So, I settled. But, maybe I’d had it all wrong. Nine months into my time at Sprint, I was clearly on the fast track…to getting carpal tunnel. I processed invoices. Data entry. It was pretty humbling. If I entered a lot of invoices in a given day I’d get a gold star. And really, I’m not sure if I knew I was capable of being more than that.
I wasn’t just defeated in my creative dreams, I was defeated in life. I vividly remember watching the footage of the world trade center buildings coming down. It was just a helpless feeling. That’s what my life felt like.
I was this scared little kid in khaki pants, trying to pretend like he was a grown up. I think I should have been trying to learn the cool corporate buzzwords and figure out where the hell I fit in. Instead I just retired to my cube, put on my headphones and shut myself off from my co-workers.
Mind numbing work was perfect for my situation. I didn’t have to think. I didn’t have to face my shit. I went to work. Clocked in. Clocked out. Every so often I would get a paycheck telling me that my soul was worth several dollars an hour. And I just accepted that.
I stayed in that rut for years. I got rescued from that job, but put in another one that was a similarly bad fit. I could do the work, but it didn’t give me life. It did the opposite. But, really the job itself wasn’t the problem. Corporate America wasn’t the problem. It was me.
The 10 year anniversary of 9/11 made me think of my 10 year high school reunion. I was well liked in high school. I made people laugh. I was smart. My memory of what high school was like was confirmed by my wife as we walked into the reunion. She said, “You were popular.”
I left the reunion defeated. But, again it wasn’t the reunion or the people at the reunion that were the problem…it was me. I felt awful about who I was and where I was. I felt inferior. I couldn’t see that people didn’t give a shit if I was a waiter at Chili’s. They just wanted to see me. But, I didn’t give them a chance to see the real me, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to be real and tell them my life was a fucking mess.
Instead I just kind of wandered around hoping to catch that feeling I used to get in high school when I was in the zone comically. Laughs gave me my self-worth in high school. Ten years later, with my self-worth bankrupt, it wouldn’t have mattered if I had gotten laughs. I still would have felt awful about myself.
I was only capable of hearing things within the confines of what I believed about myself. And I had no room for compliments, because I saw myself as a failure. So, when the hot, popular girl reminded me that she and I used to sit with a Mormon girl in study hall, I cringed. When she reminded me that I bashed that poor girl's religion mercilessly, even to the point of making her cry, I had to leave the reunion right then and there.
Maybe my wife was wrong. Maybe my memory was wrong. Maybe I wasn’t popular. Maybe I should be the guy who worked a job that paid in gold stars. But, all that bullshit was just self-fulfilling prophecy. I was going to feel like a failure after the reunion, because that’s who I was in my mind.
I wasn’t the MatthewBlakeAtkinson that I’d been in high school anymore. Back then I had an audience daily, who tricked me into thinking I was great, because I was capable of making my class laugh at my Oral Report on Djibouti. The truth is I wasn’t great, or so I felt.
Fast forward 10 years to my 20 year reunion. I’d gone through my shit with the divorce. I’d experienced grace in a way that was meaningful and I learned that facing your shit is the only way to make the uncomfortable go away. I was finally becoming comfortable with who I was. I saw the same girl who I thought had called me a Mormon basher. Instead of running from her, I asked her about it. I faced my shit.
She remembered the story completely differently. What she was trying to say is that it was good that I questioned the Mormon girl. She blindly believed what her parents told her was true and I made her look at the truth. I did it in a really fucked up way, but my friend wasn’t bashing me. It’s just that I heard it that way, because I was used to getting bashed and thought I deserved it.
She and I had the coolest talk that night. About religion. About each of us questioning our faith and asking questions and fighting to make it real. I told her about strippers and grace. And she told me about her story. It was beautiful. So much healing for me.
We could talk on a heart to heart level. I didn’t have to be popular. She didn’t have to be a cheerleader. We could just be fucked up people trying to make sense of life. And all that was possible because we dropped the bull shit.
I think I thought of reunions as what kind of car do you drive and do you have a place at the lake. But man, my reunion was so cool to me because it came down the heart. It came down to story. It was one of my favorite nights ever…not just with her, but with other conversations too. I realized how much people loved me in spite of myself. I’ve always been as great as I feel these days. I just was blinded to receiving that message because of my past.
And these days I can say I’m great and not feel like a dick. I’m not some Christian on my high horse telling Mormons where to stick it. The irony is that the Mormon girl and I had something in common. We both naively believed something someone else told us was true. We needed to live some life and find truth for ourselves. If we could’ve cut to the real then I’m sure we would have seen that we were both fucked up people needing to heal.
And I’ve learned that through facing my shit and being real, I am capable of receiving compliments. I no longer look at my life through the bullshit lenses I was given as a kid. I can see myself as I really am. I can love myself. I can love other people and receive love. This stuff is all very new. I’m me. I’m comfortable.
I was telling a friend last night that I don’t think I’ve ever felt so content. On paper what is my life…I’m bankrupt, waiting tables, living in a small apartment, driving a car with 140k miles on it. Fuck paper. This feeling I walk around with these days is priceless. But it hasn’t been cheap. Its cost is difficult to pay at times, but so worth it to face my shit, because of the healing that’s on the other side.
I’ve had so many voices telling me I was great throughout my life. But, this censor…this voice inside me that tells me I’m a piece of shit…was so loud that I couldn’t hear any compliments. That censor, the terrorist within us, wants us to stay stuck. He wants us to see our insides as crumbled and full of ashes and debris as the twin towers were 10 years ago.
But man, there’s ways out. That voice is bullshit. You are good enough. You can heal. The bullshit that’s been done to you wasn’t your fault. Let’s rebuild, bitches. We can’t change the past, but like Andy Dufresne said in the Shawshank Redemption, “get busy living or get busy dying.”
We can dwell on our seemingly hopeless situations…from dead end jobs to how the fuck do we heal after 9/11 to I’m so fucked up I don’t even know where to start. But, all those things are prisons that the censor put us in as kids that we choose to remain in as adults. We can stay there or we can crawl through our river of shit like Andy did and come out clean on the other side.
Face the shit. Talk about it. Work it through. 10 years ago, life looked bleak for me. But, I’m here and I’m flourishing. I’ve finally found my voice and it’s no longer the Mormon girl or other broken hearted people that I’m bashing…it’s the censor, this fucking terrorist who breaks hearts and tells us we’re worthless. We can’t let the terrorist win. We have to come up with strategeries (sic) to make sure that the terrorist’s voice gets silenced so that we can come into our own and be who we’re capable of being. Fuck comfortable and settling and mainstream. Fight in this life man. Fight like you want to win. Believe in your greatness. It’s in you. But, we have to battle and raise the flag that says, “Don’t tread on me.”
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