Laughter

Image credit: Photo by .sanden. on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

"So at my meeting last night, I wanted to say that sex addicts are hot, but there were a few newcomers, and newcomers don't think that's so funny," I told my husband Mark as we were getting ready for bed. Mark laughed. He knows my running joke; if I'm ever looking for a relationship again, I'm going to go to a 12 Step meeting for sex addicts: given my history of being attracted to addicts, at least that way I'll end up with someone in recovery from the start.

"Why don't they think it's funny?" Mark asked.

"Do you remember what it was like those first few days? Those first few weeks? Those first few months? There wasn't anything funny about anything."

"No. True," Mark says quietly, "not for either of us."

"I remember this moment when we were probably a few weeks in. I was in bed, just waking up, and you kissed me goodbye as you were leaving for work. I smiled, and you started to cry; you said that was the first time you'd seen me smile in weeks. But even that wasn't a genuine smile, it was a reflex born in a dream. I wasn't really awake enough to have what we were going through all flood back into my consciousness yet. When I did wake up, everything was still blackness and horror. There was nothing to smile about."

"Thanks a lot. This is a terrible bedtime story. I'm not going to be able to sleep now."

"But it was traumatic," I said, laughing in spite of myself. "It's hard to hold that trauma in my mind now, because everything has gotten so much better."

"I know what you mean. I'm so grateful to be out of that terrible place and able to laugh about it with you right now."

"Me too. And you know, I'm totally going to pick up one of the guys in your group if you ever get out of line."

"Well, we addicts are pretty sexy, you know. It's hard to resist us. And I'm sure there must be someone in my group who could use a good codie...," says Mark. And we dissolve into laughter again.

---

This post was originally published at The Second Road.