#selfawareness – amandaguthorn

March 1, 2023March 1, 2023

Pain is expressed in many forms

I went to the movies by myself last night. In my early 20’s, this was a fairly regular practice. I was living in Boston in an attic apartment with no air conditioning and little heat. I found a $5 movie theater that showed second-run movies and most important, had air conditioning and heat. A medium popcorn made a passable dinner.

While those days are long behind me (I hope), I still, and always will love the movies. I have a particular fondness for mostly empty theatres (but not the creepy kind with guys in trench coats and dark glasses). I can even forgo the reclining lounge seats for a good film. This was the case last night.

A friend recently shared their angst on social media trying to decide if they wanted to see “The Whale” for which Brendan Fraser received a Best Actor Oscar nomination and earned SAG and Critics’ Choice Awards for the same category (well-earned IMHO). The title pays homage to Melville’s “Moby Dick”, which is woven throughout the story. My friend’s post, or more accurately my friends’ deep conflict about seeing it, compelled me to see it.

The story centers around Brendan Fraser’s character Charlie, a morbidly obese man who teaches college online. The story unfolds over a week in the confines of Charlie’s apartment where he has imprisoned himself physically and emotionally. The other characters intersect with Charlie throughout the film weaving their stories together in a patchwork of emotional pain, each expressing it with their own particular brand.

I didn’t come to this realization immediately. As I drove home I thought primarily about Charlie, about self-soothing with food, something I did with some regularity earlier in my life. I put all of this in my back pocket, went home, and drifted off to sleep.

Having coffee with friends this morning, the themes of the film came up. Each of the characters was carrying pain: loneliness, abandonment, mourning, guilt, shame, regret. And each of them expressed it in what seemed like the only way possible for them. I thought about the many ways emotional pain is expressed in everyday life.

High-functioning, socially engaged, well-rested individuals who’ve recently eaten (not hungry, angry, lonely, or tired) might exercise, talk about their pain with a friend or therapist, make art, or articulate it in a blog post or journal. So how does that pain look in less than these optimal conditions? It looks a lot like life.

It’s pain in the form of anger, impatience, sarcasm, shouting, slamming doors, road rage, retribution, insolent silence, or violence. It’s pain from abandonment, loneliness, betrayal, guilt, shame, and regret in the form of tears, blame, co-dependence, outrage, retaliation, or self-harm in its many forms.

When I am in the thick of my pain, it is very hard to see out of it. I am fortunate to have the language, people, and places to share it. Not everyone does and I have to remember that before I rush to judgment of who and what someone is when they act in ways I don’t like. Because, really, who and what they are, are people who are in pain.

February 17, 2023

In the gray

That early morning time between the first threads of consciousness and the reality of awareness. Wisps of ideas seep up between the remaining pebbles of sleep. Some dissipate on contact with the morning, others linger, forming clouds of thought. As the gray lifts, I reach out to grab the thought clouds hoping they rain into puddles of colorful words before they evaporate with the day’s busyness.

I didn’t always have the gray. For a long time, particularly when stressed or operating in survival mode, my brain went from the black of unconsciousness to the blaring red of my alarm, and the dull white of things that needed to get done. I woke up everyday feeling like I was late for something, that I had missed something important, that I was letting someone down – and I hadn’t even gotten out of bed yet.

Some of that comes from my family of origin; the idea that the early bird gets the worm no matter how tired that little bird is. That you always had to be productive to be of value. And some was self-induced. As the bird got older, she was up early for long days of work while her FOMO had her staying out late on the other side of the day. The aftereffects of the night’s activities often resulted in fitfull sleep and usually a sizeable headache followed by subsequent and repeated assaults of the snooze button.

My brain could not rest, recover, rebuild, or create in stress or survival mode. The thoughts were tamped down, superseded by the most essential functions: get up, shower, get dressed, go to work, overachieve, go home, eat, anesthetize, sleep, lather, rinse, repeat. My anesthetic was TV, food, alcohol, iPad. I was not a total recluse and had an engaged social life; theatre, bowling, softball – but most of these involved alcohol. The action made the alcohol okay. It became the undercurrent of my activities. It also resulted in loss of self, damaged and severed relationships, and withdrawal from the beauty and color of the world.

The last of those days were in black and white. Awake and asleep praying that the pain and emptiness would end. And they finally did when I made a decision to change how I was living. It has been a gradual process, adding white pigment to the black, and colored hues to the white so life is polychromatic and mostly beautiful.

I’ll admit that the TV and iPad are still where I sometimes go for comfort. I have also been known to watch the Food Network excessively but I’m okay with that. Because I’m watching in color. And when the day retreats, I can slip into a restful sleep of warm browns and deep purples, and wake up in the gray.

