Problems, Questions, and Answers

Sometimes your entire future hinges on a simple reply.

The snow fell over Tennessee a couple weeks ago, shutting down the towns, closing the backroads and schools, and demanding we all pause for a moment longer than we’d like. The first day of icy peace and quiet was welcome. I made homemade chicken noodle soup, frolicked half-naked in the snow, and caught up on the half-read books by my bed. Day two was much the same until I got a call for a job out of town, where they weren’t buried in white powder, and decided to brave the elements for a paycheck. For those who don’t know, I work as an actor and model, only getting paid when I show up and work. Turning down jobs isn’t really a luxury I have at this point in my life so off I went, gripping tight to the steering wheel, praying for protection, and stocked up with snacks and water. I knew the interstate was clear from others I’d spoken to but the backroads were sketchy. If I could make it out of my driveway, out of the neighborhood, and over to the main highway-I’d be fine. My intuition was telling me that I would be fine, so I decided it was worth the risk. Four hours, one major traffic delay, three “Jesus take the wheel” moments, five coffees, and a million curse words later…I made it.

Sometimes we ask ourselves the question Can I make it? and even though everything in our bones says Yes! we retreat, we don’t try, we surrender to self-doubt instead of allowing our intuition to lead us. A practice I developed in early sobriety was what I called “Brutal Answers.” I would sit down with a pen and paper and write down the looming questions of the day, whatever was causing me anxiety or fear, and answer them with the kind of brutal honesty that felt uncomfortable in any other scenario. These answers were just for me, I didn’t have to share them with anyone else, I didn’t even have to act upon what I discovered, I just had to make space for the truth. Some of my early questions were simple but terrifying, Do I drink too much? Am I proud of who I am when I drink? Am I doing everything I can do to get my life to where I want it?

This practice of “Problems, Questions, Answers,” broke me of excuses and helped me build a sort of outline for progress. I realized that the only real solution to any problem we face is honesty. We can’t address what we don’t name. We can’t improve what we won’t acknowledge isn’t working anymore. We can’t develop our intuition if we refuse to listen to it. So often, we avoid asking questions that we don’t want the answers to. Maybe we stay in relationships with unfaithful partners or maintain friendships with highly toxic people or remain in a work environment that stunts our growth-all because we refuse to answer the hard questions. It’s not so much that the asking is hard, it’s that the action that the answer will demand of us is hard. So we avoid, deny, glaze over, settle, continue, convince, and ultimately-refuse our intuition.

The seemingly harmless question Are you happy? becomes a loaded gun. Couldn’t we just say No or Only sometimes? One of my most heartbreaking “Brutal Answers” came to that very question sometime in the middle of February 2020. I’m trying to be. What did that even mean? Other people seemed so effortlessly joyful, like it was their goddamn right to be happy. Wasn’t it my right too? Had I done something to revoke my right to happiness? Oh…aha. I wasn’t sure I deserved to be happy, I wasn’t convinced I’d done anything to earn it. Maybe happiness wasn’t for me. Maybe I’d squandered the handful of chances I’d been granted and that was that. “No happiness for you!” (Seinfeld Soup Nazi reference)

I was trying to be happy. Or was I?

I was trying to escape all the things that made me unhappy. I was skating over responsibilities that highlighted my immaturity and lack of discipline. I was blaming the ones who left, the ones who hurt, the ones who chose their own happiness over me. I was tired. I was lazy. I was drunk. Ouch. Brutal.

Necessary.

I had made an identity out of that pain. The struggle, the fight-that can be art-but the elective suffering? That’s just trite, self-serving, unimpressive performance. I had built an alter for my misfortunes and offered up my own misery as atonement. There was no honor in it. There was no advancement in it. There was certainly no healing in it. “Brutal Answers.” Now I was getting somewhere. Instead of sharpening my knife what would happen if I softened to myself? What if I tried to understand my own heart, my own behavior, and my own psyche the way I was so desperate for others to? How had I really gotten to this place of discontentment?

I am a master observer. I absorb the energy of everyone and everything all the time. It is exhausting. I can spot a rogue glance, an awkward fidget, or an inauthentic presentation from a hundred yards out. Call it a trauma response, call it a Scorpio rising, call it a survival skill-doesn’t matter. It is. This is not a trait that I wish to change about myself, rather I wish to learn to set boundaries and learn to differentiate between healthy curiosity and abandonment wounds. Without those boundaries in place it made sense to me that I’d sought out a filter for the nonstop energy sponge I was born as. Booze. Weed. Codependency. Etc.

I felt like I suffered from chronic misunderstanding. Like no one ever really saw me, they only looked at me and made judgements. When you feel this way, you do your best to hide imperfections. You assume that if you are always misunderstood then people must be seeing the bad in you instead of the good. You go to great lengths to hide the “bad.” You do your due diligence to sweep the “actually bad” under the rug so maybe, just maybe, they will be able to see the “pretty good.” This keeps us looking over our shoulder, paranoid of who’s watching and when. Curating our very existence to promote more understanding and connection. “Misunderstood,” by definition, means ‘incorrectly interpreted.’ Why did I care if I was incorrectly interpreted by others? Wasn’t that, by definition, on them? Couldn’t I just let them be wrong? Now I was getting somewhere.

The brutal answer was that I had to raise the bar for connection, but in order to do this I had to be willing to show up, the “actually bad” and all. This is deep water. This is transformation. This is hard. This is the doorway between the new and the old. The most brutal answer was that I had to let some people be wrong. This applies to everything in life. My creative work, my relationships with friends and family, my romantic partners, my culture and society…I had to let some people be wrong. I had to get cozy with being misunderstood.

The truth is that the intuition is begging for sobriety. The natural flow of information from our higher self to our earthly self needs an open highway. Asking for guidance or attempting to tune into our deep knowing while continuously mucking up the lines of communication with booze and drugs is like driving on that ice frozen backroad. It’s harder to get where you’re trying to go. It’s slower. It’s laden with potholes and detours. Hazards galore. You can’t ever reach the ideal cruising speed because around every corner is another roadblock, another slippery slope.

To strengthen and grow our intuition is a holy practice, one that requires us to forsake blissful ignorance for absolute honesty. Sit with yourself. Open the lines of communication. Clear the wire. Fire up the current. Ask the question. Answer it. Don’t look away. Listen to what is being communicated to you. Follow the instructions.

Question your loyalties. Are you serving the opinions and perceptions of others or your own soul? What would happen if you decided to only be obedient to your intuition? Try it for a day, a week, a month. The answers are always available to us, always trying to make their way to us. We have to clear a landing strip. Let them land. I promise you can survive the truth-that’s not what you’re really afraid of. You’re afraid you won’t know what to do next. You’re afraid of what the truth will ask you to do with it. Just listen. Further instructions will follow.