and helpful.  It soothed my mind and kept me in a relatively sane place.  It dispelled some of my grief and helped me fight off the cloud of depression that was hanging over my head like a threat to my very happiness.

These two incidences stick out so clearly in my mind.  They were a moment of grace that helped me to cling to my sanity.  So I recommend if things get too serious that you find a way to make yourself laugh.  It could bring you back from the brink of disaster like it did for me.

Molly Ann

It's interesting how God puts people in our lives to show us ourselves.  I have been given, as of late, a multitude of opportunities to let go of my need to be right by seeing it in someone else.  And I'm actually getting it.

I think the dire need to be right stems from some different but intricately intertwined roots:  1) A lack of control.  2) A lack of purpose.  3) A fear of being wrong.

A Lack of Control:  In a world of uncertainty, when one is plagued by self doubt, it is easy to find comfort in being right, and knowing you are right, and believing that someone else is wrong.  If I am right, then I know something you don't know and I have power. Power loosely translate into, "I am in control," or at least feeds the illusion of control.  When life is out of control, when I am struggling with something internally and can't make heads or tails of it, being right gives me the sense of control that my life is not reflecting back to me.  I may not be able to find a job, which is a pretty scarey place to be, but if I'm right, well that's something I can control because I can't make someone give me a job, but I can prove that I am right.  I can argue that I am right and I can put to ease the lack of control over my own life that sometimes overwhelms me.  It is a most interesting way to distract one's self from all the things we have no control over including other people.  However; it provides only temporary release at best, requiring us to then be right all the time, and so...we become addicts to the need to be right as a means of gaining control when ultimately we are doing it because we feel so out of control.

A Lack of Purpose:  We all need purpose and meaning in our lives.  People who lack these things often find themselves seeking a way to fill the void and usually not in a healthy way.  Lately, I've made it a point to fill my life with things that bring meaning and purpose.  I am really focused in on beginning my writing career.  Something I've wanted for a long time.  I am focused on going to church every Sunday and I am focused on exercise and eating a well balanced diet so I can lose a few pesky pounds.  I have discovered that the more I am purpose driven, the less of a need I have to argue and prove my right-ness because I have something bigger than my need for domination and control to focus on and live for.  I have  goals, objectives to get there, and a rough timeline for accomplishing all this.  But when life overwhelms me, and I find myself ambling about the house with a feeling of boredom, that is when I give in to the need to be right.   My mind wanders stirring up resentments and perceived hurts and I find things to fault others for and set out to prove why I am right and they are wrong.

A Fear of Being Wrong:  Let's face it; who likes admitting they are wrong, being perceived as wrong, or truly knowing they are or were wrong?  I don't.  This fear of appearing like a boob is tricky.  It will cause you to fight all that  much harder to be right thus digging the grave even deeper when we realize we truly are or were wrong.  For me, it's tied up a bit in ego.  Being right equals intelligence.  Being wrong equals stupidity and ignorance.  Being right equals superiority.  Being wrong equals inferiority.  No one wants to be on the bottom rung of the ladder.  The solution is simple, be okay with being wrong.  Chalk it up to humility and say, "Oh.  I guess I was wrong.  Sorry."  Or, "Not everyone can be right all the time; guess I was wrong this time."  It really is no big deal because truly, is it fair to expect myself to be right ALL THE TIME?  That's just not realistic.  When I accept my humanity, when I can look at someone in the midst of an "I'm right, you're wrong" conversation or argument and say, "You know, you could be right," I then give myself permission to be wrong so that if I am, it's really okay.  And, admitting to this foible of being wrong, admitting, "Hey, I'm only human, I could be wrong," frees me of the fear of it.  By facing it dead on, I diminish its power over me.

So day in, day out I am offered opportunities to resist the urge to prove others wrong, and prove myself right.  I have to be okay with letting others be right, or I can let it stick in my craw every time.  Seriously though, who wants to spend their days arguing and trying to make people feel bad?  I release my need for control, I work on living a purpose driven life, and I make it okay to say, "You know, you could be right and perhaps I'm wrong."

