Page 101 of My Own Kind of Person

“Hi, my name is Sean, and I have depression and anxiety. In other words, I’m bi.”

I laugh, I can’t help it. And then I get back to walking. “I’m always trying to figure out the reason I’m depressed. Like, am I depressed because I moved around a lot as a kid and the only thing I could be certain of was that at some point my mom would cry in the kitchen?” I stop and look at Mom. “Sorry, Mom. For everything that caused the tears and for mentioning them now.”

“It’s okay!” she shouts.

“I think you’re wonderful. You did an amazing job.”

“I adore you.”

“I think we made it through, right?”

“I could die and you’d be fine.”

I make a face and the room bursts out laughing. “You could die and I’d be— Are you dying?”

“No! I’m just nervous!”

I extend a hand toward her. “Ladies and gentlepeople, my mother.”

The theater applauds. I put the mic in the stand and step away from it and clap. Then I pick the mic up again. “So, back to depression. Am I depressed because of some mildly painful moments in my past? Or am I depressed because I have feelings for someone who isn’t speaking to me? Or is this just my brain chemistry? It’s a tangled mess of all those? Cool, that seems easy to resolve.”

A dark feeling settles over me. Like in bringing up the topic, I’ve invited it in.

“Now that I think of it,” I say slowly, “that guy, the maybe-my-boyfriend? I haven’t personally reached out to him since I lost my mind in English. I had one of my associates reach out to him. But I didn’t because I figured he wouldn’t want to hear from me. But who is my low self-esteem helping? I’m only inconveniencing everyone around me who has to reassure me I’m liked.”

There’s no laughter at this, and I stare off to the side of the stage. “He texted me yesterday asking how I was, and I never replied. So maybe it’s not that he’s not speaking to me.” I snap back into entertainer-mode. “This is just like how I thought those kids who beat me up in elementary school liked me! I’ve had everything totally backwards.”

People laugh.

“Just to make sure, you’re not here, right?”

There’s no response.

I nod. I put the mic back in its stand.

“The night of my seventeenth birthday,” I begin, and I know how I once would have told this story, what I once would have thought it was about. And maybe this is how all my life will be, a rewriting and rethinking of what came before. Along with, I hope, a release from whatever that was, whoever I was, and a permission to be whoever I’ll be. “The night of my seventeenth birthday, my mom brought a triple-decker Funfetti cake into the living room and told me she loved me. I wanted to cry, so I cut off my emotions and blew out the candles.”

I look up into the spotlight. “The funny thing is that I don’t even know why I wanted to cry.”

I talk with both hands now that they’re freed of the mic. “Instead, I told myself to toughen up, to stop being so soft and to grow up. And I texted my girlfriend that I was ready to have sex.” I tell the story of wishing I had ten condoms and wanting to pre-condom, of talking with Christy in the kitchen and walking with her to the bedroom. I talk about hovering over her and telling her I didn’t know why I couldn’t cry, and how she held me. The story gets the same strong reaction it got at Captain’s, but even bigger because of the size of this audience. When I give the final line—“And I say, ‘I thought I’d at least prematurely ejaculate.’ ”—the theater bursts into laughter and applause.

I look at Christy, then Mom, then at everyone else. “I don’t know why I was too scared to have sex. I don’t know why I couldn’t let myself cry when my mother brought out my birthday cake. I don’t know why I couldn’t turn to my boyfriend and, even if I was having a hard day, say hi. I don’t know what I was feeling at these moments because I didn’t allow myself to experience them. I cut off my emotions and, in doing so, I cut off myself.”

A grief begins to rise from my depths.

“I robbed myself of life because I was too scared to feel it.”

Heat hits my face, and tears stream down my cheeks.

I’m finally crying—onstage in front of a thousand people.

And it feels even better than laughing.

“I don’t want to run away from my emotions anymore. I want to feel them. If I’m scared, I want to feel scared. If I’m sad, I want to feel sad. If I’m excited, I want to burst with excitement. And if I’m lucky enough to be given love, I want to let myself feel that love. And then I want to give it right back.”

A red light goes on in the back of the theater to let me know to end my set.

“So I just wanted to say to all of you here: I love you very much.” I hold up a hand. “Thank you. My name is Sean O’Brien.”