Taylor Tomlinson: Look at You

Taylor Tomlinson walks onto the stage in Boston to applause and remarks that "It's been a rough couple of years." latestnetflix.com's read is that she describes cutting bangs to prompt people to check on her and taking mushrooms two days later, reflecting, "Probably wouldn't have gotten these bangs if I forgave myself, huh?"

She explains returning to therapy after previously ghosting a therapist who pointed out her tendency to self-sabotage. After a painful breakup where partners agreed that "in fights, you behave like a raccoon trapped in a trash bag," she sought psychiatric help and began taking medication, including Klonopin to manage panic attacks and sleep aids to hold her down through night terrors.

After researching the specific pill combination she was prescribed, Tomlinson discovered the drugs were primarily for bipolar disorder. Returning to her doctor, she asked, "Is this how you fucking tell people?" to which the psychiatrist explained they had initially believed they were treating anxiety and depression. Tomlinson adjusted to the diagnosis, joking that finding out Selena Gomez shares it made her think, "She is very pretty. Okay, I'll be bipolar."

Tomlinson recalls growing up in a religious family where her father offered a spoonful of peanut butter for depression and instructed her during panic attacks to "get as far away from the people you care about as possible... until you feel different." Framing her mental illness for the crowd, she states that "Being bipolar is like not knowing how to swim," explaining that medication functions like arm floaties to keep a person from drowning and dragging others down.

When Tomlinson told her close friends about her diagnosis, their lack of surprise felt slightly insulting, with one friend remarking that her condition was like a middle name they simply had not known. She addresses her persistent trust issues, recalling a college boyfriend who cheated with sex workers and a therapist who characterized her behavior as a "self-fulfilling prophecy."

Tracing her insecurities to childhood, she recounts asking her father at ten if she was pretty, only for him to talk about his own daily grooming and conclude, "I take a shower, I put on a nice suit, and I do okay!" Tomlinson notes how this left her guarded in romance, assuming that every kind gesture from men is merely rehearsed "choreography."

She describes therapy sessions as detective boards connecting present flaws with past events, leading to the revelation of why she is an emotional eater. At eight years old, she was eating a bagel when her father told her that her mother had died of cancer, establishing an unconscious association where "when you stop eating bread, people perish."

Addressing the audience about her material, Tomlinson acknowledges that jokes about dead parents make listeners uncomfortable, though, she counters that "now the bad thing is money." She jokes about telling childhood acquaintances that her parents were separated "By Jesus" and contrasts the shock of seeing a dead body at eight with later encountering male genitalia.

She recounts her father remarrying quickly and her stepmother surviving a subsequent cancer diagnosis. Tomlinson reflects that her mother's early death instilled a fear that she too would die young, which led her to rush into an ill-fated engagement. She admits that in conflicts with her ex-fiancé, she was "like those spikes you drive over when you're returning a rental car."

After breaking off the engagement, Tomlinson resisted advice to buy a cat and eventually started dating a man seven years older. She recalls once having lunch with a previous partner's mother who warned her not to marry him, an intervention Tomlinson compares to being saved when the mother "Gandalfed me."

Tomlinson shares a memory of lying on a hotel floor during a mental health crisis when a call to a suicide prevention line disconnected without a callback, leading her to wonder, "Did this bitch just ghost me while I'm trying to ghost myself?" She also recounts how her father's public, overly personal dinner prayers during her youth permanently removed any hesitation about discussing private family matters on stage.

She details the lasting impact of her evangelical youth group, where a pastor preached that the sin of masturbation lay in "the lust in your heart." In response, she trained herself to clear her head entirely and entertain only mundane "road trip thoughts" while touching herself.

Following a brunch where a friend reacted in horror to this revelation, Tomlinson was urged to search for female-oriented pornography. Her search led her through superhero films on Disney Plus, amateur couple videos, and finally a twenty-minute audio recording where a soothing voice reassures a driver after a car accident, which she found immediately effective. Tomlinson thanks the Boston audience and steps off the stage as the music swells.