thoughts!

vampireapologist:

to be honest since I was a child I’ve just very much had a talent for story-telling. i got bullied a lot and I got terrible grades in everything but the one good note I’d get on report cards and the ONLY nice things my classmates would say when prompted would be something like “she’s so funny” or “she really paints a picture when she tells a story”

So I placed all of my self-worth in my ability to entertain people, which is the story for a LOT of kids! But I was really good at it. 

I always took (and still take) ordinary events and made them funny and entertaining. If I went to the store and a cashier said something odd to me, I could retell it in a way that made people laugh.

People would call me over to tell their friends “that one story” they’d heard before. I got invited to lunch tables and parties and homework groups for it. It was how I connected to people and made friends after years of being bullied.

And when you meet a lot of people, and you have a conversation with everyone you meet, something funny starts to happen: you get into a lot of weird situations and encounters that just make for more stories.

So I kept sharing, and it NEVER occurred to me that anyone would think I was lying until in 11th grade a boy said to my younger sister, who was seen as quiet, cool, and I guess thereby trustworthy “why does your sister make shit up all the time?”

And she told him “she doesn’t. I’ve been with her in half the stories she tells.”

He believed her and apologized, but when I heard about it, it really hurt me. I realized suddenly that maybe everyone I talked to, shared with, was laughing behind my back. That they thought I was a liar, desperate for friends and approval.

I had to decide not to care, but it seeded a deep insecurity in me. Sometimes I still catch myself worried my friends are secretly thinking “yeah right” when I tell them about a strange girl I talked to at the library.

I know they believe me, and I trust them, but it’s an old worry, and old worries linger!

So when my posts first started getting a lot of attention, and people started commenting “and everyone clapped,” “that man, was albert einstein,” “this is literally peak fake tumblr,” it hurt my feelings! I felt silly to have my feelings hurt by a meme. Like, I’m an adult, but it still did!

But then I started getting into watching standup comedians, and they tell the most bonkers off-the-wall stories I’ve ever heard. And people dissected them and tried to prove them fake, and then instead they’d find proof the stories were real. And in fact they’d realize, the stories weren’t really that unbelievable in the first place.

They were often about normal life with one strange element tossed in, that anyone else would have summarized in two sentences or less, and no one would have blinked.

But the comedians had made a career out of making an event funny. Making life bigger and better and more entertaining than it ever is while it’s happening.

And I realized I have that same skill.

At the end of the day, I’m just really funny, and really talented, and you can take it or leave it, that’s your choice, and that’s that on that!