@iliakos said, meta: laughter, driving. / send me a topic to write a meta about my muse on. part one — laughter.
ashley has always been quiet, and that extends to his laughter as well. it extends to everything. as a boy, he might’ve smiled at his uncle’s jokes, but it was a rare sight. he doesn’t express happiness like he expresses anger. it’s always much more muted. even in the corps, where they barked and howled during exchanges of crude jokes and dark humor, he was still quiet. he made his deadpan snarks and watched his squad erupt around him. it’s a rare sight to see ashley smile, and even more rare to see him laugh. and it is, on his part, a conscious effort not to, but it’s also just the way he is.
and, oddly enough — he tends to smile and laugh more when he’s distraught. which allows me to bring up this quote from richard siken —
eventually something you love is going to be taken away. and then you will fall to the floor crying. and then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, ‘ i am falling to the floor crying, ’ but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well.
he’s so used to grieving, yet he’s so disconnected from his grief that — it really begins to feel like a joke, once he starts mourning again. when he fails to convert his sadness into anger, well — game over. because he knows how to process and release anger. he doesn’t know to process and release grief. even after a lifetime of grieving. i like to say that ashley has mourning down to a science, but if you really pick it apart, and if you dissect him and his mourning rituals — he doesn’t. he gets drunk and he doesn’t sleep and he waits for the grief to go away. and sometimes it doesn’t go away. and then he starts laughing, because he’s drunk, and his friend is dead, and he notices that his black henley doesn’t really match his black jacket.
