I missed the little things.
Walking backstage before your name is called, knowing you’re about to be brought up. The showrunner telling you when you’re getting the light. The dance between comic and wait staff to make sure we each have enough space to work. The goosebumps, the anticipation. Reading the room. Who’s gonna need to be dealt with? Who’s gonna love my stuff? Who’s gonna need work? Who’s gonna hate me? As the host gets ready to announce my name, I gather myself to walk to the mic, the most confident strut I’ll have all day. Albeit nowadays it’s a wobble but we’re working on it baybay! The crowd welcomes you with a hopefully warm reception. Now it’s my job to turn that warm applause into a thunderous roar.
The roar is what I missed the most. Having a room full of strangers lost in a burst of laughter, them being able to forget for a moment all the problems in their lives, bills, relationships, and responsibilities. For a moment they can escape all that and laugh about my inability to open a box of plastic wrap. (It’s a good bit). That’s the best part about doing this.
We lose sight of that as comedians. What our goal is. We all have so many individual goals we wanna achieve, and rightly so. Tours, Albums, Festivals, job offers on TV, radio. The 11 podcasts we do that are just one good segment away from going viral.
However, our goal once we reach the stage is always a simple one we tend to overcomplicate. Make the people laugh. The people who came to see you that night matter more than anyone else at that moment. That set you’re working on for insert audition here, that loose 8 you wanna make a tight 7 for the local talent showcase, all that matters, but it doesn’t matter more than the audience you have in front of you on any given night. An audience ready to laugh and celebrate the moment is a gift we take for granted. Make them laugh. That’s the job. The rest will come with time and hard work. The roar will come from focusing on the goal.
It’s a beautiful struggle.
I miss all this by the count of my failures.
I never imagined a scenario where I would become so unhealthy and overweight that I couldn’t perform stand-up comedy. It’s not exactly a contact sport. And that I think makes the pain of it all the more piercing. I finally got to a critical mass. No pun intended. I had to walk away from the one thing I loved more than anything. And it was all my fault.
Depression is a motherfucker. It manifests in different ways. Some chose to turn to alcohol, others to drugs. Some just go to therapy and avoid toxic situations. Me? I would overeat. Had a bad day? Here’s a $50 McDonald’s order. The weather got you down? How about some midnight shawarma X2? Botch your new bit about people making phone calls? Welp, time to Uber Eats ice cream.
The pandemic gave us all a glimpse of life without standup. I thought that would be the worst break I ever endured.
I was wrong.
Watching my friends and colleagues all kill it and do their thing while being laid out on a couch in my basement apartment was the darkest timeline.
Comedians rely on telling jokes as our identity. We depend on the routine, the nerves, the joy of a new throwaway, the heartbreak of a bad tag. The excitement of a new opportunity, no matter how dubious it appears (let’s make it a night to remember!)
When you don’t have that rush. When you miss that “raison d’être” you feel even lonelier than most of us usually feel.
You start to feel like the moment has passed you by before you’ve even given yourself a chance to make something of yourself.
Feeling like your best moments have come and gone makes for a terrible reality.
So at the age of 33 almost 34 at the time, I came to the only logical conclusion. Time for a change. I did this once already, I lost 250 pounds when I was 26. I gained it all back. And then I gained some more. Then I got really sick and gained even more weight. Before I knew it, I was a candidate for my 600-pound life. Not exactly the reality show you wanna latch on to.
So I got help. My mother, whose 2 for 3 on successful children she can be proud of, saved my life. The friends I have, saved my life. My family, as exasperated and fed up with me as can be, saved my life.
I had bariatric surgery on September 19th, 2024, after 4 months of waiting and preparations. I got fired from my day job, as I couldn’t function anymore. I wasn’t able to leave the house. I missed family weddings and parties and comedy festivals and god knows what else. It was the most worthless I’ve ever felt. Which was saying something.
Hope and anticipation turned to reality. I had 75% of my stomach removed after a month of pre-op preparation that mainly consisted of protein shakes and reassurance that all would be well if I could just make it to this surgery. Those months felt like years.
The care and attention I received from the team at the Montreal General Hospital was amazing. They took the time to talk and walk me through every moment of the procedure, and I couldn’t be more thankful to the whole team of doctors and nurses and support staff.
For years I thought this procedure was the easy way out. The cowardly way to live. Having gone through this now, I realize how dumb I was in thinking that. It’s not a magic procedure. You have to commit yourself to a lifetime of change and better choices. You have to commit yourself to taking care of yourself. The sacrifices I made aren’t noble, they were necessary.
With all that being said, it’s amazing how different I feel compared to early August. I have energy. Excited to move. I have lost 120 pounds, to quote the great poet, KD Senior, it’s like throwing a deck chair off the Titanic. All of this has allowed me to recently begin the long road back to being funny again. To begin looking for that roar.
I’m gonna get my roar back. I’m gonna take my life back. If all my bad decisions led me to this moment in time, this ideological shit, then I pledge to myself that going forward we make healthy choices, in all aspects of my life. The road will be long. The commute is even longer, but the payoff will be worth it. The laughs will be its own medicine.
It’s own form of therapy.
That’s why I’m here. To make people laugh. I’m coming back for my fucking roars. I’ll see y’all on the other side.
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