Learning about Myself: Dark Humor

           A few weeks ago, my grandfather passed away. This was my final grandparent. Yesterday, I found out that one of my friends from Midland with whom I swam competitively shot himself. Over the years, I have been to countless funerals for all of my grandparents, some great-grandparents, great-aunts and uncles, my uncle on my mother’s side, a few cousins, friends, family of friends, and my little sister. What did I get from all of this? Well I got a nice heavy dose of pessimism, but I also developed a dark sense of humor.

            My family typically uses humor as a shield to keep their emotions from getting out of control during such sad situations. I have known this for years, and I always would use humor with them as frequently as possible in order to calm them. Granted, they don’t exactly do a good job of calming themselves. I go home and our activities almost always involve death, whether it be attending another funeral, buying more flowers for the graveyard, mapping out where we all want to be buried, or looking for headstones for various family members who are still alive, death seems to be an unfortunate focal point in family activities.

            It would make sense for my family to also have a dark sense of humor, but for some reason I am the only one who uses humor in that regard. I believe this is because I have been continuously exposed to death during a critical time of development. Because I gained so much exposure to death, dark humor became rather simple. I never think much of it, but sometimes my friends point out things that I say that are “not okay.” Like when I sent my friend a selfie of my grandfather’s urn and me in the back seat of the car with the words “chilling with my grandpa in the back seat as usual.” However, this dark humor does not stop with the motif of death. It extends itself out to other touchy subjects. For example, I am writing a paper about the use of crystal meth by gay men as a subculture, so I went to Dallas and spent a few hours around a densely populated area of gay males. Within a 24-hour period, I was offered meth four times (I turned it down obviously). Instead of freaking out, I texted the same friend I mentioned earlier and said “Finding meth in the gay community is like finding a piece of hay in a haystack.” Apparently that isn’t an okay thing to joke about either. While many people find this side of my humor to be harsh and sometimes extreme, that part of me makes much more sense when it is put in the context of my life so far. Hopefully, the events of my life will lighten up and this humor will start to subside, but only the future knows.