Learning to Live

Last night, I danced in the kitchen while preparing a pasta and mache salad, drinking wine that was probably produced within a day’s drive of where I stood. Today, I walked on the shore of the English Channel, unaccosted by the blistering heat of beaches in my past, surveying ruins of old military bunkers and sunken warships while my dogs ran free on the sand. Tonight, I sit on a darkened sun porch listening to tree limbs tickle the terra cotta roof over my head while the divine aroma of lemon pepper chicken and vegetables in bechamel sauce drifts toward me through open doors.

There’s no way this is my life. Yet, somehow, it is.

Nothing in all the years I struggled to find a place in this world prepared me for the radical changes I’d face in 2019. I didn’t plan any of it. I thought I understood my purpose, my goals, my motivations. As it turned out, I was only repeating patterns and behaviors that accomplished little more than exhausting me physically and depleting every resource I had at my disposal. I was stuck in a cycle that may have been lifetimes in duration. Everyone I had ever trusted had betrayed me in some egregious way. Every dream I had of how my life should look at this stage of it had turned into a nightmare. Judgment came from every direction. Blame. Outright animosity. “She drinks baby’s blood” is something a very real person actually said about me earlier this year. I laughed at the time, but at some point I realized that if I had any hope of getting off this merry-go-round of recrimination, I had to determine once and for all what mistake it was that I kept making over and over so as not to repeat the lesson ever again.

Everyone has a backstory. Some are uglier than others. My life is an open book, but there are things about me that no one outside those closest to me has any inkling about. This is not because I have secrets. It’s because I’d have to talk nonstop for days to get through it all, and nobody wants to sit through a monologue like that. I’ve thought a lot lately about starting a personal blog that could serve as a foundation for a memoir I might someday write. But the point is--without going into detail--I’ve had to work my way through rejection by birth parents, direct exposure to HIV (I am negative fifteen years after that awful experience, thank God,) the kidnapping of both my children in a concerted effort between in-laws and my adoptive parents, bankruptcy, disability with a devastating diagnosis of lupus, and yes...a barrage of words from people close to me as well as people who don’t even know me that all accused me of selfishness, worthlessness, dishonesty, fraud, and so many other dastardly things that at one point I wondered if I had any purpose on earth other than to be a problem that other people have to deal with.

Then one day, I saw this tableau from a much higher perspective. And I understood at once the deep frustration I felt, the lack of understanding shown by nearly everyone around me, the repeated betrayals, the constant failures. All of these things were due to backward thinking that, while noble in purpose, directly contradicted one of the most basic truths in life and a fundamental principle of human existence: if we are to be any benefit to others, we must first be in a position of power to do so. In other words, put your own oxygen mask on first. Only when you’re able to breathe can you help others do the same.

I’ve spent my whole life--and no telling how many others before this one--giving everything I had to whatever cause I believed in. I couldn’t comprehend how utter selflessness in an attempt to make the world a better place kept resulting in resentment and ineffectiveness. My motives were pure, right? Then the Universe should honor them! And because the Universe kept giving me only what I needed to survive and no more, and because I continued to struggle with no relief from hardship, that meant Karma was a liar and every religion in the world a fraud. Right? That had to be it. Had to be. Otherwise I must be cursed and Voodoo magic was really doing a number on me.

It didn’t help that I had surrounded myself with people whose own negativity tended to blind them, whose performance-oriented life goals conflicted with mine, whose words consistently tore me down instead of built me up. Day in and day out I weathered the emotional storms of those around me, paid the price for every personal shortcoming they projected onto me. I realize now that I haven’t been a hapless victim in any of these situations. I have chosen them, one after the other, because familiarity is a more attractive bedfellow than truth.

But wait. Doesn’t consensus usually indicate correctness? I mean, if twenty people say the sky is blue and one person says it’s green, isn’t it more likely that the twenty have it right and the one is simply color-blind? Possibly, yes. However, if you ask twenty horses what is the most nutritious meal for them and then ask twenty wolves the same question, don’t you expect you might get two completely different answers, though both would be correct? Therefore, could “correct” be a matter of context, of not only understanding the answer but the questions itself, and a willingness to consider the source?

Until this galvanizing epiphany, I’d spent my whole life gravitating toward those who reminded me of where I’d come from rather than where I should be going. It should have come as no surprise when all of their opinions and all of their judgments about me seemed to correlate.

I made a decision--quite recently--to eliminate all negative influences from my life and surround myself only with positive people and positive energy. This meant cutting ties, leaving a community, divorcing family members. Extreme and controversial, yes. But for me, it was a matter of survival. It was a matter of deciding that I will not sacrifice myself for the approval of others any more, because being a martyr is seldom noble. In most cases, it’s being a poor steward of one’s own soul. And I will not be a poor steward of mine any longer.

Common themes in my life, like rejection, inability to meet unrealistic expectations, and blame for circumstances beyond my control may always be potent triggers for me. Abusive behavior and bully tactics are also likely to set me off. But I don’t have to surround myself with these traits or people who display them any more. Doing so is not noble, for any cause. It’s self-destructive and will cripple one’s ability to be inspired, useful, creative, and helpful to others.

It took me almost half a century to understand this. It may take the rest of that century for the practice of self-care to become instinctual. It may require learning to live by a completely different set of values.

But je suis prête. And there’s no better day than today to put these ideals into practice.