Submission 18

Comedian Bio

Tanner Hinds is a standup comedian based out of Cincinnati, OH who has been performing since 2014. Tanner was a finalist in the 2017 Funniest Person in Cincinnati contest at his home club of Go Bananas where he is a regular performer. He has performed at several comedy clubs around the midwest including The Comedy Attic in Bloomington, IN and Morty's Comedy Joint in Indianapolis, IN. He has also performed at Brew HaHa Comedy Festival in his hometown of Cincinnati, OH.

Story

'I Fell In Love and All I Got Were These Lousy Scars' I do this really weird thing where I enjoy having sex with both men and women. All the books call it being bisexual. Anyway, I reconnected with an old friend from high school who I've sparsley seen since we graduated despite living six houses down from one another. Grant it, we lived in different cities while going to college, but once we were both back in town for while we made a commitment to see each other more often. Part of that commitment was to become gym partners. So, off we would go five days a week to work out on top of hanging out a fair amount outside the gym. Needless to say, we became very tight rather quickly. I had always enjoyed the time I shared with my friend and was thrilled to be spending even more time with him. We have lived in such close proximity to each other for years and we barely saw each other. Finally, we were taking advantage of how easily we could see each other. I have always found my friend sexually attractive, but as soon we were reinserted into each other's lives I immediately began to feel those latent attractions start to develop as something much more than surface level attraction. I have never been well versed in romantic love as I have always squashed the very idea that I would ever be in a romantic relationship effectively closing myself off from that part of life. That's not to say that I have never been in love before. On the contrary, it's because I have been in love before that I was able to recognize what was sparking inside of me. I knew consciously that my friend was straight. He has had girlfriends in the past and lives his life in a way that would not suggest otherwise. As with most things in life, it's the subconscious mind that will betray you in the end. Despite knowing my friend's sexual orientation, I so badly wanted him to be my boyfriend. To rectify this disconnect, my subconscious mind began to convince me that maybe my friend wasn't completely straight. So I held onto these delusions and continued to allow myself to have these vivid fantasies about what a romantic relationship with my friend would look like. It didn't take long for me to fall madly in love with him. I have never felt like this before. It was the happiest time of my life. Just to even spend time with him. Despite my immense joy, guilt began closing in. My friend was well aware of my sexual orientation. He was nothing but loving and supportive when I came out to him, but it was something we never really talked much about. My attraction to him always made me feel guilty and now being in love with him only made things worse. I felt like it was some great secret. A burden I had to carry and the longer I held it in the phonier I felt. So after many months I decided to tell him. To say I was anxious would have been an understatement. I was terrified I might lose him as a friend, but knowing how open minded and compassionate he was is what ultimately gave me the courage to talk to him. Plus, who knows, maybe he would feel the same way? He couldn't have been more sweet when I told him how I felt. He was nothing but empathetic, caring and only wanted to make sure that I was okay. We continued our friendship as if nothing had changed. We still saw each other just as much as we normally would and he never acted any different towards me. Even though he didn't feel the same away about me, needless to say, I was incredibly relieved that our friendship could continue without a hitch. Unfortunately, this was where things only started to deteriorate in my mind. Despite knowing better, my delusions made me think that I still had a chance to be in a romantic relationship with my friend. My fantasies of us together were so vivid that I was convinced that we were boyfriends. The fact that we weren't in real life was merely a formality soon to come to fruition once I declared my undying love for him. It wasn't until we talked about my feelings that I realized that no, those dreams were never gonna come true. All at once, all of the pure joy and happiness that I felt with my friend the last several months was replaced with sadness and dread that we would never be more than good, platonic friends. My heart was broken. I have a long history of mental illness and have finally learned within the last couple years how to stay on top of my illness to keep it from spiraling out of control. The realization that I was in fact not the object of my desire's desire unraveled all that I had learned. I suddenly regressed to a child-like state where I forgot how to take care of myself. The profound sadness was unrelenting. All the years that I worked hard to stay on top of my mental health came falling apart. It's scary what heartbreak will make you do. I was never really one to drink alcohol. I've been drunk before a few times, but I never really enjoyed it nor would I go out of my way to drink. One night, I was snowed in and having nothing to do or nowhere to go. I opened my fridge and saw a good amount of beer sitting there so I figured what the fuck and proceeded to get drunk by myself at home as the snow fell. I've heard that people use drinking to numb the emotional pain they feel. It was immediately obvious that that wasn't going to be the case for me. I still cried myself to sleep that night thinking about my friend. Turns out drinking didn't numb the pain as much as it illuminated it and sharpened its edges. Making it easier to cut through to me. Foolishly, I thought that was just an isolated incident. Surely, I thought if I keep drinking eventually the numbing effects will find me. They never did. After about a week of getting drunk at home alone, it was clear that this wasn't helping so I decided to stop. Somewhere in that week though, I was getting a bottle opener out of the counter draw and my eye was drawn to the steak knifes on the other end. That's when the thought of what it might seriously be like to cut my skin popped in my head. I have had those thoughts before, but never acted on them. Out of morbid curiosity