Who Am I: In Search of Identity

The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time Demetrius Phalereus for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, in so much that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.  ~Plutarch, Theseus

Who am I?  This is the age-old question, the one philosophers melt wax and poets write manuscripts over.  Only the question of “Why am I here,” trumps its importance.  We ask this question daily and continue to do so up until our dying breath.  Sometimes we think we’ve found the answer and feel content, but then we learn something about ourselves and begin to ask the question all over again.  Some of us have the ability to live in blissful ignorance, never bothering to ask the question once they’ve found a suitable answer.  I used to think that the people in this position are using their ignorance as a vice, but nowadays perhaps it is a virtue.  To know one’s place and to feel content with one’s own position is becoming more and more a rarity.  Maybe it should be heralded rather than fussed over.  Maybe it’s okay to just live rather than worry about why we live and who we are in the process of that living.  Maybe that’s not ignorance at all, it’s just living without definitions.  Good or bad, it is of little consequence for me.  I’m an artist and being content with my own self-identity was never in my cards.

…But what if it could be?

Who am I?  Starting from age three, I was a paleontologist, a firefighter, a spy, and a baseball player.  Most people would say, “no, those are careers, not who you are,” but for me I was defined by where I thought I needed to go.  Once I decided on being an actor, that was it, my whole world revolved around defining myself as an actor.  Then I turned ten and my world got turned upside down.  I went from 75 lbs to 122 lbs and my addiction began.  My mother became an alcoholic and my adulthood began.  I went to middle school and my bullying began.  Soon enough there were more labels to define myself than could fit on one person.  I was no longer the kid who was going to be an actor.  I became the kid who was a lost, depressed, suicidal loner who dreamt of being an actor.  On top of that I was an addict, but I had no idea.  My world became so caught up in my loneliness and depression and pessimism to even see a brighter tomorrow.  When I went to college, I tried to be a list of different things.  I was the funny guy (not all that funny) and I was the quiet guy (still am in many ways) and I was the outgoing socialist (It was SDS, we fought the power and knew true strife all from the comforts of our private university).  For a while I tried to be the partier, the guy everyone could count on for booze.  Sophomore year that led me to binge drinking and doing a fair share of other recreational activities.  All of this was in search of that question, “Who am I?”  I won’t make you read my life story nor do I want to write it, but instead I’ll summarize the rest.  Whether it was theatre or my political career or coaching or living in the back of a truck, I kept on searching and kept on coming up empty.  

Then I went to VCU and in the course of three years and one remarkable thesis, I found myself.  I dealt with complex issues that I never even dreamed that I had.  In totality, I wrote three hundred or so pages of my thesis and there wasn’t a single word that mentioned my size or my weight, yet somehow after writing and performing it I came to the conclusion that I was an addict.  Admitting it was more than just a phase, I went to my first OA meeting a week after my show closed.  I was finally beginning to be free.  I set a course for myself and casted off.  When I moved back to Iowa, I remember saying, “I might be back in the same place, but I’m not lost anymore.”  

…I’m lost again.  Only this time I have a map.  

Plutarch writes of the classic paradox that if we remove every piece of something and replace it with new and improved versions of those same pieces, does the original something remain the same or is it no longer the same thing.  As I wrote before, at the end of this phase of the addiction process (the process never ends) I will be in a completely different mindset. look very differently, feel differently, see differently (trust me, without sugar, you see colors much brighter and bolder).  In essence, I will be a completely different person.  This isn’t to say that I’ll go from looking like me to looking like Jon Hamm.  And I’m sure that many of you would say, “yes, you’ll look different, but you’ll still be the same old you,” but that actually isn’t true.  For the entirety of my adult life I have never been the best version of myself so I have no idea what that person looks like.  

This post doesn’t have some grand epiphany or some great end note rather its just something that I think about a lot.  I have a shit ton of time on my hands and when I’m not trying to do something creative or working out or eating, this is the number one thing on my mind, “who am I and who am I going to be?”  This terrifies me and yet it shouldn’t.  This unknown person is who I’ve always wanted to be.  I am finally getting the chance to answer again the question only to be of sound mind and body when I do so.  As I near the PhD application deadlines, these thoughts get worse and worse wondering if any of this, wondering if anything is really what I want.  The hardest part of asking, “Who am I” is figuring out the answer.  Right now I don’t know.

