Sara Barellis and I both“live in fear” obv.

I have almost eradicated obviously from my vocabulary. The last seven years of my life I have spent at least three or four times a day reminding myself that just because it’s obvious to me doesn’t mean anything. I was just listening to Sara Bareilles on NPR’s Fresh Air and she began talking about our anxiety. Considering her public life and her amazing performances on stage, I felt a sense of disbelief. As the conversation went on, I suspended my disbelief just enough to listen to the entire episode, and then, to the possibility that Sara was like me, faking it really well.

I know i’m taking liberties with her song title there and I hope Sara will forgive me. When this song came out all I could think about was my Dad and a bunch of men in my life that think I am the girl in my marriage. I’m not really married, but I am 100% committed to a long-term relationship with a fantastic chick, who is almost certainly functioning with a higher level of testosterone than I am. But this isn’t about her. This is about me&Sara&how, when perception isn’t reality, how do we admit we need additional Psychological Health help to survive tomorrow and get through whatever pain is going to be thrown at us next.

I can’t speak for Sara (tho I feel akin to her & I hope she feels it too) but, as a white male of a certain age & a certain size, people tell me I am a huge, lovable teddy bear of passion&confidence. When I walk into a China Shop or a Hotel Room, what comes to mind is more than teddy bear than bull, but, especially if I’m able to check myself first before I walk in and walk in slowly making eye contact with everybody in the room, store or class I am able to use my eyes to bring mindfulness to contradict my size&energy. But G_d forbid I burst into the space where no one knows me! I can break things with a whisper if I want to.

And that’s the thing, I don’t want to break things. Just because I could doesn’t mean I should and that’s what Sara is talking about in public today. So she’s a little bit younger than me. She began taking medication in her mid-40s just like I did after years of Falling for the myth of within the creative community: antianxiety medicine makes you less productive/less yourself. Sure, I missed diagnosis like I had for a year or so where it was thought that I was bipolar can put you on a medical merry, go round of prescriptions, that Are keep you from being your best self. But it’s undeniable that when the right chemicals pair with the right biology and genetics inside my body, then I win! I assume it like when street drug dealers give out samples to an entire block of urban youth and just wait to see who can’t say no the next day.

Sara says it much more elegantly in this podcast http://www.wnyc.org/story/sara-bareilles-thought-into-the-woods-would-last-2-weeks-she-ended-up-on-broadway/ than I ever could but I want to share my POV here.

It’s been almost seven years to feel comfortable enough to write about this. I suspect that is not a coincidence 😛 cuz my personal life feels safe&balanced, my career recently stumbled onto a sustainable path, and my physiological makeup began heading in the quantitatively smaller form (literally) about a year ago. So when I hear a Queen of the Creative Lifestyle like Sara Barellis say to FRESH AIR new co-host, _________ - Smith, that she lives, “….a lot more of her life in a place of fear than you might think!”, my stomach tingled a little with a need for brutal honesty so, here goes a/everything….

Growing up big, male and white AS WELL AS carrying even more privilege in my pocket derived from my small, University-town education PLUS feeling blessed in my pre-teen years with a liberal, Methodist church on top of it all made me embarrassed to admit that I was afraid of ANYTHING.

i’m not even sure that I’m using “embarrassed”&“afraid“ in the way other people do. I don’t speak for others anymore because my fear is relative. When I walked down on a dark street, in a deserted park of a foreign city, I’m not afraid of being mugged. When I stand up in front of a huge crowd I’m not afraid and I’m especially jazzed when I get to sing for them and tell jokes to make them laugh. But put me in a high-rise conference room in Midtown with a bunch of pretentious skinny suit wearing stockbrokers and I break into a flop sweat. asked me to fire an employee who has been trying their best and just isn’t cut out for high performance and I cry right in front of them. And the worst is when I have to work with my mother. But more on that later. _________. —////.

And after playing God in Joseph for me, amazing technicolor dream coat at my church when I was 11 I pretty much decided that the voice of God was my voice and lots of people around me agreed. So, “embarrassed“ is probably different in my book than it is in yours. I’m not embarrassed when I fall down in public, or even when I accidentally piss myself a little at a party. But when I _________

So now I wear a Pavlok and carry Xanax in my pocket in a little travel pill container marked Advil. Now I have three anxiety “tells” (more on _________ those later) and BUSPAR twice daily (because they haven’t figured out how to make a time-released pill yet).

A little backstory, I have spent the last 5 years of my career building a business from scratch. After teaching High School film production I couldn’t stand it any longer. I considered going back to my previous careers as an Art Director or a Lighting Designer but I couldn’t

Fat people feel invisible too but rarely are they the male ones.

And honestly I am not sure it’s not cultural appropriation on my part to claim that guys like me can understand body dysmorphia but I can identify with The Shrill lady on what she said to Terri yesterday !

So lastly, I promised I would explain about my Mom and how she is responsible for everything that’s wrong about me (& most of everything that’s right about me too). As those of you that are still reading and have read my work before probably already know, she’s a Memphis debutante oh, I was born in the late 40s and was transplanted to Princeton, New Jersey by my dad, her ex-husband of over 40 years, where she made most of her lifelong friends through her Kappa, Alpha Theta, alumni, net work, and the Junior League of New Jersey. It doesn’t get more Wasfi than my mom. But in my world as a latchkey kid, who fought through her postpartum depression and her addiction to lithium, and had no idea that she was epileptic, I now service her medical proxy in the last stage of her life. She’ll hate that I told you all this, but she stopped reading my stuff after my last blog post about fat camp , which hurt me and reaction to was, “that’s so you.”

After I got fired from my career teaching in private schools in Manhattan and had a decent sketch of my vision of the future of work through predictive analytics for creatives I asked my mom to give me $25,000 to fund the software development necessary. She told me That she didn’t have $25,000, but that her income was down renting rooms in my childhood home and that if I wanted to teach her how to use Airbnb which was new at the time, I can keep a third of the income. We began a small business together based on her remarkable accomplishment of owning a home and a university town where every semester thousands of young professionals are looking for a place to stay.

That business now has expanded to a second house which she paid cash for because she had squirreled away well over $25,000 but, in the one of her favorite sayings: teach a Man to Fish, and he’ll be able to feed himself“ she empowered me to build my company, and Buy the house next-door. The anxiety is the only problem. She is now pushing 80 years old and, as Biggie Smalls tells us call Lynn you don’t know what you don’t know. Whether it’s dementia early onset, or just old lady forgetfulness., It’s tough being with her . As I began to share this with my therapist mental health team for the last few years, they helped me identify three physiological reactions that would warrant a milligram of Xanax: vicious, coughing/choking was the first. I just thought my food addiction led me to eat and talk at the same time . No, they said that was anxiety about what I was saying. The second Tal is watery eyes. When it first began happening, I was fundraising for my start up, and I kept during the pandemic, and I kept having to wipe my eyes to see the little zoom boxes on my computer and then the third towel. I’m not gonna tell you because we may meet someday and if you know everything about me then it won’t be as much fun to hang out with you.

Thank you to FRESH Air for constantly bringing me new news that brings me closer to my own truth and to Sara Bareilles for EVERYTHING YOU DO!

Sincerely,

Charles Carney Kirby II aka ChuckieJabba.NYC