I often think of the girlfriends I’ve lost over the years. I mourned them and could not seem to reconcile their disappearances from my life. They were seemingly lost to caretaking that boyfriend or mother, to geographical distance, or to that pesky heroine addiction. Maybe we just lost touch while engaged in the “whose turn was it to get in touch?” dance. But I think there may be more to it. They may have been lost to “the Stuck.” I am familiar with this place.
The Stuck is a like a skanky motel, a place you choose to stay because you simply don’t feel you have any other choice. The room is wallpapered with your fears. So ugly, you may have the overwhelming need to distract yourself with eating or drinking or falling in love or spending money so you’re numb. You won’t notice it anymore. I paid rent to live there once; my critical parent perched on the edge of the stained smelly sofa telling me how I’d never amount to anything. Aspirations for my future were buried under my dirty laundry on the floor of the closet. Sometimes that locked door between the motel rooms opened and I briefly connected with someone and made a friend. We laughed and commiserated in our ugly rooms and momentarily forgot our miseries. We started to think maybe we could unlock that stuck front door and dash out into the great Unstuck. But then we both could feel the familiar stare of the critical parents now standing over us. We could hear them in their silence. We then saw ourselves as silly for even dreaming to make a change. And that is where we friends would part company. The door was locked again. It was never a malicious decision (except that one evil e-mail). It may even possibly be the step backwards that precedes the step forwards.
We often fear our futures even as we possess the freedom to choose happiness. Lacking faith in ourselves and the courage of our convictions, we think and believe we do not have the strength to make it happen. We feel we can’t possibly create what we want. And if I do not believe I can, I can’t. It is ironic that in is our absolute certainty that the future will suck, we make sure it will. I had chosen the Stuck for so long while in my first marriage, I became sick of myself. I didn’t complain anymore. My friends no longer asked how I was or invited me to join them when they went out. We had all given up on me.
Then there was a moment of reckoning inside my Stuck motel room when I knew it could get worse or it could get better. I began to see there was hope only if I owned how I’d gotten here. I began peeling the wallpaper. I broke down and cried for all the wasted youth, time, and energy. I sought out the lessons that would guide me to my new room with a beautiful view of the world; the view reflecting my own beauty back to me. The room in the house called Happy. Many of my friends and my ex-husband could not come with me. Fear requires constant sacrifice and attention, you know.
For a long time, I worried I’d lost many of my friends because I’d been too judgmental of them. With my reputation for telling it like it is and holding nothing back, it’s a wonder I have ever had any friends at all. Perhaps I am an arrogant know-it-all who offends everyone with my superiority complex. Or maybe I think too much and over analyze every thought I ever had. Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”. My friends and I felt superior and better with all that yapping, didn’t we? However, the work I’d done to check out of the Stuck motel was about feelings and faith. Thinking isn’t feeling. Thinking isn’t faith. I now know faith in my future abilities to cope, decide, and grow, guarantee I am headed for a peaceful existence. I had acted as if I deserved better until I got it. I was a fake until I wasn’t. My friends said I was superhuman, they could not do that. I was just being brave. And I was waving goodbye.