February 16, 2023

Undraft the draft

I started writing again. After a few years of starts and stops, too much self-editing, doubt about the value of my work and words, and significant depletion of resources – time and emotional energy. Honestly, the time I could have captured, it was the emotional energy to make it a priority that was the issue.

In my “I’m not a scientist” interpretation, stress affects our synapses, the neurotransmitters in the brain, essentially disrupting communication between cells (https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/stress-physically-alters-communication-in-the-brain). So, as my stress/survival mindset has shifted, and with the help of an amazing therapist, I am rebuilding the synapse in my brain. And making my way back to writing.

I signed back on to my blog (thank you for reading) and my attention was drawn to my “Drafts” folder: there were 16. To say they were incomplete drafts would be an overstatement by a lot. They are more accurately 16 thought fragments that popped out of my head and fell on the page. Splat! Is that all you’ve got Amanda? Yup, that’s it. Nothing to see here folks, let’s move that into the drafts.

I decided to dust off the drafts and construct complete thoughts and sentences and maybe use some cool words. Whenever I use cool words, not “splat” but real words, I think of my 7th-grade English teacher, Mrs. Blinn. She introduced me to the beauty of cool words. I still think of myself as recalcitrant, as she would describe me with a laugh. And, by the way, still true.

I also decided to dust off the things that were holding me back from sharing my writing. Who would read this? What will they think of me? Do I have anything of value to say? Guess what? It doesn’t matter. For me, writing is like exercise – I do it for myself. Unlike exercise, I enjoy it. As I recently shared with a friend, without language and words, my thoughts just ramble around my head looking for a way out until they become so exhausted they just wither and die in loneliness.

So here is my charge to you who love to write and are held back by fear, stress, sadness, time: undraft the draft. Put your words and thoughts out into the world. As I have discovered this week, someone may need to read what you have to say. You don’t have to write a book, start with 500 words on something that matters to you.

In the words of the amazing Toni Morrison, “If there’s a book (blog, essay, song) that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

Thank you for reading. Please click “Follow” on amandaguthorn.com.

February 15, 2023

Before I lost my dreams

During a phone call with one of my sisters recently, I was reminded of who I was before I lost my dreams. The loss occurred over time, a slow chipping away of self by events, people, and circumstances, in addition to the natural wearing down of time and age.

Who I was, my sister reminded me, was the curly-haired spirited child with a quick laugh and a curious nature. As a toddler, my mother would take me to meetings of the various volunteer organizations she was part of. I would sit quietly under conference tables with a plate of scrambled eggs and a picture book, entertaining myself. There was much cooing and adulation from adults.

My three older sisters were often tasked with my caretaking which they did with joy. They still talk about fashioning my unruly hair into something they called a “ducktail ravish” – curls slicked back with Dippity Do into well, a ducktail. For those not familiar with Dippity Do, it was, for a time, the ONLY hairstyling product around, with a wet consistency of aloe and a dry consistency of papier mâché. I felt safe and loved.

Moving out into the world, to school, friendships, relationships, and jobs opened up opportunities – for learning, success, and love. It also exposed the harsher elements of life: criticism, disappointment, betrayal, violence, depression, fear, isolation, and addiction to those things that brought me comfort and escape – food, work, alcohol. Milestones for lost dreams.

My world became increasingly dark, caution signs, potholes, and red lights everywhere. The longer and harder I looked at that road, the darker the path became. I was comfortable living a chaotic life. I plowed forward through sheer force of will moving point-to-point with no real destination other than survival and trying to maintain control. I thought I would know when I “arrived”. But my tank was empty, the engine sputtering along on fumes. I hid the tumult masterfully under the hood of a shiny job and title and my social media highlight reel. Fortunately, my friends and family kept me tethered to life.

I was eventually led to the conclusion that living life this way was untenable and began a process of self-examination that saved my sanity, and, I believe, my life. Pick a name for whatever or whoever it was that led me here; I just know I didn’t do it on my own. This trek was not easy but it laid out a path to recovery that continues – because we never really do “arrive”, nor should we. But it does lead back to the possibility of dreams, of reclaiming those parts of myself that had fallen by the wayside, of drawing closer to the adult version of who I was before I lost them.

February 13, 2023

Bravery is in the undoing

My friends call me brave. Brave for the things I’ve done: jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, ziplining, rock climbing, rappeling waterfalls, starting CrossFit (all of these after age 50), traveling solo, doing stand-up,, acting and singing onstage, doing karaoke at the drop of a hat. I was a police officer for many years, I enrolled in a doctoral program at almost 50 years old, and (gasp), I speak in public.

