The early 2000s: I didn’t know I lived with anxiety, panic attacks, obsessive compulsion driving me away from most people.  When I was a kid I just knew I loved Maria Bamford’s stand up.

She doesn’t have to say that our day to day lives are filled with dry judgmental people evaluating the ways we feel less, and quirky, and childishly perfectly spazz-y.  She just delivered this perfect Elitist WASP voice and describes an interaction between herself and them.

This was my mind at parties, this was my life when I tried to impress a beautiful 20-something woman raised by their parents to expect more than just the typical.  And in those situations I was powerfully aware of how much I was sweating, how out of shape I was, how doomed my nomad future seemed; and I just wanted to go home and play some Elder Scrolls Oblivion and eat comfort food.  And I knew it was unfair and ridiculous to feel this way, but I had no psychological tools to know myself, I only had Maria.

And she ran a mile a minute through manic ideas of cults and materialism and atheism and then turned the corner with her spot-on unimpressed midwest friends or her judgmental mother.

While I laughed she reminded us we are not alone, and we all must laugh even when our brains make it difficult or impossible!