while I was sleeping
a snippet
I was chatting with someone who just bought my book (at my show! You can purchase it at the link below but it’s always best to buy directly from me!) and she told me all about how it made her feel and showed me the parts she highlighted. These types of conversations are some of the best moments of my life. I love when people resonate with the book. It’s feels incredible to know someone likes my writing. The creative process is so weird. You pour your secrets on the page, try to make it funny and meaningful, and hope that others like it while you hide under your bed.
But it made me remember that a book is something you have to promote, like, all the time, not just for the first 6 months it’s out. So below is a little snippet from Tears of a Blonde: Almost Completely True Stories of Love and Heartbreak from the World’s Hottest Comedian. Enjoy!
xo
Carly
***
I liked spending time with Joel. He was cute and easy to talk to, and he thought I was sexy and funny. When he left, I never missed him, and I thought that was mature of me. We spent time together in our apartments, never going on dates, never getting each other Christmas gifts, never trying to impress each other. We wore sweatpants on Saturday nights, ate pizza in bed, and used each other’s toothbrushes.
I could always count on Joel to be standing in the back of the audience at every one of my shows, he could always count on me for sex on the weekends. We talked about everything except us, except our future, except what we wanted, except the other people we were dating. I assumed he had someone else when I hadn't heard from him in a while, and he understood not to ask where my new necklace came from. And, sure, when he’d completely disappear, it bruised my ego a little, but never injured it. I was fine. He was fine. The whole thing was… fine. There were break-ups by both parties throughout the years, but what we had felt second-nature, so we’d eventually find our way back to each other like we were in a familiar room with the lights off. We’d feel our way back, then forget why we left in the first place. At the end of the day, the entire thing felt adult-like, even though I knew it couldn’t be more juvenile. Underneath the surface, we were two affection-starved people probably using each other for dopamine and routine- both too scared of the unknown to let go and too scared of commitment to hang on.
Looking back, it’s shocking to ever think I was comfortable with this arrangement. But being given less my whole life made me expect less, want less, feel comfortable with less. I didn’t think I could get more, I only thought I could get Joel.
And then there was the fire.
A small fire broke out in my kitchen, covering my apartment in a thin haze of black smoke. (It was my roommate’s fault!) It could have been a lot worse, but it definitely wasn’t comfortable. My foggy bedroom reeked of burning metal, and because my apartment was a one-bedroom converted into three, I didn’t have a living room and therefore nowhere to escape. I reached out to Joel to sleep at his place, something I thought he would obviously say yes to. I texted him a few times, called him, and left him a voicemail. He didn't answer. This wasn’t like him. I don’t know if he never saw my texts or chose to ignore them. I don’t know if he was at a bar, trying to get any available woman to go home with him, or branding himself with another ugly tattoo. I had no idea where my person was. So I texted his roommate, whom I know well (we had watched many award shows together), to see if she was with him, or maybe I could wait for him at their place if she was home. After an hour of not returning my texts, he apparently returned hers, and called me right after I contacted her to scold me about how out of line I was to put his roommate in a difficult position. I stayed in my smoky apartment that night, but even more toxic than that, I stayed in our situationship.
That’s when he first started pulling away. We saw each other less, and when we did, he seemed agitated or aloof. When I brought up the change in his behavior, he got defensive. He’s impossible to argue with because when he gets mad, he can’t articulate his feelings. I gave him grace for that, not everyone is a writer, so I dropped it. After two years of wine and ease and sex and movies, it felt like we were pushing whatever this was up a mountain. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the climb wouldn’t be worth it, that the only thing waiting for us at the top, if we ever reached it, would be a view of the parking lot. I could blame it all on him, and I wanted to, but the truth is I didn’t know what I wanted either. I didn’t love him, but I wanted to believe that if I stuck around it would evolve into that thing, that thing I’ve always wanted. The characters were well-cast, couldn’t I write the rest? Maybe we were living a shitty first draft and just needed a rewrite. What if I was quitting before I really gave it a chance? Even though I never thought about a life with him, I couldn’t imagine a life without him. I would never have admitted this, but I just wanted him to change, be better, want more, be more, do something, want something. I resented him because he wasn’t a person I wanted to love.
And then there was my birthday.
He forgot about it. MY BIRTHDAY. At my party, when people asked where he was, I knew then that we’d already watched our last movie, ate our last pizza in bed. I had no other choice than to end it. But just because you walk away from something bad doesn’t mean you walk into something good. This wasn’t just some guy I had lost, this was my guy, this was Joel. It was early summer, but I stayed inside and stopped answering texts from friends. I watched Wild three times in a week. I took showers at 2am. I wrote until my eyes turned pink and my fingers calloused. Wasn’t I supposed to have learned something from all the self-help books I’ve read? How many times can a heart break and heal? Shouldn’t my self-awareness and perseverance be rewarded somehow? With Joel, the door was always kept a little open, was it really closed this time? Couldn’t I just call him, ask him to come over and open it again?
And then there was the girlfriend.
After years of never calling me his girlfriend, he started calling someone else that, like, immediately. And I fucking lost it. This woman who didn’t even know him had exactly what I wanted. She had his family on Thanksgiving, she had his present on Christmas morning, and most importantly, she felt loved.
Although I was never in love with Joel, I was somewhere in the realm, and that was the closest I’d ever been to its orbit. When you’re 34, you don’t know if anyone else is coming along and your child-bearing years are ticking away along with the currency of beauty and youth. People will tell you not to settle, but why? What’s so bad about settling? Why does it have to sound so negative? Why isn’t “good enough” good enough? I didn’t want to look any further. I wanted questions to be answered, a “plus 1” to every wedding for the rest of time, a little bit of security and a small amount of understanding where my life was going. Passionate love burns away and what it fades into is what Joel and I already had. Our relationship was like adopting a dog when he’s six, comfortable and doesn’t need much. Besides, head-over-heels love isn’t promised to everyone anyway. Maybe the trade-off for not being madly in love is having someone to decorate a Christmas tree with. Someone to spend the evening making dinner with, and someone to order Thai food with when you really mess it up. Someone who knows your coffee order. Should we trade our search for the possible perfect partner for someone who splits the chores and texts you, “have a safe flight!” I desperately wanted Joel to be the one. And I probably would have stayed around much longer if it wasn’t for him forgetting about my birthday. But when someone doesn’t celebrate your existence, you can’t continue to share theirs.
***
The obvious thing to do when you’re heartbroken and don’t have any actual responsibilities is to sign up for a free (ok, donation-based, but who are we kidding) ten-day silent meditation retreat at the end of the year.
You can buy Tears of a Blonde here!
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