When All Is Dark, Send In The Clown

I’ve been realizing a lot lately how I’m full of sadness, always have been… and my husband is full of jokes and humor. We are both opposites. 2 contradictions. Honestly, that’s a big reason I married Jason… his humor. Not just the kind that makes your face twist into a reflexive grin, but the kind that carries weight. Humor that lives in the gut and in the marrow. The kind that’s tender and ridiculous and slightly inappropriate in the best way. It’s not a distraction from pain, so I’ve learned… it’s a strange sort of prayer in the face of it.

Jason doesn’t try to fix me. He never really has. And for someone like me, that matters more than I can put into words. I carry a sadness in my bones. Not always visible, not always spoken, but present… quietly lodged beneath the surface of everything. It isn’t theatrical or attention-seeking. It’s just… there. Like an old house I return to again and again, even when the lights are off. I’ve made peace with that house. I know its layout. I’ve arranged the furniture many many times.

Jason walks into that place with muddy boots and terrible puns. He doesn’t wipe his feet. He just barges in laughing, handing me some absurd George Carlin joke or a YouTube video of The Onion. And somehow that’s all I need. Not light at the end of the tunnel… just a good laugh in the middle of it.

He makes me laugh even when I’m unraveling. Especially then. And that laughter doesn’t erase my ache… it just gives it room to breathe. It reminds me that sorrow doesn’t own all the real estate in my soul. There’s still space for the absurd, the warm, the ridiculous. And that is sacred.

Some people think love is about compatibility, shared goals, clean kitchens, and equal labor. And maybe part of it is. But for me, love has always been about this strange mixture… this alchemy of pain and joy, gravity and buoyancy. I don’t want a life of uninterrupted peace. I don’t want a love that’s sterile and even-tempered. I want texture. I want edges. I want someone who can hold my hand in a funeral home and still whisper something in my ear that makes me choke on a laugh through my tears. That’s what I want. And Jason is exactly that.

He is the living embodiment of contrast. Where I am solemn, he is spontaneous. Where I spiral, he simplifies. Where I ache, he tickles the edges of that ache until I’m laughing again. He doesn’t ask me to stop being heavy. He just shows me that heavy things can still float.

I think the world has forgotten the sacredness of contradiction. We’re told to choose between grief or joy, silence or noise, tears or laughter. But the truth is, they live beside each other. They hold hands. The most meaningful moments I’ve ever lived have always been made of both. The best days have been mixed with longing. The hardest nights have still held some flicker of humor… some joke, some moment of softness that kept me from drowning.

That’s why I married him. Because I knew life wouldn’t always be easy. I knew my mind, with its fault lines and thorns, would sometimes get the better of me. I knew the darkness could return, as it always does, uninvited and cruel. But I also knew that if I had Jason, I would never sit in that darkness alone. He’d show up with a flashlight shaped like a banana or maybe a light saber and sit next to me until the ache felt just a little less sharp.

He’s absurd. He’s loud when I need quiet. He tells jokes when he’s going to the bathroom. He makes fart jokes in serious moments. And still… somehow… he is the most grounding presence I’ve ever known. His humor is not a performance. It’s not a mask. It’s the core of who he is… a bright, bumbling reminder that life, even when cruel, can still be ridiculous enough to laugh at.

Sometimes I wonder if the sadness in me will ever lift. If there will come a day when I no longer feel that heaviness sitting just behind my ribcage. Maybe not. Maybe that’s just part of who I am. And that’s okay. Because I have someone who doesn’t fear it. He doesn’t minimize it or pathologize it. He just shows up, with his not so symmetrical grin and his specific colored and pocketless polo shirt and says, “Wanna watch a funny movie?”

And that’s it. That’s love for me. Not just flowers. Not grand gestures. But simple things. Not just movies, in fact, many other things besides just movies. Honest things. Tiny, sacred, absurd moments that split open the grief and let a little light leak through. 

People always talk about finding someone who makes them happy. But I think what they mean… what they’re really reaching for… is someone who makes them feel everything, and still wants to stay. Someone who sees the broken parts, the complicated parts, the parts that ache and don’t always heal… and doesn’t run. Jason stays. He doesn’t flinch. He just makes jokes and holds space and somehow, without trying to be a hero, becomes one.

So yes, I love the mixture of sad and funny. That’s where I feel most alive. That space in between… the place where your throat tightens and your belly laughs all at once. That’s my home. And that’s where Jason lives too.

And maybe that’s why I gravitate so deeply to certain movies, songs, shows, and musicals… the ones that blend heartbreak and humor like they were always meant to sit side by side. The ones that remind me, again and again, that joy is not an escape from sadness, but a companion to it. That comedy, when done with depth and dignity, doesn’t trivialize pain… it tenderizes it.

Robin Williams, for example, had this uncanny ability to hold both things at once. In Dead Poets Society, he made me cry because he reminded us to seize the day, even when the day feels absolutely hollow. In Good Will Hunting, he made me weep because he knew that vulnerability was more powerful than intelligence. And in Mrs. Doubtfire, he somehow turned heartbreak into hilarity… mourning the loss of family while pretending his way into authentic and deep  connection. He was never just funny. He was full That’s what I crave in art. And in people.

I find that same contrast in movies and musicals that make me laugh one moment and sob the next… The Glass Castle, my favorite movie, the best of the best, the one movie I relate to the most, packed with hilarity and sorrow. Dan In Real Life combining the ache of loneliness and the struggle of single parenting with joy and empathy… La La Land filled with dreams, heartbreak and letting go…  Big Fish, a whimsical tale of tall stories and paternal love that humorously explores truth, legacy, and reconciling with mortality… A Beautiful Mind blends humor, love, and delusion as it portrays the isolating brilliance and heartbreak of mental illness and acceptance… Crazy Ex-girlfriend with its relatability in mental health, darkly funny, raw, awkward, and emotionally powerful… The Truman Show is darkly funny and deeply moving, it questions reality, identity, and the aching desire for freedom and authenticity… My Big Fat Greek Wedding is hilarious and heartfelt, it celebrates messy family dynamics, cultural identity, and love that bridges seemingly impossible differences.

Songs that crescendo not only with orchestration, but with emotional weight. Lyrics that feel like grief being sung out loud. Comedy tucked inside catastrophe. Beauty blooming in the ruins. I feel most understood when the art I consume reflects back that strange emotional cocktail I carry inside me.

Jason is a lot like those kinds of stories. He’s my personal tragicomedy. A man who can make me laugh while I’m curled up in pain. A man who doesn’t fear the shadows in me because he’s already lit a few campfires there. He understands that I don’t need happiness alone… I need depth. I need range. I need the whole damn scale of human feeling, and I need someone who won’t abandon the song when it dips into a minor key.

Because the truth is, I’ve never felt more alive than in moments where I’m laughing through tears. Where I’m singing with a cracked voice. Where I’m watching a film that guts me and then hands me a joke like a Band-Aid. That’s not confusion. That’s completion.

So yes, Jason is funny. But he’s also the quiet afterward. The hand that stays. The man who makes space for me to be contradictory, loud and quiet, sorrowful and hopeful, broken and still beautiful. I married him not because he rescues me from myself… but because he knows how to sit beside me when the tide is too high, and still find something to smile about.

And that’s everything to me.