Humor Was My Drug of Choice

I wish I could remember the first time I made someone laugh, and I know that sounds conceited, and maybe it is, but it’s true. To me, it’s no different than a surgeon wanting to remember the first time her scalpel cut through skin. Or a track star remembering her first sprint.

But my memory is terrible, unfortunately. So bad my childhood best friend Katheryn frequently has to remind me of very memorable things. Like how we both lost the race of “most humorous” to someone else in High School. (I honestly can’t remember her name…I need to ask Katheryn.)

I guess I write all this to say, humor has always been my drug of choice. I grew up during the Nancy Reagan “Just Say No” drug campaign, and boy did that ever work on me. Because besides one run-in with coke at a gay club in Oklahoma City in college, and the occasional pot, I was terrified of all drugs. In fact, the first time I did pot, I smoked so much I couldn’t move my legs and convinced myself I’d invented speakers. “What if there were these things that amplified sound?”

I also grew up spiritually adjacent. Meaning, I wasn’t born into a family of meditators or monks. I had to go find the knowledge. I was sixteen, to be exact. I think the suffering I had then was probably like a lot of suffering at sixteen, except my mind was specifically designed to ask questions and feel out of place. I don’t know if that’s my birth chart, the fact that I lived directly under my Neptune line, or just the way God made me. As soon as I could drive I started doing yoga in a town outside of Dallas, Texas, which was pretty unheard of in the 90s. I think they called it “Jesus stretches,” and that still makes me laugh. The instructor, who was obviously an old hippy, referred me to The Artist’s Way. But meanwhile, I was very much in character development with my main compensatory strategy … humor.

Years later, after the birth of my two kids at 27 and 30 (hello, teen mom), that ancient, familiar ache came back. Only this time there was nothing to point to. I had the kids. I had the husband. The husband was successful, so I didn’t even need a job, but I had the degree if I wanted to work. I had the house. And yet I had this deep feeling of something missing, not unlike my childhood, and I couldn’t figure out why, because now I had all the things people told me I needed to have to be happy.

It’s going to sound weird, but you know those brightly colored popsicles kids love, the ones where you suck the flavor out of the top and the color just gets a little duller? That’s what it felt like. Still red. Just less.

This was before Instagram and the all mighty algorithm to tell me all the reasons I was unhappy. I was in therapy, but it didn’t seem to be working. That’s when I found a woman named Christine Hassler, a life coach way before life coaching was life coaching, way before your neighbor was a life coach and every other person on Instagram.

Christine had gone to a school called the University of Santa Monica. Traditional therapy had felt like recycling the same old things over and over again with different faces on them. Whatever Christine was doing felt like an actual release, a washing clean. And I could see how positive she was, how much she actually enjoyed her life — which was not a category of person I had spent a lot of time around. I immediately knew I wanted to go to her school. Small problem: I was in Chicago and the school was in Santa Monica. It was an executive program, though, so after much convincing of myself and my husband at the time, we agreed I’d do it and leave the kids with him one weekend a month.

In the program, we had to pick something for our second year that we’d always deeply wanted , they called it a sacred yes, or a heartfelt project, I can’t remember which. It was just a bunch of adults going back to something they’d abandoned when they were younger. A dream, an inkling, or something. It mostly looked like an adult talent show at the end.

We went through a process where we discovered what we actually wanted to do. I said something weird of course, something like: I just want to laugh. I just want a tail!

Thinking about it now, a tail is an outward manifestation of something you’re not supposed to have. If a human had one — an actual long, hanging tail — that would be weird. Maybe inside I felt weird, and I wanted people to see it, in a way where they could laugh instead of look away. I don’t know.

From that one sentence, my incredibly intuitive partner Darnell ( I remember his name) was able to ascertain that what I actually wanted was to be a comedian. “Do you want to do stand up?” I started crying immediately. Not relief crying. Terrified crying. Because comedian meant stage, and stage meant everyone would actually see the tail.

The first time I did an open mic, I was 30 with two kids at home. Before the show, a bunch of guys were sitting around watching TV at the bar. On the screen was a live cam of a giraffe giving birth at a zoo. The men were screaming and laughing and making bets. I don’t know why, but in that moment I felt so exposed.

I was the giraffe.

My first few times on stage were an absolute flop after that. The words existed in my head, but the road from my brain to my mouth had completely disappeared — kind of like my memory. As I got used to it, it got more fun. I gained confidence. I started saying things like: I never played the lottery until I got married. After one show, someone came up to me and said, I really relate to what you’re saying. You should keep going. That’s when I realized I wasn’t just talking about comedy. I was talking about life. Taking the spiritual concepts I’d learned at school. Making them bite-size. Something people could actually use.

Not a man in his 20s talking about his erection.

I eventually finished the program, but really the program finished me. It laid the groundwork for who I am now, and planted the seeds for who I am becoming. Just like everything I went through before it had. The non-spiritual family, Texas, the Jesus-stretching.

I think we’re all the giraffe, in some way. There’s always something each of us wants to hide, is ashamed of, exposed by. A lot of times, that thing ends up being the gift. Most people don’t play it out on an actual stage, under actual lights. But I think we can all take something from that image anyway.

I’d really like to know, what’s your tail? And could you consider that the thing you’d never willingly show anyone, might actually be the whole point?