I tried to dig the pointed tip of the steak knife into my forearm using a small, red circular blood blister as an 'X marks the spot'. Drawing blood from my arm using this method was harder than I imagined. Frustrated, I dragged the sharp edge of the knife four times slowly across my left bicep triumphant as the finest amount of blood seeped through. I had to cover my marks with two Band-Ades the next morning. Even though I called it quits on drinking, I couldn't get the thought of cutting myself out of my head. I have heard that people self-harm as a way to run away from emotional pain. This made no sense to me after my first try. I used a dull, jagged steak knife across soft flesh. This wasn't running away from emotional pain as much as it was sprinting towards physical pain. It hurt. Still, I couldn't shake the thought of exploring cutting myself again. I figured I better learn from my mistakes so I went out and bought a pack of single razor blades and sterilizing wipes. No sense in cutting yourself and getting an infection. Also, while I'm thinking about it, if I'm going to be intentionally hurting myself. There's not fucking way I'm gonna want to be sober when I do it. Better get back to drinking. I was lousy at drinking. I wasn't dangerous about it. I've never driven a car after having any alcohol or gotten blackout drunk. I would say I was just an inexperienced drinker. It doesn't take much for me to get drunk. I probably shouldn't drive after one beer and I'm probably drunk after beer number two. I remember trying to go through the excess beer in our fridge and my stomach would get upset in the middle of my second drink so I looked at the bottle. Turns out I was drinking two-year old beer and didn't even know it! At that point I said, "Screw beer. We have liquor!" So, after carefully checking for an expiration date, I settled on a plastic jug bottle of Kentucky Gentleman bourbon my parents kept in a cupboard with other types of liquor (quick tip, nothing good ever comes out of a plastic jug I just figured this particular jug wouldn't raise suspicion if missing). So depending on how much sugar I already had that day, I would either mix the whiskey with a soda or just take chugs straight from the plastic mouth (who needs all that extra sugar?). Let's cut right to the action. Once I felt drunk enough to dull my senses but steady enough to hold a blade in my hand (no more than two or three drinks tops), I would bust out my razors. I would take my pants off and sit up in bed on top of my blankets laying out all of my instruments beside me (razors, alcohol wipes, paper towels). I would then pull my underwear down exposing the tops of my thighs. I chose to cut here figuring no one would ever see there. Luckily, no one ever decided to go down on me at this time in my life. Oh, how sticky of a situation that would have been to try and talk my way out of. "Don't worry about those marks babe. The last person to go down on me wasn't too keen on keeping their fingernails trimmed and was all hands if you know what I'm saying." (Wink Wink) First, I would sterilize the area I was about to cut with the wipes before doing the same to the razor. I would then make horizontal lines two to three inches long five to seven lines at a time. There was very little blood or pain the first few times. The pain would come the next morning waking up to work out or shower as the hot water first splashed fresh leg wounds. After several nights of cutting I acquired about 20 cut lines on my left thigh and decided to repeat the process on my right thigh. Once that was done, I decided to cut over existing cuts because I read that that's where scaring occurs and oh boy did I not want to forget this exciting period in my life! So off I went, reopening partially healed wounds and that's when the blood really started to flow. I cut so much on either side of my thighs at the groin level, it looked like my dick was the most decorated war soldier of all time. I found that cutting gave me a dopamine rush similar to a runner's high and it got to a point where the first time I could truly relax that day was after I finished cutting myself at the end of the night. Now, I wasn't cutting every day, initially. Eventually, I got to the point where I intended to cut everyday (some nights I just got drunk and accidentally fell asleep before I could hurt myself). I was at a point where I noticed that, even drunk, the act of cutting myself in the same spots over and over was starting to hurt more and more. A lightbulb went off in my head as I realized I would either have to start the process over by picking a new spot to cut or continue cutting the same spots but, increase the amount of alcohol I consumed pre-self-harm to minimize the pain. Luckily I realized how dangerous that could be. How drinking more might cause me to miscalculate a cut thereby increasing the chance of inflicting life-altering damage. I decided then to stop, for good. I changed my daily routine. I started getting up early to journal my feelings. I started exercising harder and more frequently to try and achieve a healthier dopamine high. I quit drinking alcohol. Since my alcohol use and self-harm both happened late at night after I got home from doing shows, I started going to bed early to ensure that I would be fast asleep long before I would normally start hurting myself. My scars started to fade and my mind became clearer the farther I distanced myself from episodes of self-harm. My feelings for my friend are still there and as with anyone you have deep, emotional connection with, I know they always be. Although it's absolute misery when you're going through it, it's amazing how a little space and time can heal even the deepest wounds. I don't regret anything that happened in this period of time. Sure, they're are much healthier ways to deal with intense emotional pain and while I wouldn't necessarily put myself through physically masking the pain again, I would absolutely allow myself to be in love like that again. Life is short and at least in my experience, true happiness is hard to come by. In my short lifetime, I have been lucky enough to know true happiness only a handful of times. Those times have been very intense, brief and fleeting. All I know is when you find something that makes you feel truly happy, you have to pursue it with all of your heart. Give it all that you've got. Let it consume you. Let it destroy you. Let it rebuild you. You owe yourself that much, because you never know when or if you're going feel that way again.