Two silly goobers and some German homework…

I plopped myself down on our living room floor last night to do my German homework. I took a big, deep breath. After a long day of working, my German homework usually isn’t the thing I want to dedicate myself to.

Just in case you’re curious, no, I did not just decide to pick up German because it seemed like a fun and easy language to learn…I am married to a German dude and I want to speak his language, so here I am trying my darndest to learn, what feels like, especially at 9:30 at night, to be the world’s most grammatically precise and confusing language there is.

Through this language learning process, I have also discovered that when, at fifteen, I made a list of everything I wanted to find in a partner as a means of manifesting my perfect person and I wrote down, “European” it wasn’t nearly specific enough…I should’ve written down something like “English,” or “Irish,” or even “Italian,” and I would currently be spending a lot less time with my nose in a language book trying to figure out what the heck the genitive case is.

Obviously, I am kidding. I am wholeheartedly obsessed with my husband, he is pretty much the best thing since sliced bread (actually he is definitely much, much better) and I would gladly learn German for the rest of my life for him (in fact, I am pretty sure that’s what I will be doing), but man oh man is this language a doozy.

As I looked over my homework, which only seemed to be getting more complicated by the second, I finally broke down and asked Domi for help, which I rarely do. I especially didn’t want to last night. Domi had been having a really rough day. He had been short of breath, due to anxiety, nothing more, but shortness of breath these days is certainly enough to send us all into a tizzy. He was stressed to the max with demands being made on him. He’s not only in school but also working, and usually, I really don’t want to be bothering him to help me finish my homework for a class I have elected to take in my spare time when he has so much going on.

However, my frustration was only building, so I called him over from the kitchen. He sat down on the floor next to me and rested his chin on my shoulder to take a look at my workbook. First, like any excellent teacher, he validated me by saying what I am working on is incredibly difficult and that he is so very proud of me. Then as he read on he out of the blue got the giggles. Immediately, my initial reaction to being laughed at when I am working on speaking in another language was to punch him in the shoulder and beg him to stop laughing, but he couldn’t. He laughed and laughed and laughed at my homework. Then because I really couldn’t help myself I started laughing hysterically without really knowing what I was laughing at. When we finally seemed to get ahold of ourselves, he explained to me what was wrong with my writing, it was a little funny, yeah, but nowhere near as funny as he made it seem. And all of a sudden, something occurred to me. I realized it wasn’t that what I had written was quite so hysterical it was the fact that he needed a release.

These are crazy times and sometimes you just need to laugh. The awkward laugh. The uncomfortable laugh. The laugh seemingly at someone else’s expense. The laugh like there may be no tomorrow laugh. Because laughter is so very necessary at times. It doesn’t mean we don’t take our world and these issues seriously it just means sometimes we need to just giggle until we fall on the floor and are gasping for air from hysterics.

So, here are my very, very unwise, very simple words of wisdom for this week:

It is a-okay to roll on your floor laughing right now. It is not out of place if it is what you need. It does not mean you don’t want to save the world, it means you are taking care of releasing your fear, your anxiety, and so much more that your body doesn’t know how to get out any other way. So, please, if you need to laugh, laugh and please if someone else in your house is laughing at what you think is your expense, know that it most likely is not, they are likely laughing to release some very deep dark emotions that don’t otherwise know how to boil to the surface. (And yeah, maybe sometimes they are laughing at you just a little bit—under these circumstances, I suggest joining them.)

Laugh it out my friends and if the laughing turns to crying, so be it, but please, do not judge yourselves for not being serious for just a minute. You don’t have to be serious all the time. You can be silly and still be strong. You can be a goofball and still have the gravitas to change the world.

I just spent the better part of an hour laying on the floor laughing my head off next to my love because we didn’t know what else to do and then maybe I had to cry a little and now maybe I need to sleep a little. But I do know, that Domi and I are feeling worlds better than we did before our epic laugh. It’s all good, all of it. I hope you giggle just a little today for me. Even the most serious of us sometimes just need to shake it out and cackle until our tummies threaten to burst. And when the laughter stops and the world feels scary again, just remember that that laughter is never very far away.

Happy Tuesday my friends. I am sending big hugs and big laughs your way. Whatever you are feeling, it’s perfect and it will pass, the good, the bad, and the ugly. XOXOX, CAMDW