Rendezvous
27 October 07 : 04.01 PM
Jeremy, one of my tutors at school, ends his email with an awfully trite quote: "Why is it that sometimes when we laugh the loudest, it is the time when we most want to cry..." I always thought of it as one of those quotes that people write all the time because it generically expresses some kind of "insightful" grasp of a facade of the human emotion.
But I've never understood it. To me, it was one of those so-called clever quotes, just because it made use of seemingly contradictory ideas. Paradoxes and ironies always seemed smarter. I didn't even think that it was that new an idea; the concept of laughing hardest when you want to cry, like "living like you're dead" or something. I had gained nothing from it.
I took a second look. I thought about it for a second, and searched through my mind for an incident where I had actually felt that. Then I realized that it really involved a far more complex emotion that I initially thought. The quote was always sorta at the back of my mind, but surfaced when I read some of the old stuff Dani wrote to me.
I remember how when Dani and I decided it was best to leave each other, we reminisced, and we laughed as we cried. It was one of those moments where we laughed because it was intimate and embarrassing, but cried because it meant we weren't going to have that ever again. It was something that I have never felt with anyone else before. I think there must be an emotional connection, a deep and real one, for you to feel this way with a person.
But then the night before, we had one of the moments again, except I was the only laughing, and the only one crying. As I read the old stuff he wrote to me, the sweet, sexy, cheesy or plain silly stuff, I couldn't help but smile because it was all so beautiful. But at the same time, I cried, knowing full well that he could no longer muster words like that anymore. I was torn.
This time he didn't cry nor did he laugh. He sat there reading word for word, and for moments, I thought I saw his eyes glisten like he was holding back tears. But he told me, in all honesty, that he didn't feel anything reading it because he no longer recognized the person who wrote it. He said that with this empty look in his eyes that made me aware of the truth in it.
Maybe I've misinterpreted the quote. It could have been something ironic. Like laughing at death. Like finding something excruciatingly hilarious but realizing the gravity and misery of it all. Not the cheesy love-mess interpretation I got of it. But whatever it is, I wanted myself to never be able to feel that way again.