Funny is my default setting. It's also my hiding spot.

A psychotherapist I'd never met looked at me for approximately four (4) minutes and said: "You're highly creative, but also highly rigid and need control."

He also said I bottle up my feelings - especially anger. That I can be quite numb. That I hold people at arm's length.

I laughed.

Which, as it turns out, was kind of his… point.

What it actually looks like

I hold a microphone for a living, which tells you something. But I was a cunny funt long before the job title - it's my first language, my native tongue. My happy place, if you will.

When in doubt, make it a bit. When uncomfortable, make it a bit. When someone asks if I'm okay and I very much am not - COMMIT TO THE MOTHERFUCKIN' BIT.

I've been performing since I was seven. Singing, dancing, acting, modelling, white collar boxing - not for fitness, not for glory, for the lights and the smoke machines.

I've also been told I don't even need to say anything to be sarcastic. I'm choosing to take that as a compliment.

The thing is - and I'm only just starting to really clock this - I've never just been performing for people. I've been performing instead of showing them something.

The joke lands before anyone gets close enough to ask a real question. The story finishes before the silence gets uncomfortable. The bit hits, the crowd responds, and I'm safe.

Genius system, honestly. Wouldn't recommend it as a long-term strategy but.

Where it comes from

During my first kinesiology session, my body-whisperer Sara pinpointed that somewhere around age four, I decided I wasn't quite enough. Not good enough. Not seen enough. Not validated enough. And that belief basically ran the show for the next thirty-something years.

The performing? The attention-seeking? Being the most on person in every room so nobody notices when you're not okay? All of it was basically just one long, very creative attempt to get people to look at me and go: yep. She's enough.

The involuntary sobbing that followed this revelation was a lot. But also very on brand, because I immediately made a joke about it.

And then in 2020 I found myself with an accidental bun in the Bunhole and instead of sitting quietly with the weight of it like a normal person, I discovered a whole new cabinet of jokes I previously didn't have access to. The sick, dark, twisted, morbid as fuck ones. The ones you can only really make once it's happened to you personally and you've got the permission slip.

I snatched that permission slip with both hands.

Did the humour help me cope? Absolutely. Did it also cushion me from feeling some shit I probably needed to feel? No doubt. Both are true. The jokes were the coping mechanism and the shield at the same time - and I'm not mad about it, because that's what I needed in the moment.

I've since named my ego. Her name is Pompy (named after our first family stray cat). She's a menace and exhausting to live with, quite frankly.

But having a name for the part of me that needs the spotlight - the part that cracks the joke before anyone gets too close - makes it a lot easier to catch her mid-act and go: I see what you're doing. Thank you, but sit down, Pompy.

Turns out there's even a name for the whole thing. Fearful-avoidant attachment. The push-pull of desperately wanting closeness while doing everything in your power to make sure it can't actually reach you.

At least knowing the name for it meant I could start doing something about it.

The reframe

Here's where my kinesiologist got me good.

I told her I was working on being more vulnerable.

She said: being funny is one of the most vulnerable things you can do.

Putting your humour out there and hoping someone gets it? Exposure therapy. Posting the joke and not knowing if it'll land? A risk. Sharing your whole chaotic personality with thousands of strangers and going here I am, please like this - that is, genuinely, showing people who you are.

Turns out I've been vulnerable this whole time. Who knew. (She knew.)

The thing I'm still sitting with: the difference between humour as the vulnerability, and humour instead of it. One is brave. The other is a (VERY funny) deflection.

I've done both - and working on doing more of the first one.

The bit I didn't see coming

I'm a Perth wedding celebrant. I stand at the front of a room and hold space for two people to be completely, terrifyingly seen by each other. To make promises in front of everyone they love.

The most intimate thing I witness, over and over again.

And then I go home and make sure nobody gets close enough to do it to me.

I'm aware of the irony.

I’m also not the same person who first noticed it.

So. Here we are.

The funniest person in the room is often the one least likely to let you in.

I'm still Bunhole. I still default to making the joke when anyone tries to get close.

Would I change any of it? No. Not the humour, not the defence mechanism, not the therapy bills.

Everything I've done, every way I've coped, every joke I've cracked in a moment that probably called for something more open - it's all got me here. And I like it here.

But I can see it now. And seeing it changes things slightly.

I'm not "fixed". Nothing has been "resolved". But asking the question more often: what would happen if I just... didn't?

I don't always find out.

But I'm curious.

If you're reading this and recognising something - the funniest person in your group chat, the one with a story for everything, who laughs the loudest and shares the least - I see you.

We are very entertaining to be around.

We're also, it turns out, doing something quite brave.

We've just been calling it comedy.