It was during a one act competition my junior year that I ironically won an award for playing a young actress who was struggling with dissociative identity disorder.
I had no idea what was waiting in my mind. Looking at this picture I see a very different version of myself. But I don’t feel like she is any younger than I am. Just another me floating along the non-linear expanse of my existence.
I don’t say these things to be poetic. I say them because DiD is a very surreal disorder. One minute you are there, another minute you aren’t, it’s hard to describe, hard to understand, and painful to experience.
But, there I am, with a bra on my head.
“I wear this on my head as to keep from weeping”, is the quote that my friend Sarah Jones chose to include in the description of the photograph. It’s true. I was saying all kinds of things that day. I thought I was going to pass out from stress. I was having serious anxiety issues and didn’t know what to do.
So, I put a bra on my head. My bra. With comically large cups sitting on my head I tried to hold onto the ridiculous, so that the dam of the terrifying didn’t burst.
In my life, few things are more important than laughter. The love and grace of GOD are just above it on the list of my needs. Doug’s love and support is sandwiched between, I guess.
So many things in my world are scary. So many things make me anxious. So many things seem to go wrong on a daily basis. So much of me feels broken beyond repair.
But when I laugh I feel for an instant, light.
I forget the weight of trying. The struggle of maintaining. The sorrow of my woundedness is absent when I laugh.
Laughing is a necessary part of my day. No, it doesn’t actually make anything better. It doesn’t heal anything or solve anything. But it helps me survive.
GOD said to me once,
“If you smile, it is to My Glory. If you laugh, it is to My Glory.“
What He meant was that I’m not a person who has reason to smile or laugh. But HE gives me reasons. He puts blessings in my life to give me a fleeting moment of happiness.
I don’t want you to glean from this that GOD is all about making you happy.
GOD wants you to be content with where you are, if it is His Will. But the GOD who knew that the platypus was going to happen, the GOD who decided farts were a good idea; He loves you too much to not send a laugh your way every once in a while.
Put on a funny movie. Read the cartoons. Pull your grandpa’s finger. Read Anna Kendrick’s Twitter. Watch cat videos. Do something to make yourself laugh.
It’s important.
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