It's cold outside. Bitterly cold. Any-moisture-in-your-nose-freezes-when-you-breathe-in kind of cold. Everything stands still or is slow moving...only the warm air out of the furnace vent blows out effortlessly. I love the view outside - everything looks beautiful and magical - but one step outside and the cold saps all my energy and I grow numb.

I hit the pause button on my journey for a little while, cruising in survival mode. As an event planner, the level of stress to create and deliver a major event always escalates to a frenzied pace. I do what I have to do to get through it, and at a certain point I would surrender to that feeling of robotic numbness. I would lose myself in work, feeding off of the adrenaline. Like the air out of the high-efficiency furnace, I've always wanted to give the impression that no matter the challenges and issues, I could make everything look beautiful and magical. Some would say I am a workaholic, but I don’t know how to work hard AND play hard. I only know how to function. 

Secret Reveal #6: I stay busy as a way to escape and hide from my reality and my secrets. 

Work, I could control and manage things. Work, I could remain emotionless. Work, I could validate my sense of self-worth. Work, I would always find the positive and make things happen. After all, work is one of my holes in my sidewalk - it's a safe place, it's a comfortable place. But when my work environment became its own chaotic and demoralized cosmos, I felt the hole beneath me open up further, leaving a trail of overwhelming disorder and confusion - a sort of tossed salad of reason, reality, deceptions, disillusions, misconceptions, red herrings, logic, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and anxieties. I hate being in this state and craved the return of the blanket of cold numbness. It would have been so easy to slip back and escape into the old me.

But I can't. I've changed.

I was very much aware of my past shadowing behind me, but I wasn't able to shut it out or shut down like I used to. Its presence was clearly felt, demanding to be acknowledged. Unfortunately I didn't have the self-discipline or energy to put the emphasis on my own needs. So work would creep in and take up its space, but this time, I felt a gnawing resentment towards work and I became aware of my escape responses. The first was to flee - I coped by eating and smoking cigarettes to try and settle the chaos within me, or I cleaned and found ways to stay busy to detach from myself. The other was to fight - I had the impulses to scream, shout, kick, punch, damage things but instead channeled all that tension by helping staff on the snow slides. 

But nothing really worked - I couldn't shake off the feeling and guilt that I was once again trying to escape from my reality. In a TED video,  Ash Beckham gives a talk We're all hiding something. Let's find the courage to open up. 

My hole in the sidewalk is my version of the closet. Ash Beckham also refers to three principles to get out of the holes and closets:

1. Be authentic: Being honest with myself is always the hardest conversation to start and listen to, as well as permitting myself to be vulnerable to let the authentic self express itself.
2. Be direct: I'm better at acknowledging things, but still working on finding my voice to express things - I often like to use analogies, but also learning to better understand the effectiveness of being direct.
3. Be unapologetic: To stop worrying about what other people think and the perceived expectations are notions I struggle with, but slowly getting better at giving myself permission to do things for me.

Earlier this week, I finally had a moment to myself and I took the opportunity to close the door to work...I ignored it knocking at my door or its repeated calls to be let in. I sat quietly in the Ikea cafeteria enjoying the stillness as I looked out the window and watched all the vehicles speeding on the highway.  And then I acknowledged what I had been feeling for the past little while - I wanted off the highway. 

I’m done escaping from my past and my secrets. I'm through with just functioning. I am ready to step out and live. And the means to achieve this - I can’t be an event planner for much longer.  It's time to move on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There's a hole in my sidewalk, by Portia Nelson

Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter Two
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes me a long time to get out.

Chapter Three
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in. It's a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault. I get out immediately.

Chapter Four
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter Five
I walk down another street.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This poem appears in the publication There's a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery by Portia Nelson. In revisiting this poem for this post, I was struck with the realization that I've been repeating Chapter One and Chapter Two for a greater part of my life. There's a stupid detour sign on my "runway of life" that keeps me looping around "Repeat Road". In my session this past week, my counselor had me read the poem out loud over and over and over again...and I became overwhelmed with emotion. Over the years, as part of my survival tactic I've maintained a calm numbness. But in this session, I was surprised at how much bitterness and anger I carried within myself.

1. The Hole:
Falling into the same hole in the sidewalk is my way of self-sabotaging my progress. It's become a "comfortable state of being"...this dark place is familiar to me...blended into my identity. As comfortable and familiar this place is...the truth of the matter is I HATE this place! It sucks! And even more, I hate how I've made this place so comfortable. 

2. I pretend I don't see it / I can't believe I'm in the same place:
I've become very adept at justifying things, disassociating from myself and situations, which are all simply a means of avoidance and denial. But when I'm forced to confront the situation, the result is an ANGRY DISBELIEF. And the more I repeat the cycles of Chapter One and Two, the more the bitterness swells within which has been simmering for years. And I'm angry. I'm angry at myself for falling back into the same hole. 

3. It isn't my fault / It is my fault:
The child abuse, the date rape and the rape - I have always readily blamed myself for letting each incident happen. No matter how many times people would tell me "It isn't your fault", I couldn't and still have difficulty believing otherwise. But when the healing process is self-sabotaged, when I fail at losing weight, when I fail at opening up to a potential relationship - I don't take ownership, I don't hold myself accountable. This also makes me angry at myself because logically, I know it should be the reverse - the rape isn't my fault, but my self-sabotaging ways are. 

4. It's a habit: 
I'm generally the type of person who tries to fix things. The notion of walking around the hole or walking down another street without a hole hasn't sunk in. I'm still trying to fix the hole...either by trying to fill the hole (represented by eating my emotions) or using a wooden plank as a bridge to cross the hole (but I lack the mental and emotional balance, so I keep falling in). But this also makes me angry as I've come to realize I've wasted so much of my energy and my time trying to "fix" the damn hole!

Recognizing and acknowledging my anger is something very new to me. The way I've dealt with anger in the past has been to remain silent, maintain a calm and cool exterior, never letting the ugliness of anger erupt. But I'm learning this isn't productive...the way I have been trying to manage and control my anger is eating away at me inside and taking up too much space. Someone recently talked about recognizing their anger and how they have learned to channel its energy and power. I would like to learn to do the same, and learn to express it in a healthier and productive way.

During moments like this, I look to other women who have struggled as a victim, conquered as a survivor and demonstrated what it means to be a thriver. Madonna recently revealed her own rape experience, her other struggles early in her career and how it made her feel, which you can read in the October 2013 Harper's BAZAAR Magazine:

"...But it was hard and it was lonely, and I had to dare myself every day to keep going. Sometimes I would play the victim and cry in my shoe box of a bedroom...And I wondered if it was all worth it, but then I would pull myself together and look at a postcard of Frida Kahlo taped to my wall, and the sight of her mustache consoled me. Because she was an artist who didn't care what people thought. I admired her. She was daring. People gave her a hard time. Life gave her a hard time. If she could do it, then so could I." 

This and other experiences in her life has shaped her raison d'être: "If I can't be daring in my work or the way I live my life, then I don't really see the point of being on this planet."

I find strength in her words...in her enduring belief and choice to dare. I believe this may be my way out from my own anger and to move onto the next chapter of The Hole in My Sidewalk. Because if Madonna can do it, then so could I.