What else I learned from filmmaking

Making this film was the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life. No, not the actual production itself. That stuff I have down cold. In fact, I learned how much I knew on our last long night of shooting. I was just looking at what I prepared for that last night and, wow, I was prepared, I knew what I was doing.

What surprised me were the things I learned about my life through this process. I knew I would learn something but, boy, there was a lot there.

I discovered that my depression and frustration through the process was that I thought I wanted “help,” that I wasn’t getting the “help” that I wanted. I was frustrated because I felt like I was being left alone, no one was helping me.

What I realized just the other day is that what I was waiting for was someone to tell me what to do, someone to step in and criticize the way I was doing things. I was so used to having someone over my shoulder, challenging my every decision, that I didn’t know what to do when no one did that. I always thought that my ex was “helping,” was there to guide me, support me. Yet at the same time, I knew what he was doing was irritating and aggravating and making me feel like I was completely incompetent. Those two sides of my brain just wouldn’t co-exist during this film. I was depressed because I was alone yet I was delighted to be alone. I was feeling out of my element because that’s what I had been taught to feel. Yet I never felt more in my element than on this production.

I don’t even know if I can express what I felt through the production, there were so many things going on in my head. It was so difficult for me to just keep moving forward because every single day, I had a batch of new and weird thoughts and emotions going on.

The sad thing is, I wanted someone to step in and tell me what to do. Because that’s what I knew. Whenever Chairman showed up on the set or talked to me about the production, I was waiting for him to find some fault in what I was doing and take it away from me. Then when he didn’t, I was angry because he wasn’t “helping” me. I now realize I’m an idiot. He didn’t take anything away from me because he trusted that I knew what I was doing. He wasn’t “helping” me because I didn’t need “help.” When I did go to him for real help, he was always available and always gave me real help. He didn’t hesitate to give me his tow cents when necessary but he didn’t find it necessary to give me two cents every single minute of the production. I didn’t know how to deal with that. Someone who trusted me and my abilities. Wow. What a concept.

Recently, Bonnie linked me to another blog that talked about finding their new “normal.” That their life had changed so much and now they had to figure out what normal is for them now. It made me think about what my normal is now. And working through things on the film made me realize that there is a new normal in my life.

My old normal was a regulated, controlled, confined life. I didn’t do anything without an hour long discussion about everything. I didn’t do anything without going through challenge after challenge after challenge about every choice I made. My old life was strangling and suffocating and I didn’t know it. I thought that was what normal was supposed to be. I never trusted myself because that was normal. I never took chances because it was normal. I was terribly alone in normal, even though he was always there. I got used to being lonely and yet not alone, not knowing if what I did was right without him telling me it was, or it wasn’t. Normal meant not listening to myself and only listening to me.

My new normal is this controlled chaos that is my life. New normal means learning to listen to myself and not waiting for that other voice to chime in, because there is no other voice. Actually, there are many other voices that I never heard in my old normal. They are the voices of those around me who see a strong, independent, capable artist, not a weak person in need of shaping. Those voices were never allowed to come through. New normal means truly trusting myself because there is no one else to trust. New normal means doing what I want to do, good or bad, without waiting for permission. New normal feels funny and weird and odd and empty, and yet I can’t wait until new normal becomes just normal.

The only thing about new normal that is like the old normal is the loneliness. However, at least it is true loneliness and not the type of loneliness shared by two. It is just me and I think it’s going to be just me for a very long time. That’s the hardest part of the new normal is that but I’m glad that the other normal is long gone.

So I will learn how to do this new normal and learn to accept the alone part of it and embrace the rest of it. And in no time at all, it will be normal normal and nothing else.