Anna Rae Gwarjanski Portfolio |
“When people call reporters scum, and ridicule them as dishonest, or make fun of their looks, and encourage others to insult or attack them, they are not just challenging a few newspapers or TV networks, they are challenging the very idea of a democratic system. The press is just as important as the judiciary or the branches of Congress; if it is muted or crippled or undermined, there will be no one to make sure that people are protected from power -- that was the whole point of the American Experience. For the past few years especially, I’ve seen people malign “the media” on social media and outloud. It infuriates me. While I’ve never worked for a national media outlet, I have worked for community newspapers, and I can tell you there are very few people who are as engaged, hardworking, and caring as the journalists I worked beside. Along with that, I can also tell you that as a whole, very few people are as exhausted, both mentally and physically, as my coworkers and I were/are.
I can’t speak for every reporter, but I chose to study journalism in college for two main reasons: I loved to write, and I wanted to make the world a better place. I thought journalism offered me the opportunity to combine those passions in three ways: to give people hope, to instill pride in the community, and to hold leaders accountable. In some ways, it did. But, my idealism was naive, to say the least. People complain the media only reports on the bad things that happen in this world. Y’all want to know why? It’s because that’s what the consumer wants. I didn’t like publishing vehicle collisions, especially single-car accidents, because unless they affect multiple people, I don’t consider that news. But guess what? If a wreck happened and we didn’t write a story about it, we got complaints. I loved publishing human interest stories about people helping people. But, again, guess what? Those papers didn’t sell as well as those that included stories about robberies, murders, etcetera. So, because newspapers have to be run like a business in order to continue printing, we ran more of the latter stories. Not because the reporters enjoy them. Do you know how hard it is to interview a mother who just learned her missing daughter’s body was found? It’s awful. Nobody wants to be assigned a story like that. It depresses you, messes you up for weeks. If you think it’s hard, as a reader, consuming that kind of news, imagine what it’s like being surrounded by it all the time. Did I make mistakes as a member of the press? You bet. But they weren't in any way malicious -- they were mostly a product of being being stretched too thin, and I took responsibility and did everything in my power to make up for them. All in all, I'm proud of the work my team and I did, and I like to think we helped our community make great progress in many different areas. Yet, for the seven months I was managing editor for my newspaper, I got screamed at every. single. day. People sent me death threats -- me, a peace-loving, people-pleaser, wannabe hippie. Once, one lady told me to “kill myself” because I had the audacity not to send one of our four reporters to Washington D.C. to cover inauguration day. To this day, it blows my mind. And, as much as I hate to say it, it changed me. I’m as non-confrontational as they come, but I’ve never been afraid to use my voice. Now (and I feel like everyone can relate to this), I think twice about what opinions I post on social media because I’m sick and tired of moderating the vitriol they tend to produce. When I do make the decision to share something, I steel myself before I click “publish.” If someone posts something negative, I’ve noticed my jerk reaction is to harden my heart and blow them off rather than try to understand their viewpoint like I would have once upon a time. I have friends and family on both sides of the aisle, and, before now, navigating that divide was never been a problem for me. I love debate. I love talking with people who can enhance my worldview. Even with people who are total opposites from me, I’ve never felt like I needed to strangle my words. I hate that I do now, and I hate that I don’t know how to fix it. I studied four years in undergrad and two years in grad school for the honor of calling myself a master of journalism, but I needed a break after only one year of working fulltime in the field. I went into it prepared for the long hours and bad pay; that was expected, and as long as I felt like I was fulfilling my purpose, I would gladly put up with that. However, I wasn’t expecting the intimidation and audiences who were so nasty I can’t even put into print the things they said to me. Maybe I just wasn’t strong enough -- I consider myself a pretty tough person, but I couldn’t handle that. I cried every single night. I’ll probably pick up journalism life again at some point, but especially now that we have leaders who call the fourth estate “the enemy” and followers who agree with them, it’s too hard for me. Anyway, rant over. I just ask that, next time, before you bash “the media,” think about that community reporter who’s working 80-hour weeks and is on call 24/7. Remember that he or she is probably operating on four hours of sleep, Ramen, and lots of coffee. Remember that he won’t get to travel and see his family for the holidays, because the job doesn’t stop. Remember that she’s only human, and she’s doing the best she can. I know there are some bad eggs in journalism, just like there are bad eggs in every profession. Trust me, I see the grave shortcomings in a lot of the mainstream press. However, to belittle and scorn “the media” is to sneer at every person who works or has worked in that profession -- including me. Every journalist I’ve ever met has been committed to the truth and committed to making the world a better place. There has never been a time, at least in my lifetime, when it is more crucial to have people like that. Even though I can’t call myself one right now, I will never stop standing up for this group of patriots.
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“But you can’t get to any of these truths by sitting in a field smiling beatifically, avoiding your anger and damage and grief. Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth. We don’t have much truth to express unless we have gone into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not go into. When we have gone in and looked around for a long while, just breathing and finally taking it in -- then we will be able to speak in our own voice and to stay in the present moment. And that moment is home.” I’m not an angry person. While I wouldn’t exactly call myself even-keeled, it takes a lot to make me mad. In fact, I can probably count the times I’ve been openly irate on one hand.
