There’s a span between realizing that you need to do something and actually doing it. Span those two events with planning and organization, even if the casual onlooker might call it procrastination.
Who cares what the casual onlooker thinks? David Bayer shared a story of a time when he was lamenting someone else’s reaction to his behaviour, only to be shaken out of it by his teenage relation when she said, “Who cares what someone else thinks?”
Only you know. Only you can know. Perhaps we can remember this instead of judging others, but it’s so easy to do. When people are judging you, who have no idea, yes, it’s painful. In today’s world, it’s your everyday.
It used to be that way. Back in the days before cities, you knew everyone. Like it or not, you knew their business, and they knew yours. Secrets, when they existed, were deep and clear lines were drawn between the in and out.
By the time towns were becoming cities, it was possible to meet people as an adult who had no pre-existing knowledge of who you were or what you were about.
But still, humans use what they can to shortcut through to deciding if you are friend or foe. More and more, the sheer volume of people we meet demands it. Some are accurate and precise enough for use. Some are completely wrong.
Recently, I returned to the liquor store where I’d picked up boxes to move six months earlier. Of course, I was helped by the same attendant who’d celebrated my leaving with me in November.
“What happened?” she asked.
“The deal fell through,” I answered.
“And you just stayed?” she asked.
Using Time Wisely
Indeed, I did not just stay but chose silence as my answer.
In November, I issued an ultimatum, gave a timeline, and prepared for a better housing market come spring.
Time did not just pass. Besides, when we were already living as separate people, what was another winter? I had a new sled to ride, my own floor to inhabit, and a new life plan to figure out.
But did she need to know? If she did, she could have read all about it.
People don’t read; they gossip. I got to tell maybe three people that I bought a house, and then people whom I’d never met knew what I’d done. Gossip spreads, and when you aren’t in the loop, you have no ability to defend yourself or manage perceptions.
In corporate life, I was chided for not managing perceptions effectively. I thought they should do a better job of owning their half and stop getting all their exercise from jumping to conclusions. I realized I could spend my whole life trying to prove I have a brain, and men would still look at me, ignore my engineering ring, and imagine me bent over.
I like my happy, isolated life where I never have to hear what other people think about me, especially when it’s none of their business.
I’ve realized that I write to record my version of the story, so that I can never be gaslighted again. People can’t tell me that it didn’t happen; the internet serves up the proof. Yes, it did, if it’s only evidence to me, from me.
Retirement is the freedom to give up managing the perceptions of certain people, if you ever tried.
First, The Long View
Having gone from cities, to towns, to villages, to the one who gets a nickname because everyone is talking about them, but no one knows their name, I have many nicknames.
Many conversations in which I was not a participant but a topic. In all my loneliness, I didn’t realize that I was so observed, discussed, judged.
Along the way, I dropped people who only saw the negative, or used value systems that I didn’t share. But no matter who you drop, there is still someone who can rattle you with a remark, uninformed and uninvited.
As I leave behind the village that only knew me as someone’s girlfriend, maybe it’s good you think that I “just stayed” for six months, because the truth is that it was three years ago that I knew I needed to leave. Three years ago, when I first reached out with the questions involved.
First, to a therapist. From the frying pan into the fire was a pattern I could see. From my dad to my boyfriend. After the move, and the resettling, then what? With past experience, I knew that the moment I needed someone, he’d be the only phone number I had, and boom, back to square one.
I needed a strategy that started with a new life, not just a new address. After being nothing but a source of narcissistic supply to the major people in my life, I had no identity of my own.
A self that didn’t exist. “What do I want?” I couldn’t answer the question for purely myself. Each answer was to impress someone else, to precipitate a certain reaction, to lead to a specific conclusion. I crossed them off systematically, attempting to get to the root. Over 100 items on the list, three remained.
Next, The Pilot Phase
For the three answers of who I might want to be and what I might want to do with my time, I tried them out.
