Momentary

Tobias Wolff reminded me today (From his memoir This Boy’s Life) that one good – or fabulous – thing that comes with experience (age..) is that you know you won’t be stuck in a moment of pain forever. He reflects on not being able to see past a present moment as an adolescent and being consumed by it. That then, in youthful bliss and intensity, we believe a moment of joy, heartache, pain, anger, will be always, is the whole world, will hold us in its bubble of intensity forming a barrier to everything else. Older, we know “this too shall pass”. This is sometimes sad, our moments are always building to the end, like a nice, long-lasting orgasm that only exists in the first place to be at its end, to be finished, over, gone. We know this as we get older, we try to grasp the significant flashes of our lives and hold onto them, aware that they slip through and past so quickly.

But I have relief knowing this too shall pass. It has been a saving grace. Lightning stabs of ‘what will give my life meaning now?’ have been crippling the last few weeks. Crippling and pretty destructive. But tonight I was reminded of one of the reasons to always get out of bed – the chance that today I might get a fit of the giggles.

After a weekend away with some excellent friends, I was complaining at work of sore abs due to “giggle-fitting” all Friday and Saturday night. I was told by a friend at work that the reason I was suffering was due to the fact that I have a “low giggling threshold” that is, I can be reduced to giggle-fitting pretty easily. I took it as a compliment at the time – it wasn’t really meant as one, but we take what we can – and figured it just meant that I have a good sense of humour. But I’ve thought about it tonight and realised it’s not as simple as that. I do have a really good sense of humour, but more so, I have really, really good friends (and my hubby is included in this group, he is ridiculously funny, or at least, ridiculous) who make me really, really happy.

As always, out of the eye of the storm it is easier to be a bit more philosophical. There are times when I feel I can’t breathe because my bubble of pain is sucking all the oxygen out of the air, suffocating and paralyzing me all at once. But in the back of my air starved brain I do know that “this too shall pass”, that if I can hold my breath, close my eyes and just get though this moment, this minute will tick over, another moment will come. And hopefully it will involve one of my amazing friends giving me a giggle-fit, where I laugh so hard I break the bad bubble and suck oxygen so deep into my lungs that I get dizzy. This gives my life meaning at the moment, that I have these moments of joy with my friends, that with them I have laughed so hard I have smashed my head into my glass, fallen off my chair, cried, been rendered speechless (a difficult task..) and at one stage last weekend, curled up into a ball on the floor where my whole moment was one, all encompassing, wonderful giggle bubble.