…One day at a time…

PS. One thing I am sure of about myself is that I love commas and I usually put them in the wrong places.  

Scared Out of My Mind

“The most important things are the hardest to say.  They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless.”  ~Stephen King

This week I had written a different post that detailed the beginnings of my addiction.  I thought starting at the beginning and working up to the present would be a beneficial story, but today I just wasn't feeling it.  For me, my food addiction has represented a large wall, a buffer between how you feel and what you feel.  When your senses are dulled it's easy to overcome a sad feeling (for me at least) because you don’t have to deal with it in the same way as a healthy person.  Once that buffer comes down, those emotions, those things you thought you had fixed come rushing back like a dam bursting open.  Perhaps this is why I've been so emotional in the past few weeks.  It’s a new feeling for me and I really don’t like it.  I’m scared out of my mind.  

As the Stephen King quote reminds us, some things are diminished when they are said aloud or written on paper.  The emotional state that represents shock, for instance, must be felt to be understood and when describing that feeling all words pale in comparison to how you felt.  The same can be said for how I feel today.  The common colloquial “scared out of my mind,” is used in many ways today that don’t represent what it actually means.  So I can only ask you to trust me and believe me when I say that I am truly scared out of my mind.  This is by far the scariest thing I have ever done.  

Today my trainer told me half the things I’ve been eating are going away and that she wants to know via text/call how I feel and what I’m eating.  She’s a great trainer, but right now I’m super pissed off.  However, I’ve known myself long enough to acknowledge that if I’m pissed it usually means I’m just terrified and I’m masking it with anger.  There’s a reason why these two specific things are so terrifying and I will attempt to describe them to you.  Some of my thoughts may sound confusing, but that’s just because you will read them using logic.  You can’t use logic when you’re an addict.  

Step One:  We admitted we were powerless over compulsive eating — that our lives had become unmanageable.

Step Two:  Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Step Three:  Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.  

No matter what other people will say, for me, the hardest part of OA/AA/NA are the first three steps.  For starters, I am as far from religious without being atheist that a person can be, therefore how can I give my life over to something I don’t even believe in?  (In a later post I will talk about how I’m overcoming the whole “God” part of this, which ironically, in finding a substitute, I accidentally found faith).  Secondly, words like “powerless” and “sanity” and “turn our will and our lives over” are absolutely terrifying.  How in the world can I fix my disease by admitting defeat?  

I won’t ever fix my disease.  Accepting and fighting an addiction is like trying to get over losing a loved one; the pain will get better but it will never actually go away.  For every minute of every day for the rest of my life I will be an addict.  I can only hope that by working my program and staying true to my new self that every minute will be as a recovering addict.  That predicament alone is scary.  To think that as an addict the only true cure to my disease is death.  Really scary stuff.    

Logically I can sit alone in a room and know that I am strong enough to overcome sugar.  Hell, it’s just sugar.  It’s not like I’m fighting some rogue nation with a pair of pliers and a stick of juicy fruit.  However, the same logic that tells me I am strong enough to overcome this illness was also the same logic that I used when I ate entire pizzas and had no idea I had even ordered them.  It was the same logic that said if I eat eight Krispy Kremes tonight and save the other four until tomorrow it’s actually healthy.  And then the same logic that when I ate ten said it seems wasteful to just leave the last two all alone.  I need to recycle the box.  

My trainer wants me to cut out half the food I’m eating and text/call her about everything I’m eating.

 Here is what my logical brain hears:  This is too much and I can’t do this.  You’re telling me that I’ve already cut out everything I love eating, now I can’t even eat what I like.  I’m a failure and I can’t do this.  It’s like I’m a runner and you’re cutting off my legs and then telling me to run.  Fuck, now I have to call her about my food.  This sounds like a sponsor.  It’s getting all too real.  There’s no way I can fix my life in six months.  Now I can’t get my PhD.  I’m stuck in Iowa, I miss my friends, and my job, and my life.  I now have to fix every facet of my life…this very minute.  My future is knocking at the door telling me it’s over.  Why do I keep going?

That’s how I feel.  It’s how I have felt for the past two weeks (I’m two weeks clean today).  Some of you would read this and say he’s spiraling (true) and he’s not thinking logically, but the problem is that I am thinking logically.  I am thinking the way my brain has always worked.  For me, this is logic.  I build one conclusion on top of another conclusion.  My brain is diseased and is far from being sexy.  

