Many of my close friends have called me a "lucky" person. Even more so, to people who don't know me that well, I can make things look pretty effortless. (Hint: Making things look effortless is a defense mechanism used (sometimes) by people who have loads of dirty laundry and don't want to wash it in public.)
Anywho, I’d go after what I wanted, whether it be a job, scholarship, or finding the perfect apartment, and I’d get it. One of my friends even said to me once, “Alicia, you could shit in a swinging bucket!” This southern colloquialism apparently means I am really lucky. My mom went so far as to say, “Alicia, you live a touched life.”
To me, the thought was incredulous. Keep in mind, this is NOT a pity party, but... A touched life?! Yeah! My mother is a neglectful and abusive drug addict and I have a chronic illness that causes a myriad of issues most people will never know in their life!
I began to resent these comments. I felt strongly that I worked hard for all my successes. Hell, I even failed at quite a few things! There are jobs I've applied for that I didn't get. My first time applying for an internship in DC, I was rejected. I didn't get accepted into grad school the first time I applied either. But my grandfather (the strong male figure in my life) always said, "The harder I work, the luckier I get."
3 & 1/2 semesters into grad school, I was put on contract with my program for a number of reasons. *Contract basically means I can't move forward to internship until I demonstrate that I'm committed, get my GPA up, etc.) I was also finding it difficult to support myself.
Has anyone seen my MOJO?
What has happened to me?! When I was younger, falling down didn't faze me. People didn't recognized my failures, because I never really dwelled on them. I didn't see it as productive! Instead, I practiced a faith-based optimism (or cognitive dissonance) that led me to believe what happened was for the best, and maybe the Universe wanted me to pursue other opportunities, or try harder. I couldn't quite figure out what had happened, what particular instance or where I lost my mojo. Why was it so hard to overcome failure? I don't wallow in it, but I'm so scared of it I feel paralyzed!Then I realized, it began about the time I moved to Knoxville and started grad school.
How could that be? I got into my dream program, and was even deemed a top applicant, receiving a small scholarship. *That totally took me by surprise because I was just praying to get accepted.* Then my boyfriend said, “It might be because you thought of DC as a failure.”
*&^%$#MIND**BLOWN*&^%$#
I’ve always spoken about my time in Washington, DC as though it were a blip on my radar, or some crazy thing I did after college. Almost similar to how people talk about experimenting with drugs or homosexuality, only to conclude it was “just a phase”. I dismiss it that way, because the experience is a source of shame for me. The less I talk about it, the less I have to think about it.
What was SO shameful?
I started and completed a 3 month internship that led to a year-long associate program. I hated my job because I worked in a small office with only two people, and need much more social interaction than that. To supplement my social interaction and make more money, I worked as a waitress/bartender in one of the BEST bars in DC, Madam’s Organ. I worked the two slowest nights, Sunday and Wednesday. This meant that two days a week I got close to 4 hours sleep, not including the partying I did with my own friends or picking up weekend shifts to make extra money. It was a fast pace but I was keeping up.
Five months into my experience, I received the greatest blow to my heart and soul that I'd known in my life: my grandfather passed away. He was the greatest man I’d ever known and one of my best friends. I was crushed. I literally could not picture what life was going to look like with him gone. I was scared.
Physically, I felt my body was failing me too. I started to feel incredibly anxious all the time, and when I talked to my doctor about it he said, “What are you scared of?” "Nothing," I replied. "I just feel anxious.” My heart would race and I’d feel antsy, like I was crawling out of my skin. This is fine if you can be up and moving, but 40 hours of my week were spent at a desk, in front of a computer. Because of my increased anxiety, and grieving over my grandfather, I’d started drinking more, but only at the bar where I worked. In DC it's legal for employees to drink alcohol on the job, which can be fun because your customers can buy you shots, and it took the edge off of dealing with super rude customers.
In late August I received my first wakeup call: I was pulled over on the way home from the bar because I crossed the double yellow line at 230am. I was reaching for gum in my purse and not paying attention, but I was scared because I did have two drinks around 8pm that night. I prayed it wasn't still in my system. I told the police officers this, but because of the way I was dressed coming from work (mini skirt and cowboy boots), I was still made to do all the sobriety tests. I passed all of them, and then I did the breathalyzer. The results were consistent with my story, but they still made me park my car and get a cab home. The next morning my roommate let me borrow her car so my friend and I could pick mine up before it was ticketed/towed. Pulling out of her parking spot I ran into a pole and caused $1500 dollars worth of damage to her car. It wouldn't END!
That's when I knew something wasn't right.
Life was not supposed to be like this. The universe was telling me I needed to reevaluate the direction I was going. I called my friend Kristen at work and said, “I’m not going to hurt myself or anything, but you need to come over when I get off work. I’m in trouble and I need help.” She came over and we evaluated my goals, and I’d decided the one thing I wanted was to get into grad school. I didn't feel like I was going in that direction and I made my mind up to leave DC.
