I read something from Simon Sinek that said there are two types of people, the kind that walk in a room and say "here I am!" and the kind that say "there you are!"
I consider myself a "there you are" person but I can't for one second be a "there you are" person without having you first understand my "here I am" epiphany. It's not that I wanted to be the center of attention but instead I didn't know myself at all and had to find me before I could even see anyone else's anything.
I've told versions of this story before, the safe ones where I look great and come out perfect. But as Rachel Hollis so aptly put it in "Girl Wash Your Face", Superman was rewritten because invincible was boring.
I'm no superman but I'm sure as hell not boring.
It was a Sunday morning and I was meal prepping. I do this religiously, pun intended. Routine is sacred to me and has always centered me. This day was no different, or was it?
My daughter was watching TV but left the room to take a nap. My hands were covered in chicken so I let the saccharine sweet children's channel play while I chopped and sautéed my way to order and calm. The show changed to a movie and I said under my breath "this is going to be so lame" but still didn't stop to wash my hands and change the channel.
What happened next was nothing short of an awakening. I wasn't high or drunk, quite the contrary. The next few minutes would become the most sobering reality I've ever encountered.
The movie plot began to unfold. A girl (preteen age) wants to be a baker. Her grandparents own a bakery where she works. In her eyes this is her passion and purpose. She describes why she wants to be a baker.
"It's like when I'm baking, time just stops and I'm casting some kind of spell. All I have to do is follow the recipe exactly and I can make something magical happen. I love it and want to spend the rest of my life doing it."
What a load of crap! I thought. The acting in this movie is terrible and how in the world could an 11 year old girl know something so deeply profound.
Meanwhile I felt another emotion creep in, jealousy. How could an 11 year old know her place in this world and her contribution to it and I'm sitting over here a 34 year old married mother of two making a great living and confused. Wait, am I confused? No, I love my life and everything in it.....except I'm kind of bored and restless. But why? I have everything! The husband, the family, the job, I manage a department for crying out loud! I have it all!
Not sure of what was going on in my own head, I forced myself back into meal prep. (still not changing the channel)
The girl ends up in Paris for the summer in her Aunt's bakery.
I laughed out loud because not only was this completely ridiculous but her parents also went with her. Who on Earth can just pack up and move to Paris for the summer? Don't these people have real jobs? I thought.
Another 30 minutes into the movie the girl makes a huge mess in the bakery and ruins various baked goods in the process. She runs out of the bakery to talk to her mom about the situation.
And then it happened. On the screen I saw a girl and her mother talking to each other. In my head I saw two people truly connecting and I found myself saying out loud to no one, "I'm missing it."
What is "it" you ask? Remember when I mentioned all the things I had; well, I didn't really have them.
My marriage was hanging by a thread. Every night I arrived home 30 minutes to an hour later than I promised. I talked about work nonstop. I would bring my computer to bed to catch up on emails. When I did each of these things I would always say "I'm sorry." In my mind this was my lifeline. I'm sorry would fix things long enough for me to get back to work. Except I could feel the I'm sorries running thin. My husband did EVERYTHING for our family. He was the glue and I was slowly becoming Goo Gone, (the stuff that removes glue).
Then there were my children. I have 2 and at the point of this epiphany they were 1 and 4. Motherhood felt suffocating to me. I loved my children with all my heart and honestly feel like the day each was born a new room in my heart opened like an addition on an old house. But I hated it. There, I said what you're not supposed to say. Let's be clear though. I did not hate my actual children, I hated everything that comes with small children. Diapers, round the clock feedings, stalking them while they run through the house looking for something to electrocute or maim themselves with. And if I end up in hell it will be arts and crafts with toddlers followed by pretend play. Was I supposed to hate this as much as I did? Was I letting the fact that I hated it get in the way of cultivating a real relationship with these little people? If my daughter had the chance to go to Paris when she turned 11 would she even want me there? Oh God! What if she didn't and instead sat on that bench pouring her heart out to someone else's mother.
And of course work. Work was where I spent every waking minute physically or mentally. The truth was I was terrified of losing my job. Everyone around me felt smarter, more put together and childless. My childless coworkers could guiltlessly stay late, attend work happy hours and travel non stop. I was trying to compete with a group of people that didn't battle their own priorities. I was constantly beating myself up for never measuring up. They were getting ahead and I was treading water. The thought of this was eating away at my soul. I had risen through the ranks in my career because of my ability to outwork everyone around me and that edge was slipping. Each day I would go to work giving myself a pep talk that went something like this "use the hours you have meaningfully." Only to fall prey to the unspoken office politics of how it would look if I left at a normal hour, so I stayed late. This of course started the I'm sorry cycle with my husband.
Which leads me to my last realization. What was I even contributing to? I worked for a cell phone insurance company. I only share this because I wasn't curing cancer, clothing children in Uganda or anything worthy of my time and attention. (there are a million other worthy causes that aren't this Mother Teresa-ish but at this point this was where my head was) I had created a planning and procurement department and managed millions of dollars of cell phone inventory. People get pissed when they don't receive a replacement phone but this job wasn't a life or death situation.
Bottom line I wasn't doing anything with meaning behind it, except, my team.
The one thing I was doing right was building my team. The amazing people that showed up for me daily. This team gave their blood, sweat, tears, brains and hearts to their job and for that I loved them fiercely. Weekly I had one on ones with each employee and a team meeting. We laughed, cried, dreamed and planned. It was pure magic! They needed me to guide them (so they thought) but I needed them even more. It was pure magic!
Didn't that little 11 year old girl describe cooking as magic? There was something there, but what?
I knew one thing for sure, I had a mess on my hands. I had to clean up each part of my life and something that had to stop immediately was me trying to compartmentalize each part of my existence. I don't care what anyone says, you can't compartmentalize your life. It's like a painter's palette. Choose to keep the colors separate and create a fairly boring painting or blend them and produce a rich and vibrant piece of artwork.
I was done with boring. It was time for rich and vibrant.