Molly Ann

Have you ever had a dream hangover?  You know, the kind of waking dream when you open your eyes you still palpably resonate with it.  You can't shake the strong emotions you were feeling in the dream.  And it can sometimes stay with you for hours, or even the duration of the day.  And these feelings can be joyous, depressive, incredibly sad, or make you feel as if you are grieving some incredible loss that never happened because as far as you know, everything is just hunky-dory.  It can even leave you with a light feeling, a calm serenity of feeling everything is just jim-dandy when your senses tell you otherwise.

Well, yesterday, I woke up with a dream hangover, and not the good kind.  I was talking to my recent ex-boyfriend, "Gray Beard," and we were in this strange house I didn't recognize.  I saw him in this room.  I'm pretty sure it was his.  There was a large, oddly shaped water bed and clothes strewn about the place.  Gray Beard said, "I want to explain to you why I broke up with you."  I was amenable to this, so I said, "Okay."

He then proceeded to give me some lame-ass, piss-poor excuse about how I had rearranged a few items in his home, and tried to clean up.  By doing this, I was trying to change him on some deep level.  Huh?  First off, let me explain one thing:  Gray Beard is tidy.  Everything in his home had a place and he did not like clutter.  He wasn't obsessive compulsive, just very neat.  However; reflecting back on the dream, I can see that perhaps I was trying to change something about him in real life.  There was a particular way I was wanting and needing him to behave to help soothe my personal fears triggered by the fact that I felt repeatedly marginalized by my ex-in-laws.  That was my stuff to deal with, not his and I shouldn't have pushed it off on him.

Nevertheless, this thought process did not occur to me upon awakening because I was still hung over.  In the dream I read him the riot act.  I was righteously angry and felt I had every right to be.  I said to him, "You totally misunderstood me and my intentions.  I wasn't trying to change you, I was trying to help."  Uh - yeah.  In real life, I think I fed myself that same line of crap too.  I believe I called him a dumb-ass at this point for being lame.  He then said he wished to get back together with me and I protested telling him I couldn't possibly trust him because he completely lacked the ability to communicate.

Now this last accusation was true to life.  In the real world, he just stopped talking to me.  That was it.  After a few days I received a text telling me all my stuff was packed up and on his porch waiting for me to pick it up.  There was no explanation offered.  No conversation. No let's talk and see what we can work out.  He just stopped having anything to do with me and I was left with a mystery.  Now THAT can make a person angry, and it did me.  Hence, the dream and my anger hangover.

So my day was coated with this yucky "I just had a fight with my ex-boyfriend" feeling. And it did last all day.  I talked briefly with Kitten (see my character list on my home page) about it in the morning, That helped somewhat.  But mostly I walked around feeling really irritated at Gray Beard particularly because he got the last word; and his last word was hollow, empty nothingness.  His silence screamed at me.

I faced the rest of my day pretty well and gave myself a good talking to.  No point in letting my day be ruined, and it wasn't.  Yet I felt these hangover emotions like you do a headache from a real hangover.  You get up and get moving because you either have to go to work, or run an errand, or eat and have a shower, or something.  Yet that headache behind your eyes is bugging you.  So you pop a couple of aspirin or Tylenol, don your sunglasses, and head out to greet the world hoping no one guesses you are hung over.  My aspirin was talking to Kitten and my sunglasses were the prayers I said as I passed Gray Beard's place on the way to work.

I can loosely guess at what I may have inadvertently done to push him away, but I think the thing that angered me wasn't that we broke up, but it was being completely, utterly, and totally disregarded and ignored.  As if hadn't ever mattered and never would.  It was like I didn't exist for him anymore.  I would have preferred a messy fight instead of him just throwing up his hands and slipping into a dark cave of nothingness nursing himself on oblivion.  I felt like I was playing pic-a-boo with a 2-year-old.  They hide their eyes and think that if they can't see you, then you truly aren't there.  Gray Beard's special brand of total apathy toward me was one of the cruelest things one person can do to another.  It says, "You don't exist to me; you don't matter. I don't see you so you aren't there."  It's very ostracizing and brutish.

So yeah, I had some angry dream hangover yesterday.  Perhaps it was a good thing for me to go through that so I could process the break up better and learn something from it.  I learned about myself - It's not my job to try and change others, not even if I'm scared.  And I learned something about him too.  Although his apathy and lack of caring was hurtful, I learned I don't want to spend my life with a man who can't function on the most basic communication level because it pisses me off.

