The Sixth Reflection

During the summer of 2024, I was in a very abusive relationship. I was dating someone who likely has BPD, and this person manipulated me in ways I can’t even begin to explain. This person started to instill in me that I was an imposter to my own brain and my own heart, while expecting so much from me that I knew I couldn’t expect in return. For two months, I felt so exhausted all the time and I felt like this person I was dating was draining the life out of me. There were points where I felt like I didn’t belong in anything I thought I loved, the biggest thing being my career, and my world was crashing down around me. I had just finished my Ignite training, and I was directing better newscasts than most people would if they knew nothing about tv about a year and a half prior, but I felt like I didn’t belong. I felt like an imposter, not just to tv, but to my very existence. There was one point where I considered quitting my job, going back to college, getting a 4 year degree, and then going to go work in a massive office building with a tiny cubicle. I felt that working in tv for that meaningless year of my life that I would never get back would at least make for some fun stories to tell at the coffee station in this massive office building where I was just another body being forced into productivity, and that my experiences working in local television production were worth nothing more than that

We eventually broke up, and I found myself in a very odd situation: I had free time. I had nobody telling me who I was or what I should do. The first thing I did after the breakup was take a nap. And I’ve been sleeping a lot better recently, and feel less exhausted as a result. I had the free time to get back into editing videos and making music and I bought a new car and I got a tattoo and I finally got a haircut and cut off my gross, tangled, and matted hair that I waited months to cut because I felt obligated to keep it for someone who wasn’t looking out for anyone but themselves. 

And I started diving deeper into directing. I got better at actually directing, not just operating the equipment. I helped configure some of the live boxes in the new graphics package we’re getting soon, and I started spending more time in the control room. Every other Tuesday, I direct the morning show with one of our directors who’s been working the morning show longer than I’ve been alive. And I’ve been learning how to communicate and keep my stress under control as I find new ways to improve my skills and continue to learn how to be a director so I can use Ignite as a tool, not as a crutch. 

I also went back to therapy, since I have some very real trauma from that relationship, plus I have a lot of life changes coming soon (aka I’m getting promoted to a newscast director sometime relatively soon, since one of our morning directors left for a different gig in Arizona on the creative services team at a station where the temps are more reasonable in the winter, and now I get to join a team of insanely talented and intelligent individuals and direct the morning news in the city I grew up in on the most watched tv station in this part of the state, among other various life changes such as moving apartments again and taking a few trips to go experience life and be reminded of who I actually am) and I told my therapist a bit of my story of wanting to study engineering and wanting to program computers, just to realize that my heart wasn’t there. My heart wanted to tell stories and wanted to engage with art and expression and humanity. And now I operate code based automation and get to do just that in ways I never thought possible

My therapist asked me if I have ADHD, because she saw that my brain was not only able to make sense of two very different things (art and engineering), but was able to make those two very different things work in harmony and have been very successful as a result. I told her about my last relationship and I told her about what I did after (including the fact that I bought a vacuum for the first time ever, which is a very mundane object, but it was a special moment to me) and the thing she told me when I was done telling her about all of those things was that my beautiful ADHD brain was able to soften the blow of something that would’ve completely destroyed most other people. And she’s right. It did. No matter what label science may use to describe my brain, it saved me from myself, as opposed to me needing to be saved from my own brain. I genuinely don’t think I would’ve physically survived that situation if it weren’t for my brain. I genuinely would’ve ended my own life if my beautiful ADHD brain hadn’t turned to art and turned to engineering and turned to music and turned to video and turned to writing (maybe Jess was right!) and turned to the people around me who wanted to help me learn Ignite and learn it well and be a director and direct the best newscasts possible. And for that, I’ll forever be thankful. My brain was designed very intentionally and without coincidence

The summer of 2024 is one that I’ll never be fully sure of what happened, but I’ll always remember the fact that my life could’ve changed for the worse or been cut short entirely, but because of my brain’s unrelenting desire to turn the mundane into beauty (and my perseverance to keep going while being aided by my friends, my family, and surrounding myself with art in any and all forms), I’m still here and now I get to be myself and rediscover who that is and go to work at a place I love and do a job like nothing else out there surrounded by my best friends and my loving family and I get to live in the city I’ve called home for most of my life, for as long as I want, all because of a design flaw turned superpower that allowed me to turn the most mundane and even soul crushingly painful moments into the most beautiful and amazing feeling I’ve ever experienced in my life: the undying desire to be joyful and spread joy