“She was always making jokes in class, kept us laughing all the time.”

“I don’t know that I ever see her without a big smile.”

“Some people are just born funny.”

They’re not talking about me.

Not that I don’t have a sense of humor that can range from silly to sarcastic to full-on giggle torrent. Sit me down watching an episode of “QI” or “Would I lie to you?” and I’ll drive my husband crazy, laughing with my headphones on. All he sees is a crazy person going manic while I’m listening to Sandy Toksvig or David Mitchell. It must be like being in the room while someone else is having a phone conversation–on LSD.

And I tell jokes or what I hope are jokes in my QiGong classes and I’d like to think the students’ laughter is more than politeness on their part–although QiGong students do tend toward the polite end of the civility spectrum.

But I’m not by nature a happy person. I am more likely to politely disappear into a private world where thoughts run more toward the unhappy stories I hear, the pain that someone must have felt when they were let go from a job or told off by a friend, the grief and loss of a pet or relative or even an object they held in value. I will think of these things and feel a visceral deep ache in my heart and gut despite not being personally affected.

And when the loss is my own, I carry my sadness forever. Not every moment of every day, not in a way that keeps me from enjoying a good dinner and drink or a beautiful walk, but somewhere in what might be called by some my ‘soul.’ The pain of the death of my beautiful caramel tabby almost three years ago will just, from seemingly nowhere, wrap a fist around me and I will hurt almost as deeply as I did the last time I caressed his fur.

I’m not speaking of depression, either, here. I have gone through periods of deep and lasting depression, depression that seems to have no cause, no igniting source, per se. So I know what that feels like all too well. No, this no antidepressant or talk therapy would change. This sadness is simply part of my being.

My life walks in a deep forest, the limbs dragged down by their mantles of leaves, the senses dampened, the sounds of insects humming in the dark, beautiful but always dialed down to a few decibels lower than what those on the sunny savannah might hear. The knot in the chain won’t be untangled; the chip in the vase not repaired; the broken heart remains broken.

Those of us born in sadness aren’t more intuitive necessarily or more sensitive. I know I’m not. We just see the world revolving with downturned lips, beautiful nonetheless.

I’m happy there are those who are ‘born funny.’

And I’m just fine being born sad.