I don't know about you, but I have a committee in my head.  They sit at a long table with big chairs, arms folded with elbows resting on the table, they lean forward, and they all begin to speak to me sometimes taking turns, sometimes shouting in a hulabaloo-like fashion.

"Did you see that?  Did you see what she did? As if... Who does she think she is?  Go give her a piece of your mind."

"C'moooon...You know he thinks you're sexy.  Just bend over in front him; let him see your best side .  It doesn't matter if your mother didn't raise you to be that way."

"Oh wow.  So you think you can do that? ha-ha-ha-ha-ha..." Much snorting and guffawing is heard.

"You are so," (fill in the blank) "noodle-brained - you can't figure out the simplest things; fat- you must have a flat stomach before a man will love you; incapable - failure is your friend; ugly - look at how bad you break out when Aunt Flo comes to visit.

And so my brain feels like it's on a ceaseless merry-go-round and sometimes the only way to make them stop is to take a flying leap off the edge and pray there is soft sand to break my fall and not gravel.  Other times, I face them dead on and scream, "Will everybody please sit down and shut the hell up!"  Sometimes, I turn on some really raucous music, A.C.D.C. or perhaps Nickelback, and lay on the floor on my back in a prone position with a beer in hand.  I close my eyes and I slip into a world of loud rock music.  It is actually relaxing because it blocks out the din of the committee.

I have learned this much.  I have to actively combat them and regularly put them in their place.  For every negative thought they throw my way I have to shake it off and replace it with a positive.  On days when they pull out the heavy armament, I have to batten down the hatches and call on the only thing I know can help me, my biggest weapon of all...prayer.  "Lord, please help me.  I can't shut them up today.  I just can't do it, and I need your help."

However, lately it seems I am in a pretty good maintenance mode. I have them all properly seated in their place, mouths closed, elbows off the table.  They have reduced in numbers as well because I have fired a few and kicked their lazy, non-do-gooder asses out the door.  So, there aren't as many.  And I've learned another interesting trick for dealing with them by breaking their most sacred rule - sharing what they say to me and exposing them to the light.  They are like Mogwai in that respect and really don't like the light, it hurts their cause - to ruin me and make me stumble and fall down.

I talk about what's bothering me, what I'm afraid of.  I talk about why I'm angry and ask myself, what expectation was not meant that's fueling my fear?  I journal and  I read my bible and ask, how does this apply to me today?  The bible is full of advice on how to deal with the committee.  Then, I share what I've learned.  When I talk about what frightens me I put it in perspective and the people I share with offer me comfort then say, "You will work it out!" or some other positive thing.  They help me to shut them up.

So, committee, I address you directly and I say:  Sit down and shut the hell up; you're fired!  And if you don't behave, well, you know what I'm capable of.  Don't mess with me or I will kick your puny, powerless ass.

Molly Ann

I've been thinking about my thoughts lately.  Strange?  Perhaps - but worth the time it takes to scrutinize them.  I am, after about 40 years, coming to grips with the fact that my thoughts are really responsible for so much in my life:  happiness, sadness, depression, success, failure, sabotage, fear, anxiety, determination, and spirituality among many other things.

I have been in the habit of thinking about whatever pops into my head and then just letting it whirl around in my brain often times like a destructive tornado.  It has been the cause of much anger and so many blow ups between me and those I love.  But, truly I say to you, we can choose our thoughts and in so doing, better manage our feelings and our attitude.

I don't want to ramble around anymore being victimized by what I think.  So now that I've defined what I don't want, I should clarify what I do want.  Clear thinking and decision making.  Making choices logically and rationally while taking into account the emotions attached to them.  Emotions are there.  We do have them.  All of us.  But, what's the point in letting them have complete control over how we choose, how I choose, to live my life? 

I wish I was like Spock, half human, half Vulcan.  Mostly, his rational side won out, but when it was necessary, his all too human side would creep up on him.  There was no logical reason for him to remain in Star Fleet when he could have been off doing so many other great and challenging things.  But one of the things that kept him there was his sense of loyalty to, and on a deeper level love for, his friend James T. Kirk.

