I have built my life around survival and fear. That’s the honest truth.
A good life, a prosperous and successful life. A life other people would see and feel envy. The job, the title, the salary, the house, the vacations, the education, the friends, the family. Warm, authentic, and outwardly enviable. But I found myself driving home from dropping my son off at school one morning recently feeling absolutely trapped. Realizing I was a stranger in my own life. That I had all of these things and couldn’t feel even a bit of excitement or satisfaction with any of it. What does all of this mean if it feels like none of it fits? The friends and family fit, of course. But the possessions, the career, the home, the vacations, the success. The person I see when I look in the mirror. Shouldn’t all of this bring me more joy than it does?
I’m processing a lot in therapy. If you are not processing something in therapy, you should be. Especially if you are a man because you are less likely to seek out therapy than women. Guys – y’all need therapy, and it is not a failure or a weakness. You don’t even have to tell anyone you are going. But you are fumbling insanely hot, dedicated, loyal, brilliant women because your unwashed, unhealed asses think you don’t need to process your past with a trained professional. I digress. Go to therapy.
The processing has brough to the surface all of the systems around which I have built my life, the core beliefs that constructed those systems, and the pain that caused the core beliefs to form and the mechanisms I now use to support those beliefs. I realize that so much of my life has been lived for someone else’s benefit, because I grew up in an unpredictable home where the primary caregiver was not consistent and could in fact become terrifying, even unsafe. I witnessed physical abuse. I experienced emotional abuse. I experienced sexual abuse as a 4 year old, then grew up in a religion that preached purity doctrine. I learned that I was bad, dirty, unworthy. People in my life have failed me, repeatedly. They failed to offer support and understanding as a devastated four-year-old. They failed to teach me that it was not my fault. They abandoned me when my emotions and pain were loud. I am not unworthy because something was done to me when I was far too young to understand and certainly unable to consent to what was happening. I learned to scan every person, every room for threats. Notice body language, tone shift, how heavy footsteps fell and how loud or quiet voices were. I learned that staying small, agreeable, and denying my own needs was how I protected myself from chaos and pain. I learned that it was better to avoid saying the hard thing than face the wrath that would follow admissions of my needs.
In the corporate world I would be judged as much for how my shoes and accessories matched as my ability to execute my work. I learned that a woman being seen as more competent than a man was a threat, not something to be celebrated. Keep quiet, be agreeable, conform, adapt, perform.
A ghost in my own house. A wraith haunting the walls I structured around pain, fear, grief, shame. Feeling trapped inside a life that somehow was something to be proud of, but also something I am no longer sure I want. I am white knuckling this whole thing because I have no idea how to do things differently and the inertia of it is a river pulling me away from the source of what I was always meant to be. Get married, have the kids, get the degree, build the career, buy the big house, pay the bills, file the taxes, don’t ever complain and always be grateful. Get up and do it all over and over and over again until I die. The beliefs my life was structured around are not mine and they have only benefited me on the surface. They are someone else’s beliefs projected inward. They are a series of decisions that turned into a whole life that benefits everyone but me.
So many of us are going with the flow of lives we began to build in our early twenties and using blueprints our parents and popular culture left for us, doing the things we were “supposed” to do and never really taking the time to figure out what we want to do. Finding ourselves falling asleep in the armchair at 8:45 PM on a Wednesday night having done not a single remarkable thing in the last decade or more. Hitting walls and burning out. Abusing substances, abusing ourselves, abusing our loved ones. Holding everyone except ourselves responsible for allowing ourselves to be lulled into comfortable complacency, safe in the knowledge that our lives fit just right. Instead of fanning the flames of promise within us, we fall asleep early to the flicker of a screen and call it living.
I thought I was living a free life, manifesting my own destiny and being the master of my universe. Leave the toxic marriage, build a new life on my own, keep going and absolutely crush anything in my way. I did all those things. So why does a new day sound like an awful idea and why is it so hard to find joy now that I have arrived at the pinnacle of mainstream adult achievements? The destiny I manifested was built around the most painful belief of all – my value is only real if others see it. For a high-achieving career woman who is financially independent of a partner and who has had to fight for every single opportunity that came my way, admitting that I have built so much of this for someone else’s idea of success, well, that is some life altering stuff. No wonder I am depressed and anxious. No wonder it feels like I am swimming against an impossible current, exhausted, drowning, and never really getting anywhere. My existence was not created in my own image. No wonder I can’t stand it.
So I asked myself – what do I know I am good at? The answer: There was a point when I was 15 or 16 that I felt that I was meant for something big and that I had a spark no one else had that I could fuel and harness. My pen is mighty and my words land. When the people around me failed me repeatedly, the written word was my solace, my comfort, and my passion. So let that be the flame I nurture back to life.
What a blessing to be able to stop focusing on survival long enough to have this realization. Inside me that spark has been diminished, but it is not gone. I have a chance to stop and look around and ask where I am, who I am, and what I’m supposed to be doing with it. To take stock and decide what should stay and what should go to fan that flame.
What needs to go is the belief I am worthless unless others see my worth.
What needs to go is making choices based on threat assessments.
What needs to go is waiting for someone else’s approval to decide what I want to happen next in my own life.
What needs to go is waiting for the next achievement to be happy.
What needs to go is staying in rooms that will only accept me if I am small, agreeable, assimilated.
What needs to stay is my own authenticity – the voice in my writing, the clothes I prefer, the way I lift others up, the people in my life who see me and accept me without question.
What needs to stay is the deep knowledge that I am capable of surviving.
What needs to come back is the creativity, the lightheartedness, the spark, the flow state.
What needs to change is the story I tell myself about myself.
What needs to change is giving any of my precious time to people who only value my body but have no intention of handling my heart and my mind with care.
What needs to change is how I expect that if I can just find true love the story will change itself.
What needs to stay is the brilliant mind I have been using for someone else’s benefit my entire life.
What needs to stay are these stories, pressed into digital pages like little strands of tissue paper hope. Written with coviction and sent out with love to someone who may need to hear them.
What needs to change is waiting for approval to start living my life.
At the old age of 42, it is not too late. I am going to become who I always wanted to be.
Full and Unfinished 
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