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Even if I were in a world where no memory existed there was a time when I would still have demurred, still said �Oh, it was nothing�, still have laughed off a compliment with a barbed joke at myself (some line like �not bad for a fatty, yeah�). And why? Who does it serve? Who taught me that it is ok to be mean to yourself, to let yourself down in front of others?

I spent 23 years of my life pointing fun at me, making myself the butt of my own jokes and the only cause it served was to keep me in my place. A place that was below the rest of my thinking. It kept me dissatisfied, it kept me lonely and it made me even madder at how stupid I was.

The weird thing is that the self deprecation stopped working, stopped giving me the big hurt pay-off as soon as I started using it in my stand-up comedy. The more I told the world how weird and silly I was, the more it actually wasn�t true, and the less I believed that it actually was true. I engorged myself with self deprecation, and ate and ate so much of it, stuffed myself full of it, that I was forced to throw it all up, out into the world, and thus it was no longer in me.

It�s six years down the track, and I don�t need comedy to show me the reality anymore. I just stopped beating up on myself cause it stopped feeling good. Sure, if you are the best at hurting yourself then it dulls the pain when others do it to you; you are numbed, immune, vaccinated. But it feels better not to do it. It really does. And the funny thing about liking yourself is that is when you really do become invincible.