Transcriber: Ishani Pain Reviewer: David DeRuwe
I was born with the rare condition called VACTERL Association,
and VACTERL Association is an acronym for seven birth defects.
To get into our special little club, you need at least three birth defects,
but to some extent I have all seven.
Which means I got the gold membership, baby, ha-ha!
Comes with unlimited chicken wings and pool access.
I’m going to ask you to laugh at some uncomfortable things, and that’s OK,
and if you don’t, you’re actually ablest.
That’s how that works.
(Laughter)
Here’s a quick funny thing. That is not a picture of me.
I had way better sideburns fresh out of the womb.
That is actually the first picture that comes up, when you Google my condition,
which I think is unnerving.
(Laughing)
I think we should swap it out for a shirtless picture of Brad Pitt,
like with his hands photoshopped like mine.
That would be ... be a lot better than this sad child.
It’s an acronym for seven birth defects.
Not all of them are that exciting or that interesting.
Like, I'm going to be honest, I'm not really that smart.
I don't even know what half of these words mean.
Like, if you came up to me and said, Tracheoesophageal Fistuala, I’d say,
“Shut up, nerd. Give me your lunch money.”
(Laughter)
I don’t want to hear that nerd stuff.
No, it means I have like a small eating tube,
which means that sometimes I swallow food like a turtle trying to tuck into a shell.
It’s pretty sick. Ha-ha.
(Laughter)
Yeah. I’m a real fun eater. OK.
One of these conditions is a little weird.
That's why it's blocked off.
I’m going to tell you what that condition is, but I need to tell you.
For example, I was born without a butthole.
See? Ha-ha.
(Laughter)
Now my hands are completely invisible.
(Laughter)
Don’t worry, I do have one now. It’s pretty important.
(Laughter)
That’s actually not even that uncommon of a thing.
I can guarantee at least one of you in the audience was born without a butthole,
and your parents were just nice enough not to tell you about it.
(Laughter)
My parents picked 14. My dad goes,
“Son, you do not have a butthole. You were born without a butthole.”
I was like, “Cool. I guess I’ll just go to prom now.”
(Laughter)
Go up to my date and be like, “I’m so sorry, honey. You got to get tested.”
It was important I don’t put that up there
because if the word “anal atresia” was up there,
you wouldn’t be paying attention to a word I was saying.
(Laughter)
The L stands for limbs. That's my hands.
That’s the thing people see when they look at me
is they see these bad boys right here.
And honestly, they don’t even really cause me much difficulty.
Looks can be deceiving. You know, honestly having the hands is kind of fun.
You know, like, I’ve been flipping you guys off this entire time,
(Laughter)
but none of you knew.
I do it to kids all the time.
Hey kids, I don’t even think they -
(Laughter)
They don’t need to censor that because they’re like,
“I don’t know what he’s doing with those.”
(Laughter)
I do have some conditions that aren’t as fun to talk about.
But honestly, I think all of you can relate to this -
the issues that we struggle with the most
aren’t really the things we want to talk about.
You know, our biggest struggles usually we hide from people.
You know, we hide them from our friends or family.
We even hide them from ourselves if we can do it.
Why do we do that?
A lack of a lot of things.
You know, we hide our problems because we want to be normal.
You know, we don't want help. We want to handle things on our own.
We don't love ourselves when it matters most.
Most of my problems are pretty literal. They're pretty out in the open.
You know, they're easy to identify.
So I’m not trying to say that any of you were born without holes in your butts,
(Laughter)
but maybe some of you out there have holes in your hearts.
Hey, pretty gross metaphor, but it works.
(Laughter)
Loving ourself is never an easy thing to do.
Loving myself is something that I’ve struggled with most of my life,
and I bet a lot of you have as well.
My therapist always tells me
the thing that really inspires me is that if you try hard to love other people,
you need to try just as hard to give that same love back to yourself.
(Applause)
His line, not mine. He’s not here. That would be unethical.
Oh, it’s not easy.
My therapist gave me this task to do one day, where he says,
“I want you to go home, look at yourself in the mirror,
and I want you to say three nice things about yourself.”
And it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do.
If you go home and do that, you will get at one of them,
and then you’ll want to punch yourself in the face.
(Laughter)
Loving yourself isn’t easy, but it’s so important.
It's a basic idea that we're taught as kids, but basic is essential.
We have to do it.
And if you don’t love yourself as much as you possibly can,
you’ll be shocked at the amount of garbage you’ll put up with in your life.
You’ll be shocked at the amount of garbage you’ll let other people dump onto you.
Thank you.
Loving yourself can mean a million different things
to a million different people.
Loving yourself can be done in a million ways,
but getting started is the hardest part.
So I want to share a quick story with you:
I used to work at a popular retail store.
I’m not going to say the name, but it’s a store where they sell things.
(Laughter)
Narrow it down. Ha ha. I sold phones to old ladies. That was my job.
No, it was not Best Buy. They were way classier than what we were doing.
For example, my department was phones/toys. Ha. Pretty broad.
I was at a point in my life where I was realizing that it was hard
for me to do physical labor and eat food and not get sick.
So there would be some days where I would get sick at work.
And one day I got sick at my job,
and I expected my manager to be pretty chill about it,
but they were horrible to me.
They said rude things to me,
they questioned my ability as a worker, they thought I was on drugs.
And I should have quit right there, but I didn’t because I’m stubborn.
Because when we suffer in silence, we push ourselves to extremes,
sometimes for no reason.
So now I’m selling phones, but I’m being prideful about it.
What a weird hill to die on.
(Laughter)
I was so unhappy. I was very unhappy.
But I just had to consider a lot of things,
and my girlfriend sat me down one day
and gave me a piece of really powerful advice.
She said, “You know, nobody is a hero for working retail,”
(Laughter)
“but everybody is a hero for sticking up for themselves.”
I want all of you to do that.
And I’m finding the plot.
(Laughing)
Yeah. Love yourself. Stick up for yourself.
It’s not easy to do, but I guarantee if you shove just a little bit,
you’ll be shocked at the amount of change
you can be in your life, you can make in your life.
So I’m going to end this by saying three nice things about myself:
And I want all of you to scream out it with me.
And if you can’t do it, that’s kind of part of the point.
So on three, I want you all to scream three nice things about yourself.
One, two, three. I love my ... body.
(Laughter)
I love my jaw.
(Laughter)
I love my Hawaiian shirt collection.
(Laughter)
Thank you very much.
(Applause)