However, the downside of that is I don’t really know how to recognize or cope with anger. Melancholy, grief, heartache, sensitivity — I can *deal* with those. Via my depression and the just plain ol’ moodiness that seems to stereotypically come with being a writer, I’ve lived with those feelings my whole life. Maybe it’s because I think I don’t deserve to be angry. All things considered, I had a blessed childhood, a supportive family, a close-knit group of lifelong friends… what is there for me to be pissed off about? Life’s been pretty darn good to me. It was only when I started playing rugby that I realized how much unresolved emotion I had stemming from how my eating disorder ended my swimming career. My body was so damaged after years of abusing it, it was all I could do to finish my four years of college swimming, and even that almost didn’t happen. I had to let go of all of the goals I had set, and until rugby, I never realized how freaking pissed off I was that I let my bright star vanish. How much I blamed myself for letting my “potential” fade. How red-hot with embarrassment I was that I let everyone who believed in me down, and how furious I was that it was all my fault and there was nothing I could do about it because those years were gone, wasted, and I could never get them back. I was a late-bloomer for swimming, and I got addicted to rapid improvement, which is one of the things I think led to my downfall. In one year, I went from being one of the worst swimmers on my high school team to being an All-American and part of a national-record-setting relay. Even though, looking back, that rate of progress would have been impossible to maintain, it didn’t seem at all farfetched at the time, and I was willing to kill myself to make it happen. In one of my later therapy sessions, I remember shamefully asking my psychologist why I “chose” to have an eating disorder. “I’m smarter than that,” I remember telling her. “I needed to lose weight fast, and I remember researching the best way to do that. Why the fuck did I settle on bulimia? I know I thought I could control it — only use it for a little while to get down to what I needed to be — but how could I have been so stupid and arrogant?” Her response helped me begin my journey in forgiving myself. She said everyone has a big tool shed in his or her brain, and inside every tool shed are different tools. At that time, I only had certain equipment to work with, and I chose the tool off the wall that I thought would work best; I played with the hand I had been dealt. Now, she said, through therapy, I have more tools, and that’s why I’m feeling like that former self was so dumb. But, just because I now have a shiny, beautiful, expensive Bosch toolkit doesn’t mean I can judge the old Anna Rae for trying to use an unsafe rusty saw with broken, jagged teeth. “Basically, now that you know better, do better,” she said. So, while that conversation unlocked the door into that blistered compartment in my soul, I never fully entered that room until I joined my first rugby team. I know yoga is a popular tool for healing, but that didn’t work for me. Perhaps rugby and its elegant violence is an odd way to reconcile aggression and restoration, but this sport offered me a way to release anger in a physical yet controlled environment. With each tackle, I slowly tapped into those years I felt bulimia had stolen from me and the rage and guilt that came with that. What’s more, every time someone pummeled *me,* I began to understand that it wasn’t anything personal; that’s just what happens in the game of rugby. It’s what makes the game so special -- you can beat the shit out of each other, then shake hands after the match and buy each other drinks. It’s honest confrontation. Even when I blew my knee out, that, too, was a learning experience. I could have blamed rugby — the first thing that gave me true, bubbly joy in years — and returned to my dark corner, carving another chip into my shoulder. I was very close to doing that, to be honest. After I first got my MRI results, I remember feeling so discouraged, thinking, “another opportunity squandered. Figures.” But after a few weeks of crying and sulking in my personal pity party, I realized I had two options: I could either let this injury steal the happiness this sport gave me — what ended up happening in swimming — or I could meet it head-on and let it spark a brighter fire. I chose the latter, and I haven’t regretted it for a second. That red-hot room in my soul I was talking about? Going through knee reconstruction made me sit in there and really feel everything I had been avoiding. But you know what they say about fire — it hurts, but it’s cleansing, too. And, learning to be still in the midst of all those flames and acknowledge that pain without letting it take control is what I think really made me whole again. For the first time in my life, instead of throwing a bandaid on my wounds and just giving them attention when they bled through, I actually cauterized it. People ask me all the time why I’m so passionate about this foreign, masculine sport. The easy answer is that it’s what I feel like my body is made to do. I’m good at it, and it’s fun. The long answer is everything I wrote above, but it boils down to the fact that, through breaking me, rugby healed me and made me stronger. In Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, Anne Lamott wrote, “If you have a body, you are entitled to the full range of feelings. It comes with the package.” Just like how secrets have a lot less power once they’re out in the open, emotions lose their control over you when you stop locking them away. You can’t understand and rebuild something if you’re pretending it doesn’t exist. Being mad or sad or scared, or whatever you’re feeling, doesn’t make you a bad person -- it simply makes you a person. I love how Lamott (if you can’t tell by how much I quote her, she’s my favorite writer; somehow her words always speak right to my soul) writes about these feelings: “You are probably going to have to deal with whatever fugitive anger still needs to be examined — it may not look like anger; it may look like compulsive dieting or bingeing or exercising or shopping. But you must find a path and a person to help you deal with that anger. It will not be a Hallmark card. It is not the yellow brick road, with lovely trees on both sides, constant sunshine, birdsong, friends. It is going to be unbelievably hard some days — like the rawness of birth, all that blood and those fluids and shouting horrible terrible things — but then there will be that wonderful child right in the middle. And that wonderful child is you, with your exact mind and butt and thighs and goofy greatness.” However you get there, I encourage you to find something that helps you just BE. For me, that’s rugby, but everyone’s different. Don’t be afraid to search for it, though, because encountering and working through that damage is a journey well-worth experiencing. I promise, it will give you life. |
About the AuthorConfessions of a failed southern lady. I've got messy hair and a thirsty heart. Writer, photographer, career wanderer. Archives
May 2023
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