I won’t say these tasks are easy but the bravery required is a momentary decision. Check the box – done!

As I walked the dog the other day at an uncharacteristically leisurely pace, it occurred to me that my greatest acts of bravery have been in the act of undoing. I could walk at this uncharacteristically leisurely pace because I had just left my job after six years – with no solid backup plan, hence the bravery.

This was not a momentary decision; it was painstaking, sometimes painful, and long overdue. My line of work has an inherent amount of stress. Managing a large staff and multiple functions in an industry in which the main focus is to keep bad things from happening (public safety) and managing those bad things when they eventually do happen because they do. I’ve done this for a long time and I’m good at it: in the face of crisis, I am unflappable. I am also loyal to my people and my employers. This is what made the decision hard (aside from not having a full-time gig to jump to).

The organization I left has been experiencing an exceptional number of “growth opportunities”. For those familiar with that phrase, it essentially means challenges that make life working there really uncomfortable and uncertain. It was hard to determine if there was a plan or just that the plan changed so often that calling it a plan seems spurious. This created a level of organizational stress that caused people to retreat into their own safe spaces and eliminated the ability to engage in healthy discourse without fear of blame. Continuous resource scarcity at the lower and middle levels of the organization was juxtaposed with beefing up the top of the food chain.

Resource scarcity, the fear of not having enough or losing what I have, for me and my department, put me in survival mode. The stress increased my cortisol levels to the point that it affected sleep, appetite, depression, and my generally affable nature. Life was tremendously dark and every tunnel light was a train. In the last several months, a series of non-events were convoluted into events by those who shall not be named. I felt my livelihood threatened and I walked myself onto a precipice, standing there for an interminably long time. I could either jump or slink back into the chaos.

I ruminated, I contemplated, I best and worst case scenario-ed. I talked to my financial planner, my therapist, and my lawyer. I talked to friends and family. And what I noticed, is that my greatest pain was when I recounted my circumstances over and over and failed to make a decision. So I did. I quit. With plenty of notice and a solid transition plan for my team. As soon as I sent the resignation letter, I was swept with a relief I had not known possible when I was living in the morass of indecision.

I have been overwhelmed with the support from friends, family, and colleagues; their encouragement about the future; their validation of the decision; their approbation of the bravery to make it.

As the dog and I strolled leisurely, I recounted other undoings. Relationships and jobs that literally made me sick and my misguided thought that I alone could fix them. How brave I felt when I finally decided to leave them. And how free.

July 17, 2016

Stop Mowing the Weeds

I moved into my new-to-me house last September and have enjoyed watching things bloom and grow in my yard through the Spring and Summer. I’m relieved to have a smaller yard (downsized from 2 1/2 acres); gardening and mowing are now doable tasks without committing an entire weekend. I’ve downsized my life as well: big yard to little yard; big house to little house; lots of stuff to less stuff; “frenemies” to friends; couple to single. I had to do a lot of weeding on all fronts during the transition and it wasn’t easy.

My previous yard had beautiful green grass. My new lawn, well, not so much. The dirt is more sand than anything else. The few times I’ve mowed, I kicked up enough dirt and sand to look like I just face-planted in a dirt pile. My friends know this is a very real possibility. I’ve managed to locate 6 or 7 healthy blades of grass among the dandelions, horse weed, crab grass, ragweed, quack grass, and mug wort (thank you Google Images). But as long as it looks like grass on the surface that’s good enough, right? For a minute maybe.

I went out this morning to weed and mow before the heat took over the day. The gardens looked good so I turned my attention to the lawn and the plethora of non-grass plants (weeds) protruding from same. I could clearly just mow over the weeds, like unpleasant problems, and move on with the rest of my yard. But as I said, I’d done that before but the weeds kept coming back because the roots were still there, under the surface, ready to spring forth unbidden at any time.

I decided that today I would try the same approach with my lawn that I’d taken with my life. I would dig up the weeds first, thank them for keeping the soil together when nothing else would, and then unceremoniously toss them into the pile of detritus that no longer served a purpose in my life. I grabbed my pitchfork and shovel, my tools of destruction, to have at it.

The smaller weeds came out easily with a twist and turn of my hand. Gone. The larger weeds, the ones that had planted themselves and taken root many years ago, took quite a bit of effort and I considered just cutting off the tops to make things look better. But I was committed to doing the work to rid myself of them long term, roots and all. After about 45 minutes I looked around and realized that once I dealt with the weeds, the rest of the lawn looked pretty good.

Weeding is hard work. I fully anticipate that some of the weeds will return on occasion and some new weeds will appear as well. But now I have the tools to manage them. Stop mowing the weeds.

weeding