People who know me know I’m motivated, driven, and have an old school work ethic that makes most people look like pansies. So when I say I need a break, or wanna give up, people rarely question it. They usually presume I've done ALL I can do. I will love her forever for many things, but particularly for this: Kristen said, “I think you can do better. I think you can work harder.” Don’t get me wrong, I cried. I fought it. I tried to persuade her that leaving DC was the best option. But in the end, she and I drew up a schedule of what needed to be done to get into school, I followed that plan to the best of my ability.
The first item on my “Get into Grad School To Do List” was three recommendations. I didn't have any research experience, and I'd only taken ONE psychology class in college, so I knew they needed to be stellar. I already knew where two of them would come from. When I figured out who the third lucky person would be, I went to work. Mind you, I didn’t actually know the person. I knew of them, and thought to myself, “Now they would make a great recommendation letter! The fact that I didn’t know them yet didn’t faze me a bit. This was the type of person I was. Think of what I want, decide the best way to get it, and then do it with a laser-like focus. Meeting this person was the biggest blessing/heartbreak/lesson I’d had in my life until that point. They loved me (just like I knew they would), and they became sort of a mentor to me. More than that, they provided the stability and security that I craved ever since my grandfather had passed. Then something happened that I did NOT plan. I fell in love for the first time in my life. It did not end well, mind you. Nonetheless I got my third letter and was accepted into grad school.
And Just so you know, getting your heart broken is a legitimate life event that causes grief. Grief is not just something that happens when someone dies. It can be your dog dying, a divorce, losing your childhood home, or anything else that causes a severe emotional upset/disruption in your daily life. Also *VERY IMPORTANT*: Grief does NOT just go away on it’s own. TIME does not heal ALL wounds. An open and untreated wound gets infected and given ENOUGH TIME...you have to amputate a limb cuz the neglected wound gets infected and hurts the healthy tissue around it. Like any other sickness, it requires reactive and proactive care to get better. I did not know this, and because I’m not the type of person to sit at home and wallow, I lived a life where I didn't think about my grief: working a ton, drinking, partying, and moving at a rate that would not allow me to think about how much my heart hurt. And YES, my heart ACTUALLY hurt.
This dangerous and viscous cycle of numbing my pain finally caught up to me. A friend/coworker of mine was sick and pleaded with me to work her shift at the bar. I obliged, and by no later than 9pm, I was told I was too drunk to work. Even in my drunken state, I felt the shame run all over me in full force, and I couldn't escape. What I did next I cannot divulge, but I can tell you the action was a cry for help, a desperate desire for control, and as I started to sober up, I had a serious heart to heart with myself.
WILL the REAL ALICIA please stand up?
The truth is, I didn't even recognize myself. My behavior was so Un-characteristic of me. I was not this person. I was not someone who got too drunk to work, or let my fear and pain overtake me. I remember staring at the Washington monument as I sobered up, knowing this was the end of my time in DC. I felt as though I had been conquered. DC had gotten the best of me, and now it was time to pack up and get the hell out of dodge so I could actually recuperate. I remember the next day very well. I didn't go back to the bar, even though the next night was my last scheduled shift. I knew if I went back, there was a good chance I would drink myself to death. Even though I loved my employers, I loved myself more and I had to trust they would understand.I stayed in my apartment, feeling numb, yet a strong and quiet resolve. I let the activities of the night before run through my head as I tried to figure out exactly how I'd gotten to that point. To be honest, there was no conscious decision made. No one gets up one day and says, "I think I will be self destructive today. I think I will use alcohol to evade my feelings." I had reached that point due to a series of decisions to ignore my pain.
It's been over a year, and what I didn't realize until now is that my feelings about my failure were severely affecting my resilience. It took me over a year to gather the strength to REALLY process what had happened in DC. I had talked about it with friends, but never fully recovered from the feelings of shame and doubt that lived inside of me because of my experience. What I couldn't see was, those feelings were still there, quietly whispering to me, sabotaging my new ventures. Moving to Knoxville, starting a graduate program, disconnecting myself from an abusive parent (and my only remaining parent at that). Not coming to terms with my mistakes, and more so not having forgiven myself, was continuing to hurt me as I tried to move forward.
DC was my first BIG failure. But let me make myself clear, I DO NOT regret the experience. It was one of the toughest periods in my life, which is a big statement for someone with my experience, but here is why. It was one of the toughest periods in my life because I almost lost myself.
Weeks, months, and now years after, it has continued to remind me exactly the stuff I'm made of. It is my biggest lesson about choosing to numb pain out of fear versus confronting it head on from a place of courage. Is confronting the pain easier than numbing? Not really. But the end result is quite different. The difference is this: As I choose to confront the pain, I do so from a consciously cultivated foundation of self-love. The result is that I grow stronger, and am literally a better version of myself. I get to know myself more. I am more forgiving toward others and toward myself. I love others more, and look less for their approval.
To be continued...
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