This is the true nature of what I’m dealing with.  It’s not that I have to overcome an addiction to sugar or to certain foods or to food in general.  That is only one small facet of what I’m going through.  I have to change the way I eat, sleep, drink, read, go about doing work, go about teaching.  I have to change my entire thought process and my entire world that I’ve lived in for twenty-seven years.  If I am successful, the next time many of you see me, I won’t have just lost weight, but I will be a completely new person.  It is such an immense task and I am scared out of my mind.  

There is hope and I will end on this.  Since starting back up in recovery, I have been diligently doing my program but as they say in OA, I haven’t been working it.  One of the mottos of OA/AA/NA is “one day at a time.”  So I will try that.  I will work my steps, my program, and continue one step and one day at a time.  The future holds much to be scared of, but I don’t live in the future.  I live today.  Today, I am abstinent.  Breathe.  

Hello My Name is Grant and I am an Addict

In my opinion, the greatest asset a person can have is a sexy brain. Sure good looks and an athletic build help, but a brain that can create, build, and imagine will easily compensate for any other believed deficiency.  The problem is that in order to achieve a sexy brain most of us need to achieve good looks and/or an athletic build, but it isn’t for any superficial reason.  It’s because in order to have a sexy brain, you need to have a healthy brain.  And I don’t.  

I grew up in a very smart world.  All immediate family and most extended family members are college educated with a litter of Masters and PhDs to go around.  Most of us are what the culture would classify as “smart,” but some of us, speaking specifically for myself, took a long time to realize it.  For me, it wasn’t until the second year of my MFA that I first had a moment of clarity.  I was the Teaching Assistant for a Shakespearean Acting class and starting talking about Romeo & Juliet.  I forget specifically what was said, but I know that I walked away from the day smiling and knowing that whatever I had said had been pretty smart.  I finally became self-aware that I was much smarter than the shadow I had cast for myself in the background of much smarter people, some in my own family.  This identity shift was wonderful, but also hurtful because it brought about a much larger problem.  Once I became self-aware I also recognized something I had let crawl into the corner and turn into a monster.  I had a problem and it wasn’t going away without a lot of work.  

My name is Grant and I am a compulsive eater.  When I first said these words out loud they seemed foreign like oranges growing in cornfields or carrots hanging from trees.  I had always been overweight and extremely self-conscious about my size, but never had realized that perhaps it wasn’t just an eating unhealthy problem, but rather a serious lingering illness.  

The first time I said those words was over two years ago and although writing about them and saying them out loud is no less scary than it was before, they are not foreign to me.  I am an addict.  I do need help.  And currently I am in the process of getting some.  

Today marks my seventh day of recovery.  This is not my first attempt to change my life, but I believe it will be my last.  For the first time I am devoted to my program, my trainers, my food plans, my family, my support system, and most importantly to myself.  This will be a very difficult road.  It will be a journey that lasts the rest of my life, but in fighting this disease today, I am tying to add years, maybe even decades onto that journey.  

As I go through this journey I decided to start this blog.  This is one of the scariest things I have ever attempted to do.  Many people who go through addictions are able to find comfort in the fact that the programs they are part of are entirely anonymous.  Using anonymity would be easier for me, frankly it would be much easier, but as a career I have chosen the life of a storyteller and in being a storyteller I believe it is my duty to tell this story.  Through the course of this blog I will be as emotionally naked as I can be.  I will share my frustrations, desires, hopes, dreams, setbacks, and fears.  I am doing so in the hopes that anyone who reads this and thinks that they too might be suffering from my disease that my story can provide some awareness, hope, and maybe even some avenues for help.  

One caveat to my story is that it is my story and my story alone.  As a member of an anonymous organization, I take other’s anonymity incredibly seriously and will never divulge any information that pertains to their lives or to anything from any of my meetings.  Rather I would hope that if you want to hear more stories like mine that you find an AA, NA, or OA meeting near you and attend it.  

My dream is to have a sexy brain.  One that works on all levels, that functions succinctly, and exercises its ability to create and build and dream whenever and wherever possible.  In order to do so I need to help rid it of the disease that infects it.  That is why that I am proud to say, “My name is Grant and I am an addict.”  This is my recovery.