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Carla Schierling

Why I've been MIA

To all my friends and those who have tried reached out to me recently, this is a huge apology and explanation to all of you. I am so sorry for being insanely absent and not getting back to anyone. I am embarrassed by how many unread messages I have on several different social media platforms… I did not want to make any kind of post like this, however I think I might actually be able to start getting my shit together if I do.


As many of you know there was a huge loss in the local comedy community June 11th 2021. However for my friends and myself it was losing one of the closet people in our lives. I feel like I can confidently say that Bryan Collins was more of a family member to us than even our own families. I have been in agony from this loss, and I know my friends have too. I have unintentionally pushed a lot of close people in my life away and I am so sorry. I cannot keep myself together in almost any given situation and it’s become a problem for me at this point, I have zero control on my emotions lately and its quite embarrassing.


I’ve had to leave early from class multiple times now, I’ve had to walk out of countless comedy shows, I can’t even pull myself together to go grocery shopping. I’ve honestly started to have groceries delivered to my house just to avoid it all together. It’s embarrassing how someone will say something almost completely unrelated but it hits me in such a way that I can’t help it but to feel everything all at once. I can’t even identify if this is depression or if I am surprising so much that I will burst at any given time. I have very much been almost exclusively surrounding myself with people who are going through the same thing as I am, which is very unfair to the rest of the close people in my life and I am terribly sorry. I’ve had a few people reach out and I gave them a generic answer, but I am not okay, I don’t think any of us really are. My boyfriend said it perfectly, that Bryan’s loss is such A Living Absence…


I don’t have much family, and the family I do have aren’t that close to me. They don’t even know what kind of art I create or have been involved in my art journey at all (excluding mayyybe 2 of you.) The fact that my family is so uninvolved in my life and don’t fully accept me for who I am has always weighed heavy on my heart. All that use to bother me a lot, but over the years this guy names Bryan Collins unexpectedly and slowly started filling in all those voids without me even realizing it.


Bryan was everything, to all of us. I don’t think I’ve ever had someone love and support me so purely than he did, which might seem unreasonable, but that’s how I genuinely feel so any argument to that seems irrelevant. Obviously, Bryan wasn’t perfect, he was a butthead, but we loved all that Bryan was. If I was ever in a crisis he’d drop everything and get a drink with me, he’d push me to do more and own my art. He was the person to tell me to 100% go adopt that cute little yellow snake I wanted that was a 2 hour drive there and back, and encouraged me to martial arts that I’ve wanted to do since I was 12 (Bryan was a black belt in Taekwondo). He was the friend in the group that if Bryan wasn’t going to be involved no one else really wanted to either haha. We all wanted to be around Bryan as much as we could. He loved all the parts of me that my family has never been able to understand. He was so much to all of us, and we all had a very personal and deep connection with this man individually. I don’t want any of this to come off as a sob story for me, I am one of many who are still (and will be) deeply hurt and affected by this loss . Because Bryan was the fuckin best. I don’t even know where or why we got so close but over time it felt like nothing else mattered as long as I had Bryan in my life; and that is something I would often say to myself when I would catch myself losing my mind over my family issues. He would often jokingly call me his daughter and he was Papa Bryan, or Auntie B depending on the day lol, and we would have the best times all the time. I am so lonely, and so broken to have that taken from me. A lot of things ended the day for me. I don’t think I’ll ever fully recover, and I’ve been awkwardly trying to piece my life back together with this gaping hole I have to work around. Every day I wake up feeling empty that this is the timeline I have to wake up to every morning. I also chopped all my hair off, I didn't get much closure of what exactly happened to my friend and I needed a visible change that I could see for myself. Because for the first few weeks I refused to believe this was a real reality having him gone.


I keep telling myself that I don’t want to let myself get that close to anyone ever again and that is a huge reason why I’ve gone MIA. I obviously don’t want to do that but it is how I’ve been floating through my days as of late. I got all my house repairs done by myself (I only electrocuted myself twice), I’ve been barricading myself in my home or at the lake by myself all summer. Of course I haven’t been completely by myself, I am unbelievably grateful for the friends I have from the Comedy scene, a lot of you don’t know this but I get a lot of shit spending my time with you guys. That’s another reason why I am making this post. I’m tired of people telling me how to live my life and who I should be surrounding myself with. For the people who keep telling me “Carla you’re and artist not a comedian, spend your time better”, you can fuck off. Because I know for a fact these people are the only reason I’m able to get any relief from the pain of Bryan being gone. I’m grateful for all the positive people in my life, and that’s all I want to surround myself with. I’ve accepted that my family is what it is, and my friends are the ones I get to choose and make good memories with, anyone who’s going to threaten that I will leave you behind. I’m done with keeping people in my life that make me constantly feel ashamed of who I am.


Bryan Collins, I miss you so ungodly much, I’ve sobbed through this whole letter and my cat is covered in all my nasty tissues. But I’m going to try and get back on some kind of track, I’m going to try and slowly get back to all the unread messages I have. I’m not going to lie I’ve wanted to delete FB and messenger all together for a few weeks now but that I will say is for sure, unreasonable. Bear with me, I’m going to try to be a better Carla for everyone.


-C.S


Below are some pieces that were Bryans favorite (for some reason lol) and some that were dedicated to him











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