Laughing

I'm laying here I bed at 1:01 in the morning and what am I thinking about? Laughing. 

I LOVE laughing! Not just any kind of laughing either. I love the kind of laughing that makes your abs hurt. The kind that makes you literally fall over. The kind that makes you cry because you are laughing so hard. The kind of laughing that is full bodied and full of life and joy. That's my favorite kind of laughing. 

It's not hard to make me laugh either. I laugh at the smallest things. Sometimes I'm even the only one laughing. But that's okay. I just love to laugh. Sitting in bed right now I was think about the past year. Specifically how much I have laughed this past year. And I realized something that is almost....disturbing....to me. The was a period of time this past year when I stopped laughing. 

I mean I still laughed, but it was the short little giggles that were almost forced because my brain told me something was funny. But it wasn't true laughing. It was four months of what I like to think as slowly dying inside (dramatic I know). It was....my first semester of college. Now don't get me wrong, there were still a few times that I really laughed during those four months, but they were mainly times when it was just my best friend and I hanging out. For the most part though, the further into those four months I got, the more detached and not myself I became. And that was terrible. I have distinct memories (and I'm pretty sure I've written about some of them) of calling my mom crying because I wasn't happy. Those days were bad. My mom would answer the phone and all I had to say was "it's bad" and she would know that I was going to cry. Those four months I became someone else. I don't know who, or even how much I really changed, but I didn't like it. But something happened the next four months after that.....I became myself again. Actually....no. 

I didn't become myself again. I learned and grew and rebuilt myself into a new and improved version of my old self. And....I laugh again. The full bodied, on the floor laughing and crying laughing. And it's the best thing in the world. 

I was talking to my best friend about some of those old memories. At one point I said that if I could go back and do things differently, I would have changed a lot of things, but you know what? I wouldn't. I mean those first four months of college were not easy and were not even remotely how I wanted them to work out, but if it hadn't been for that hard time, I wouldn't be the person I am today! I wouldn't know the things or the people I know. I wouldn't have put myself out there more and tried things that used to scare me. I wouldn't be as grateful for my parents and the ability I have to call them when I just need to talk. And most of all, I wouldn't have realized how much I love laughing.