I Learned to Laugh at It Before Anyone Else Could

Spoken by Ava, 31, during a voice note she never sent

People always tell me I am funny.

I know exactly why.

If I say the embarrassing thing about myself first, no one else gets the chance to use it against me.

That sounds dramatic when I say it out loud, but I do not think I realized how much of my personality was built around that idea until recently.

I am the person who makes the joke before anyone can notice that I am uncomfortable. If I trip over my words, I laugh. If I get anxious and say something strange, I turn it into a story. If I feel awkward, left out, insecure, too emotional, too much, I make myself into the punchline before anyone else has the opportunity.

People usually laugh with me. That is the problem.

Because if everyone is laughing, then no one asks whether I am actually okay.

For years, I thought that meant I was easygoing. Self-aware. Able to laugh at myself. I thought it was one of my better qualities.

Then last year, I was sitting in my therapist’s office talking about a fight I had with someone I cared about. I was crying while telling the story, but every few minutes I would interrupt myself with some joke about how ridiculous I was.

At one point, she stopped me and said, “You do that every time you say something painful.”

I remember staring at her because I genuinely had no idea what she meant.

“You say something that matters,” she said, “and then you make fun of yourself before anyone else has a chance to.”

I laughed.

Then she looked at me for a second and said, “You just did it again.”

I wish I could say that was the moment everything suddenly made sense, but it was not. Mostly, I just felt embarrassed. Then I felt angry. Then I spent the next week replaying the conversation in my head.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized she was right.

When I was younger, being laughed at felt unbearable. I was too sensitive, too emotional, too awkward. I cried easily. I cared too much. I was the kid who always seemed to be one second behind everyone else in understanding how to act.

So eventually I learned that if I made the joke first, I could stay in control.

If I called myself dramatic, no one else could.

If I joked about being needy, then maybe nobody would notice how badly I wanted to be loved.

If I made fun of how anxious I was, then maybe it would sound less real.

Humor became armor.

The strange thing about armor is that after a while, you forget you are wearing it.

People started describing me the same way I described myself. Funny. Sarcastic. The kind of person who could laugh at anything.

And to be fair, some of that is real. I do think I am funny. I do like making people laugh.

But there is a difference between humor that comes from joy and humor that comes from self-protection.

One feels light.

The other feels like holding your breath.

There are entire parts of myself that I have only ever spoken about as a joke. My anxiety. How lonely I get. The fact that I always assume people secretly hate me. The way I apologize constantly, even when I have done nothing wrong.

I would say these things in a laughing voice, and people would laugh with me because that was the version of the story I gave them.

Nobody knew that later, when I got home, I would sit on my bed and think, I was not really joking.

A few months ago, something happened that I still think about.

I was out with friends, and I made some joke about being “the unstable one” in the group. Everyone laughed automatically.

Then one of my friends looked at me and said very quietly, “You know, you do not always have to make yourself smaller so everyone else feels comfortable.”

Nobody said anything after that.

I remember looking down at my drink because for a second I felt completely exposed. Not in a bad way. Just in the way you feel when someone notices something you thought you had hidden perfectly.

I think a lot of people do this.

I think there are people who learned very young that if they were going to be laughed at, it hurt less if they were the one telling the joke.

There are people who make themselves into a character because being a character feels safer than being a person.

The funny friend. The chaotic one. The mess. The one who “always has issues.”

We say these things like they are harmless.

Sometimes they are.

Sometimes they are the only way we know how to talk about what hurts.

I am still learning the difference.

I am still learning how to say, “Actually, that upset me,” without laughing halfway through the sentence. I am still learning that people are allowed to see me being serious. That I do not have to perform being okay or make myself easier to digest.

The truth is, I learned to laugh at it before anyone else could because I thought that would protect me.

Maybe it did.

But I think I am finally reaching the point where I want something more than protection.

I want to be known.

And you cannot really be known if every true thing you say arrives disguised as a joke.