Not much ruffled his feathers.  Others people's bad moods didn't affect him.  He never took anything, now matter how rotten someone was being to him, personally.  His thoughts were well organized, efficient, and well directed.  He was not selfish and had an uncanny knack for observing human behavior in his personal relations in a detached, matter of fact way yet, he was loyal to and watched out for those he loved even the over emotional, feeling driven Dr. McCoy.

He made smart choices after discernment and almost always chose the logical route, save for those few instances where his loyalty and love sneaked to the surface to win the day.  He strikes me as a model of what I want to achieve. Yes, yes, I wish to be more Spock-like with my thoughts.  I want to choose what I think and discard what I don't need.  I want my brain to be more ordered and efficient.  I don't have to attain great levels of happiness all the time.  Spock didn't and he was just fine with that.  However; a more neutral outlook on emotional events, that ability to step back and logically ascertain without taking things so personally, now that's worth shooting for.  Spock had a certain inner peace about the way he lived his life and emotion played only a small part - I want that!

Lately, I've been pondering the concept of what I don't want verses what I do want.  This applies to so much:  What I want/don't want at the grocery store, what I want/don't want in a relationship, what I want/don't want in a career,  what I want/don't want in the brand of T.P. I buy...ad infinitum.   In reading a book about Law of Attraction by Losier (a Canadian author) I discovered a few important things about defining what I don't want so I can focus on what I do want.

Contrast is important.  Sometimes we can't know what it is we want.  The mind is too muddled and in a flurry, and riddled with angst.  So, Losier recommends you choose your situation (career, relationship, money, vacation...whatever) and write a list of 50 to 100 things you don't want with regards to your particular situation.  So I did this.  Damn if it wasn't easy.  It's like having a bitch-fest with yourself.  I put pen to paper and let her fly.  I don't want this.  I don't want that.  Man, all these things really suck. Blah, blah, blahbitty, blah.

Then for every item I wrote that I didn't want, I had to write a contrasting want.  The theory, in my mind is two-fold:  1) We spend so much time focusing on what we don't want that we ultimately create that.  2) You identify what you don't want, then eliminate it, what's left is what you do want.  There is no way to spend your time focused on what you don't want and expect that you will be able to escape it.  "I don't want this job, I don't want to be here, I don't like this job."  How often have I said these things and found myself still stuck where I don't want to be?  Too many. " I don't want to be alone.  Being lonely sucks.  It's Friday night and I don't want to be sitting at home watching TV."  I was single for a long time before my first marriage, this was a common conversation in my head.  So, what I ended up with was a string of Friday nights with no date.

So instead of blaming myself for my stinking thinking, the author recommended that I start doing some mental acrobatics.  For every don't want I uttered or thought I was to immediately name the exact opposite - what I DO WANT!  What a concept.  So I began this mental process and low and behold I found out that I spent and incredible amount of time throughout the day focusing on what I did not want. Wow!  No wonder I've been so stuck. I've been mired in a quick sand of don't wants and sinking fast.

So, lets get down to brass tacks:  Do I have my dream job, pretty little one-bedroom apartment, Subaru Outback (I've always "wanted" one), and Mr. Right For Me? No.  At least not yet.  These things take time.  I have been so ensconced in what I don't want that it will take some time to turn this big ol' barge around.  I just need to persist with dogged determination.  Years of thinking a certain way takes time to manifest the changes one seeks.  It's like a person who has gained, let's say 100- pounds.  They begin to exercise and eat right.  A month later they have lost only a couple of pounds and don't see any difference.  Defeated, they give up.  Well...it took time to gain the weight.  I doesn't happen over night.  So...it will take time to lose the weight.  And it will be so gradual that you may not notice for a while.  Certainly, two-pounds isn't noticeable in this scenario, but eventually you go to put on your pants and realize they are too big and you need a belt.  Ahhhh...success in small doses.

I'm on a mental weight loss program.  I am in the process of losing all that heavy don't want that I have over eaten for the last many odd years.  Eventually my mental muscles will get stronger as I continue to work them out and my don't want will slim way down making room for the new, improved Molly who is a gal who knows what she wants!

Molly Ann