What I Expect Every Psychologist Wants Me To Say About My Relationship With Performing

It’s crazy.  I can do improv show after improv show in front of hundreds of people and I never get scared.   Most people would lose their shit if they were in my shoes.  Not me though.  I always considered myself as part of a rare breed, as someone who was blessed with an intrepid soul.  But then the other night before a show I was asked to host for the evening and then I quickly realized something: I am terrified of something after all.

I’m afraid of being myself.

I became paralyzed with fear with the mere notion that I would have to present in front of an audience as only myself.  I would have no character to hide behind, no mask to reveal my real identity.  And that frightens me because, quite honestly, (pause) I don’t know who I am.   

Oh, it feels so liberating to finally say that!  Everything I’ve said or done in my life so far has been premeditated in order to make people laugh.  I’ve been a pathetic chuckle whore who gives joke jobs and lets people yuck-yuck my bits.  Well NO MORE.  I’m being real for the first time in my life and it feels good.  From now on I’m gonna have to take care of someone more important than an audience, someone who I’ve been ignoring for way too long:

me.