There are many details that remain crystal clear in my memory: it was a chilly April morning in an ordinary conference room; there was a standard issue table and several chairs; a whiteboard with someone else's brainstorming not quite erased, a clock on the wall near the window and pens and paper scattered as if a toddler had been there before me. I had a stack of reports laid out in front of me. Out the window, I could just barely make out a ferry coming into the harbor when I noticed the time - 9:07.
He was late.
I didn't mind he was late; those reports always stole a little part of my soul - the sameness of them, the purposelessness. Nothing with any of my creativity or passion written into it. Work felt like a tradeoff - muscle through the monotony and get the big, fancy title. Play someone else's game and get a nice paycheck. There was no authenticity. It felt like survival.
Muscling through tough times was a skill I had developed early in life. We didn’t talk about the hard things in my house when I was growing up. When my parents sat my brother and me down to tell us they were getting divorced, I had never heard them raise their voices at each other; I never witnessed a single fight. I was 14 and felt so utterly lost when they told me, but I had no idea how to express the emotions I was feeling, so I just pushed them down.
Not a single tear shed.
I developed a belief that strength was my superpower and it meant being tough. So I created an impenetrable outer shell and let very few people “in."
I was very far from being "myself".
Years later when my own marriage started falling apart everyone around me was shocked: I hadn’t told anyone we were having problems or about his indiscretions. Very few people knew the story of me hiring a private investigator, the lies we each told each other, or the attorneys I had conferred with. I kept people, even close friends, at arm's length and I put on a brave face, keeping my emotions flat. When I could no longer tolerate the lies and deceit that were destroying the one truly intimate relationship in my life, I muscled my way out of the marriage and played down the pain I felt inside.
I kept muscling.
In a 6 week period I had sold our house, quit my job, moved 3,000 miles across the country, bought a new home in a new city, and started the job that brought me to this very conference room. Any one of those things would have been a tough transition. I tried to do all of them at the same time.
By the time I started the new job, I was pretty numb. My whole world felt flat, as if it were a 2-dimensional rendering of what a life should be. I willed myself to stay strong, to not show vulnerability, and to keep my emotions in check.
As I busied myself with climbing the corporate ladder, I grew further away from true connection to my work, my friends and myself. I believed that if I could just show up saying the right things looking the right way, no matter how far off from my true experience that was, all would be well.
All was not well.
On that April morning when he finally arrived, I was fired. All of a sudden my vision narrowed and I could barely breathe. It was so devastating that while I could remember the exact time on the clock on the wall, I have no idea what he actually said to me. I left the room, somehow got home, and collapsed.
The ladder I was on came crashing down and as the fall happened, I couldn’t even remember what I had been climbing toward.
Throughout my whole life I have been an achiever. I had a fundamental belief in myself. But this changed everything. I questioned my abilities and my intelligence and I wondered what I could possibly do next. It blew my whole life open and I felt exposed and afraid.
I spent the next few weeks barely holding it together. All my tricks had failed me - I was an inauthentic version of myself. Pushing my emotions down only resulted in disconnection. At that point, with my overused (metaphorical) muscles and feeling completely lost, I decided to take a pause. I carefully calculated what was in my bank account and went on a journey to find the pieces of me that I had been holding back. I willed myself to be present as I traveled to Europe for a workshop with a spiritual leader and to truly connect with girlfriends on a trip to Cuba. I practiced letting my emotions flow as I worked with a therapist and completed a coaching certification. When curiosity struck me, I followed it through shelves of books at the library and weekend workshops on many different topics.
I was trying to rediscover myself.
This journey is far from over, but every day I practice being just a bit more of the authentic "me". And, it is a practice - it is very easy to fall into the "shoulds" and the comparison game, but I can tell you from personal experience, it is a losing proposition.
