top female comedian

I love birthday dinners. I love the ritual of getting dressed up, picking out a cute gift and a card, and knowing I will probably get to have cake at the end of the night. But I think the thing I like most about these gatherings is that inevitably I will get to meet the one special friend who I’ve heard so much about. Recently, the dinner was for Shelby and that friend was Katie.
Katie and I started our conversation talking about jumpsuits and Alanis Morsette. Within the hour, we passed through the topics of astrology, religion, tattoos, past jobs and past lives, and we had moved deep into a conversation about friendship breakups. I ordered another drink and prepared to commiserate with her. I love my girlfriends with a ferocity that I sometimes don’t understand. I even have several jokes in my act about how I would take a bullet for them, how I raise them up and how codependent I can be. So when a friendship ends, it’s often heartbreaking to me. Katie said it’s worse than a romantic breakup, and I agreed.
Most of my friendship breakups had been a slow burn. The friend and I would find ourselves in different points in our lives and slowly stopped making effort to prioritize the relationship. And that was okay. We would love each other from a distance and still cheer for one another’s success. I had very few fights that lead to a friendship breakup. But in the end, those breakups were okay too. We could both move on knowing where the other one stood.
The worst breakups I had were my girlfriends who would act like they were fine, like nothing was wrong at all, but were purposely removing themselves from my life. Much like the way you sneak out of a party without saying goodbye to the host, they knew that they were leaving, but they didn’t want me to know that they were leaving. I would see them with their coat on standing by the door and they would insist they weren’t going anywhere— they were just cold and wanted to warm up by the door. It’s fine. We are fine.
Katie and I agreed this was the shittiest feeling, because we were left not knowing what we had done to make them want to go. I remember even asking these friends, what did I do? Why are you mad? What can I do to make this better again? But they gave me nothing. They became a ghost. There was no closure.
For the longest time I held such bitterness about this. I ruminated and fixated on how people could leave me. Talking about it with Katie, I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. This birthday was an open casket.
We turned our attention to Shelby and decided for her birthday, we would tell her all the things we loved about her. I was relieved when Katie went first, because when it came my time all I could do was cry. I had to tell my friend what she meant to me, because she meant so much, but all I could summon up from my diaphragm were some blubbering murmurs between sobs. Now that I’ve had more time to think about it, here is what I want to say about my friendships:

When I die, I will be wearing an invisible charm bracelet. It will be an angelic single strand of spun gold with shiny enamel gloss charms. Each charm will be a talisman that would represent a friend I’ve held space for in my heart. A hummingbird. A hat. A duck. A soccer ball. A panda. And then there will be the other ones. A book. A plate of pasta. An airplane. A paintbrush. I have to include those too. I honor what you brought into my life, the friendship we had, and how it shaped my life into what it was. Even if it ended, even if we don’t talk, you are on my invisible charm bracelet and I carry you with me.