My identity - falling apart to come together

“Remember why you are there, Brian. Don’t forget who you are doing this for. And be careful who you bring with you on this journey.”

Amy Pearson

I have thought a great deal about identity in the past few years.

Growing up, my generation - the generation at the tail end of X and into the new millennia was taught that you have one career, a spouse, a mortgage bubbling over with 2+ children, maybe even a pet.

If you had a dream to be a creative person of some sort, almost any adult figure, particularly parentals, always demanded that you have a back up.

“You want to be an actor? Great. What’s your back up plan?”

Even the backup careers were set in stone. Server, temp: starving artist!

With this sort of thinking comes compartmentalization. I had my artistic world/my corporate world. The people I was closeted with/ the ones I was fully out toward. There were the people I allowed to take advantage of me as their doormat/ the people I stood up to, defiantly with unshakable boundaries.

Unshakeable until the slightest storm came my way.

Since finding recovery from addiction in 2014, each year has come with incredible gifts - many of which I thought were out of reach for me. But also, there were the lessons, many painful - including great loss of friends who were in and out of recovery themselves. And then there were the miracles, like moving back to Los Angeles for my second (or perhaps third, fourth) act and making my dream project, “Wrath Mercy.”

When I was raising money for my film, my manager at my “career job,” at Breathe Life Healing Centers reached out telling me that she wanted to talk about my film. I thought in that moment that I was in trouble, that I had failed to keep the separate parts of my identity properly separated in my public attempts to raise money, to the point that I was going to be reprimanded. But oh, was I wrong.

“No, Brian. We want to know how we can support you.”

For years I believed that I couldn’t have money and be an artist. That I had to sacrifice my dream for a roof over my head. Or that I would have to have an unfulfilling “day job” in order to go after secret desires.

This is the myth that our heads tell us. Or maybe it’s a systemic myth told to keep us down by the people in power positions.

When my manager asked me that question, everything I thought I knew about my identity shattered.

Falling apart trying to fit in….

I have been writing about movies for 15 years, and because I didn’t do it full time, I always thought there was something wrong with me or that I was less than my other film writing counterparts, that I couldn’t call myself a journalist. I remember being invited to the “Rabbit Hole” premiere in NYC and standing uncomfortably in the Oak Room with Nicole Kidman and Jon Hamm, looking at my journalist peers in the corner and thinking, I don’t belong with them either. I don’t belong anywhere. So, I drank. I drank and drank and ended up in a bathroom stall completely wasted with Parker Posey and hitting on Sebastian Stan in the streets as he hurriedly got into a cab and away from me.

I tried so hard to “fit in” as a writer, as an actor, as a server, even as a drug addict, that I couldn’t grasp what I was mean to be or who I was anymore.

Coming together

After moving back to Mississippi and going to treatment I found myself asking the question. Who was I anymore?

I knew I wanted to keep writing about movies. I loved it. I loved interviewing Oscar nominated directors, and I believed that I had a unique perspective as an actor and director. In recovery, I was starting to really see that these parts I had kept away form each other could, together, be an advantage.

A former editor at an Oscars website I wrote for belonged to an LGBTQ critics group, and although I had never really seen myself as a critic, the idea of that part - the queer part of me - something I had kept the most hidden for so long, being combined with my love of film and my experience as an actor/director was so appealing. Not to mention giving me access to a larger audience and more films…it was an incredible thought.

In the years I was a member, I believe that I contributed to the landscape of LGBTQ journalism. In the last few months, even amidst making my own film, an LGBTQ story itself, I threw myself into writing, with a piece on the WGA/SAG AFTRA strikes that featured many LGBTQ subjects, voices I felt were unheard.

And yet, I found myself falling apart, people pleasing -again holding the film writer back as I tried so hard to be the film journalist the critic’s group demanded me to be. Despite being something I am incredibly proud of, It was one of the most difficult things I ever wrote because of my fear that I needed things to be safe and separate yet again.

Barry Jenkins has been such an inspiration to me, not only in his interviews about his process of adapting “Moonlight,” but also in his ability to not only create works of art but also discuss them and even curate programs at film festival. I always thought that could be possible for me as well. That’s the exact reason I shuttered Awards Wiz (my previous website) for this one. That’s why it is set up as it is with sections on film, musings and projects, including “Wrath Mercy.”

Unfortunately, systems and perceptions have yet to catch up with reality in so many ways. And when they refuse to catch up to you, they can find ways to expel something they don’t understand. I’m not one to be cryptic, but I also know that it’s best at times to keep some things to yourself.

So, this is my less than grand announcement. I am no longer a member of that Critic’s group. And that is that.

I can remember my friend Amy and I sitting in my dining room in Mississippi back in 2018, before I moved, before she died, talking about my future. In the months after I left and moved back to Los Angeles we would talk on the phone often. And while I was floundering in my identity and purpose, worried about this job or that deadline, she would always say - “Remember why you are there, Brian. Don’t forget who you are doing this for. And be careful who you bring with you on this journey.”

I’m here to be me. I will surround myself with those who support me and encourage me. And I will continue to write for the actors and writers and directors who may not get coverage otherwise. LGBTQ artists who still have dreams, including myself.

And the rest? Well, one thing was proven to me last week. The ones who don’t belong will exit your life on their own. And for that I am grateful.