The Purge
What happens when you open the door you've kept shut and everything is covered in raccoon shit
Forgive me, Stackers, for I have sinned. It’s been 5 weeks since my last post, but mamma is back with some thoughts and a new tan.
I’ve been MIA for a bit - prepping, and then performing my solo show: A Really Bad Time, then went on vacation to Portugal for 9 days. More on that dream of a trip in another essay, but today we’re talkin’ about what happens when you share parts of yourself you don’t usually share and then your whole body says - oh! It’s time to purge everything? Clear your schedule, bitch!
I performed A Really Bad Time on May 7th in New York. It’s a show about my three rounds of cancer, as well as some childhood sexual trauma that I went through, and how all the events intersect in a big ol’ shame tornado. Dark at parts? Of course. Hilarious at others? Yes! Don’t believe me? Come see it when I run it again on June 27th at UCB NYC (and hopefully in a city near you this year!) Performing it this time did something weird to me, a sort of “uncorking” that I want to address.
After running this show for the first time in Chicago earlier this year, I was elated, relieved and so proud of myself for getting a story out that had taken me years to construct for public consumption. This second round knocked me clean on my ass. I remember coming off stage and feeling like I had “bombed” or missed the mark. I was dazed and dissociated talking to my friends after, and when I got home, I absolutely lost my mind crying. That crying continued for the next few days, along with an insane vulnerability hangover and higher-than-usual exhaustion. It should be noted that I got nothing but glowing feedback from the people who came, and yet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had all gone terribly wrong.
After some serious unpacking with my therapist, who came to the show, I realized that I was not upset about the delivery of the material, rather, newly upset at the content itself. Seeing all the worst events of my life on display in such a linear and clear way hit me like a ton of bricks. My animal brain went into overdrive at the massive system malfunction it perceived to be undergoing. After all, when you spend three decades keeping your darkest corners hidden, it can be pretty jarring to just flick on the (overhead…ew) light.
I thought I was just opening up to a crowd, but I accidentally opened Pandora’s Box. Since then, I have been in a slump - feeling sad, lethargic, and sobbing at the drop of a hat, which sounds terrible, but has been a necessary step in the right direction. It’s been a purge. A massive one.
A lot of what I talk about in the show is about how important it is to be honest about how you’re feeling, when you’re feeling it, and to let it come out of you. As someone who kept most of my suffering to myself starting at a young age (it’s tough to chat about an HPV diagnosis over a cold apple juice at age 7), I learned that putting on a happy face even when I wasn’t feeling happy was a perfect way to keep people from asking prying questions. When I later had to deal with three rounds of thyroid cancer, and all of my doctors told me not to worry about it because this was “the best cancer to have”, I again shoved the fear down, believing that I didn’t have the right to be scared or ask for help.
Putting it all together into an hour of performance really made me see clearly how much IT ALL FUCKING SUCKED (pardon my French), and because I now have the emotional bandwidth to sit with it, feel it, and release it, it’s all coming out. I just didn’t realize how much debris was in there. It’s like opening an attic that’s been sealed shut for decades, but the attic is the entire Grey Gardens estate, and I have to sort through the cobwebs and raccoon shit with a journal and a soda water “because we’re doing this the healthy way this time”. To be perfectly honest, it’s been overwhelming, but Alex from 5 years ago would probably have approached that attic door, sat down outside with a bottle of wine, and pounded the whole thing before walking back downstairs to find a joint. So clearly therapy is working.
While I have made plenty of strides in my emotional life since actively engaging in therapy, there are some common themes that still plague me. In these last several weeks, my old wounds have reappeared with more vigor than the hairs on my upper lip when I was in fourth grade. In no particular order, I present to you the stars of Alex’s waking nightmares:
Anger at the injustice of what happened to me as a kid (sexual abuse and subsequent HPV diagnosis with no idea of what happened or who did it)
Outrage at the current system of pedophiles running this country who have faced zero accountability
Fear of the cancer coming back
Sadness at the time I’ve lost ruminating over all of this
Frustration at the paralysis I feel when I’m going through periods of low or sad emotions
Exasperation that these traumatic events still have such a hold on me, years later, even when there are so many wonderful things happening in my life
Today (June 3rd) is the first time in weeks that I have felt my emotional sky clearing, and a rejoining with myself. It’s been a rough patch for sure, but I feel like I’m on the other side. This was a purge that I felt ready to handle, and knew that the time for numbing and ignoring was over. I stayed away from alcohol, forced myself to get more sleep than usual, moved my body every day, and reached out to friends as much as I could stand, knowing that these feelings would pass, and that this clearing was the necessary bridge to my next level of healing. The attic is a little less cluttered, a little brighter, and the contents are now on the floor in front of me instead of pounding me to the ground. But they’re still covered in a lot of raccoon shit.
My biggest takeaway from the last several weeks is that pretending to be okay when you are not is the best way to keep yourself in that state. I pretended to be okay as a kid, so that I wouldn’t have to tell anyone what was going on. I pretended to be okay when I had cancer because my doctor’s told me it was no big deal. I told myself “things could be worse” at every stage of life, and of course, they could be. They also could have been better.
By not allowing myself to feel the full extent of my pain, I was just putting it off for another day, and that day month finally arrived. So that’s where I’ve been. And I’m glad to be back. And if you need the reminder:
It’s okay to feel sad
It’s okay to feel afraid
It’s okay to feel overwhelmed
Just don’t keep it to yourself. The hinges on your attic door won’t be that strong forever.
Upcoming standup shows in
A Really Bad Time with Alex Kumin NYC: 6/27
*Chattanooga, TN: 10/17
*Bergen, Norway: 11/19-11/20
*Oslo, Norway: 11/24-11/28
*links coming soon
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You're so honest and smart. And absolutely correct, the circumstances SHOULD have been better and I'm sorry they weren't. You're brave and are helping people with this. And goddamn, that Epstein/Sopranos thought is genius.
I couldn’t love you more. So proud of you! 💋