October 4, 2017.

SPOOKTOBER STORY #2:

It's just before my 31st birthday that I notice the weird, desperate note in my own laugh. I find it unattractive, making a mental note to try to not do it again, and continue discussing politics with my boyfriend. We're eating cupcakes. Cupcakes are fun.

It's almost exactly a year later that I notice it again, this tinge of manic sadness when I laugh, like I'm really trying to force it, to let everyone know that, *yes*, I really appreciate the comedy stylings of John Mulaney. Like I need everyone to laugh along with me to let me know that I'm right, that I'm correct to laugh at this. I really don't like that sound in my laugh, so later, that night, after the show and when I'm home alone,(my boyfriend left me in January for a woman he met while buying cupcakes. Cupcakes are no longer fun and I usually cry when I see one), I try to make myself laugh by watching cat videos online, and while I am laughing I observe very closely to see if I can hear the desperation. I don't hear it and consider the case closed.

I'm 35 and I notice it all the time, now. When I laugh, it goes, "Ha ha ha?" and rises in pitch, and it's weird, and ugly, and makes me feel ugly when I do it. I try not to laugh, I love to laugh, but it makes me sick to hear it, to feel this ugly and pathetic thing coming out of me. I stand in front of the mirror and practice laughing normally, but I can no longer remember how. I watch other people, in public, on television, on the internet, and try to learn how to laugh without that sick pathetic desperation, that deep and boundless sadness coming through, "Ha ha ha?"

I'm 39 and I've conditioned myself systemically not to laugh. When I feel the convulsions start to come, I pinch the fatty flesh on the inside of my elbow and *twist,* hard, until tears leak out of the corners of my eyes. It hurts, and is slowly driving away all of my friends, who no longer identify with me and my joyless existence, but it's better than hearing that sound. That sound isn't laughing. It sounds like an old woman mourning her son. Haaaa.... haaaa.... haaaa?

I'm 44 and I am alone and the thing I am most afraid of is the noise coming out from me and I do not want to ever hear the noise again but John Mulaney is back on the television and I can feel it rising inside of me and so I pinch and *twist* but he is funny he is *funny* and so I turn off the television but it is too late and I hear it, this awful, ghostly weeping sound, inhuman, but it's coming out from my mouth and I am laughing and I am laughing and I am laughing and then maybe I am screaming