A little over seven years ago our family began a journey that has not left one of the six of us unchanged. We were on an adventure, yes, but we were on that adventure because we were seeking out a specific promotion through Bobby's employer. We followed all of the steps and did all of the things that we thought were supposed to be done in order to get this financial dream job. We built up in the kids' minds a sort of promised land of the perfect life replete with fancy family vacations and no longer having to carefully plan all funds coming in - that this job opportunity would create a land of plenty. We did so, because that is was we were lead to believe would be the case. In hindsight, I can see that our lives slowly became consumed by this all but promised job opportunity. I felt like our family had done "all of the right things", but this job remained just out of reach. Always, it was right around the corner. Feedback was constantly given that it was only a matter of time, that soon it would be him sitting in this chair our family so coveted.
And then unexpectedly all of the rules changed. The path that we had been on was now null and void. None of it mattered. The sacrifice, leaving places we loved, uprooting ourselves time and again, learning new positions and different office dynamics - it mattered not one bit. When that reality hit me - it shattered me. We have spent the last 7 years of our family's life moving them and moving them and moving them for nothing more than the experiences of living in different parts of this country, and while those things have been incredible I am not sure that those experiences alone have outweighed all we have sacrificed. To put all of your eggs in one basket - to believe in something so much - to be loyal to something, and then to find that it was all for nothing it earth shattering for me. We gambled and we lost. We gambled with our family's dynamics and we gambled with our lives. The hardest part about all of this for me is that I didn't even know we were gambling. I believed that this process was a sure thing. Do x, y, and z and the payoff is guaranteed 100%. I mean, how can you lose when your supposed success rate is guaranteed? What a soul crushing realization that it was all for nothing.
A bitterness that was once a slow moving vessel has, in the last 6 months, accelerated to the point that I thought I was going to combust from the red hot fury of a dream shattered. Even writing about it brings stinging tears to my eyes because I was made a fool and was humiliated. I hate feeling both of those emotions.
I have spent a lot of the last few months living with such regret and feeling so awful that a good portion of the kids' lives were spent chasing a dream that was most likely never going to happen (unbeknownst to us). I have regret that I bought into this dream and that I sold this dream to them. I packaged it up to them in the truisms of life: if you work hard you can achieve your goals, if you are a good person then good things will happen to you, if you follow the rules the rewards will be great. I had my kids believe in a crock of shit. I now know that not every person who works hard achieves his goals and that good people sometimes get the short end of the stick and sometimes rule following gets you not a single reward at all.
It has been an excruciatingly hard few months for me to say the least; it has been an almost equally hard few years waiting for something that was/is always just out of reach. I knew that I had to, I still have to, allow my emotions and thoughts to just do their thing. I knew I had to feel all of the feelings about this situation and think all of the thoughts about it too. I have been living in this state of flux - of always hoping, but never knowing when it was going to be our turn for the financial bounty we had been told was coming. This situation alone has been life altering (some days I think life wrecking) in its own ways beyond moving around the country.
But then...
Just when I think I am going to break under the weight of the sadness, heartache, bitterness, anger, humiliation, and rage I stop and gather up the deepest breath I can muster and I breathe in and breathe out. The quiet voice within find me as she always does in my deepest darkest hours. She whispers in my ears all the truths in my life. All of the things that are most real and most important. She gives me hope that I will be able to find my life again - my truest most real life - under the buried rubble of the remains of a false narrative I have been building my life on these last seven years - that this job was the end all be all. That this job promotion was going to make life great. That it was going to ease worries and offer all of the commercial fruits of success, That this job was going to be our savior.
The quiet voice within is a godsend. She comes and saves me at my worst, weakest, and lowest moments. She finds me and she brings me back to myself. She whispers to me that it will be okay. That even though I have spent the past seven years chasing a false idol that I can still recreate what is real and true in my life. More importantly, she reminds me that I can still recreate the realest, truest sense of family life that is the foundation of who we are as the six of us. She reminds me that I can build on that foundation and create a life that is good and pure and true and relies on no outside influences. No false narratives.
So, it is her voice that I have been listening to lately. Trying to regain my footing on the life that I know to be truest for not only myself, but also of the kind of life I want to build my family on again. It will take me a while to put the pieces back together and to remember what it is that I value and what feels right for our family, but I know that I can do it.
And right now, it is that promise that I know I can count on. It this promise to myself that will not let me down.
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