Damaged 📦
"I'm constantly thinking."
—Kendrick Lamar
> newsworthy | fear
It didn't begin to dawn on me until 2014 that I didn’t have to keep so many things that were happening inside of me a secret.
Anxieties and insecurities didn't disqualify me from journalism. They didn't make me damaged goods. They made me human.
But I still worried people would think I couldn’t think smart enough to be a paid journalist with an audience. 📝
I began thinking differently in 2014.
That's when The Atlantic magazine's prominent national editor, Scott Stossel, published a highly revealing cover story and book that publicly described for the first time his long war with alcohol and debilitating anxiety.
- Stossel went into excruciating and embarrassing detail.
- He talked at length about his ordeal on NPR's "Fresh Air" with its radio audience of millions.
I became consumed by Stossel’s piece and began to feel liberated as I read. It felt like the psychic liberation I would experience later at Alcoholics Anonymous.
It was deeply relieving to hear someone else tell embarrassing stories about their alcohol abuse and anxieties.
His colleagues expressed surprise that Stossel had quietly struggled for so long.
He drank in the morning before public talks.
His nervous stomach clogged and overflowed a toilet at home of the powerful Kennedy family.
His body shook and he dripped with sweat at his wedding.
Stossel's courage came at a crucial time for me. By then, many of my adult years had been spent living alone. Relationships didn't last. I’d only wanted to be a journalist.
But villains within were growing in influence. I was far from accepting that anxieties and insecurities would always be part of me. There wasn't a surgical procedure to remove them.
I had to learn to cope.
- next time "Just one shaky eyewitness."
- listening Chet Baker "I Fall in Love Too Easily"
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