Laughing to Survive

In a blatant attempt to make me feel better not too long ago, my carnival of friends at the Breakfast Club carried on the following conversation between 6:30 and 7:00 in the morning while we had coffee and the cooks made their last minute preparations for the day.

"Well, when I got divorced the first time," Johnny O explained, "we kind of stood there before the Judge and it was awkward. Nobody knew what to say. So I looked at her and asked, "You want to go out to dinner?" She said yes and so we went out and celebrated our divorce."

We all stared at him laughing as this is a typical Johnny O thing to do. "We may have made love that night," he continues, "I don't remember."

The laughter grew.

Whitely then cleared his throat. "I waited until she had fallen asleep. When I knew that she was dead to the world, I quietly slipped out of bed, retrieved the bags that I had already packed and hidden, took all of the money out of her purse and snuck outside."

"I threw the bags in the back and climbed in. I turned the key and ... the battery was dead. I laid my head on the steering wheel."

"Then I snuck back in the house. Put the money back in her purse, hid my bags back in the closet, undressed and crawled back in the bed. I would have to do it the next night."

Laughter exploded in the room and even though I was in as dark a place as I've ever been in my life, I couldn't help but join in.

"Well, that's nothing," Nancy said from the other side of the counter. "I was in this really bad relationship and had no way out. No money. No plan. Nothing. So one day when he was working and I was off, I went to all of the military recruiting stations in town and asked each one who could get me out of town the quickest."

Hysterical laughter became even louder, and I was crying from laughing so hard and in harmony with my friends.

"It was the Army," she concluded. "Two days. So when he went to work two days later, I went to the Army."

"Did you tell him?" someone asked.

"Oh, yeah," she answered, "I'm not heartless. I left him a note. It said, "Gotta Go! Love Ya, Nancy".

The laughter was now a frenzy and in the middle of a very dark place, my friends were telling me stories of survival of lost love or bad love. They were also bearing witness to the fact that they had healed and could laugh again. And they drew me in. And they have helped me to survive.

And for that, I thank them all.