I thought I’d use my interests and education at the LCBO. I planned to work my way up to manager and take on a store no one wants because it’s so remote and small. Hence, bye, my life calls.
But that proved beyond my abilities.
I thought I’d go back to pre-pandemic times and revive the corporate-training-turned-pdfs effort that I was about to turn into a speaking career when all the stages closed down, but for real people, not the weirdos they become in the corporate environment. To that end, I started resilienceimagined.com and found joy.
Maybe I found joy in working through the confusion, the voices in my head and finding the words for the intuitions I had.
Whatever works, I thought. Finding joy was the entire objective.
It wasn’t easy. I discovered that I had to disconnect from the identity tied up with my family of origin. As such, I wrote under a different name. After a year, I felt healed enough to take my name as mine, and not as a mantle I must bear.
It can be a challenge to start at the bottom. I know many degreed professionals who’d never take a minimum wage job and deal with the public. It is difficult. As I mentioned, beyond my abilities. However, I gained more clarity, confidence and contacts within the community. A community that could hear my side of the story for the first time.
If you want to learn how to become a pilot, make sure you do a lot of crashing and burning in the simulator. It’s the only way to learn the boundaries of success.
Finally, The Organization Phase
When you know where you are headed, you know what you will need. It started as a slow process to heal. With some organization, it became a personal project with deadlines that demanded my time.
With new demands, I was able to unhook more and more from guilt and shame manipulating me into spending my time and money on someone else’s mission.
The more I could see myself living on my own and enjoying it, the less I could tolerate circumstances and treatment that seemed to be unchanging. If anything, it was getting worse.
Nothing was being maintained; things started to show the neglect. Seeing overwhelming work around me, I realized none of it was mine to do. But if I stayed, I’d not only be doing it, but I wouldn’t get any of the benefit.
Suddenly, houses that needed a lot of work started looking highly appealing. Much less work than here. Much better conditions than here. Upside potential that doesn’t exist here.
Easy peasy decisions that don’t hurt, don’t cause rumination or regret. Only, “I wish I’d done this years ago, when everyone warned me.” But when I did that, I’d doubted them, and headed back.
This time, I know for sure. I feel it in my bones.
Getting organized is always a matter of letting go. Don’t make room for what you don’t need. Don’t tidy and find places for things you don’t use. Pare down with honesty, but when in doubt, hold on, because you can’t get it back. Try again later.
As someone who is all about organization, you might have been surprised by the slowness and the time taken after the move-out date to still be moving. I’m getting Load 9 this week, and it won’t be the last.
Underestimated Finality
The last thing you want to do is poke the bear. Don’t rile the narcissist with sudden and dramatic swooping farewells. This will only provoke them to retaliate, as they will be triggered by their abandonment fears. Go slowly, go surely, and make sure you don’t look back or let them back in.
You’ve learned how to pretend. Do it like an Oscar winner, for your life might depend on going along with a story until you are safe and sound, separate and sovereign.
Safe. Like any addiction once broken, you see the organization of the hole it filled and found true fulfillment for that need. Now it’s not discipline keeping you clean, it’s self-love.
There’s no attraction left; now you can only see the organization of hurt, damage, and harm. You see organization in the past, not the future. And that’s where loss can stay.
It’s not nostalgia, but something you’ve already grieved. A relationship that wasn’t real, a person that didn’t really exist – neither of us, really. For I saw the real you, and you know it.
There’s no unseeing what I saw. No lies to take it away. No promises to make it okay. It’ll never be all my fault, ever again. It never was.
Success, then, in walking away, when it looked so simple to do, so easy to avoid, and yet might be my most proud accomplishment.
I embraced spirituality and let the truth set me free. Organization from tip to toe in what I believe, in who I am, and what I want to accomplish, as reflected in my environment, from my energy to my words. And when tarnish shows up, I will intervene. One mind, one heart, one mission, one religion, one true decision.
Organization. It’s so much more than just the tangible.
Leave a Reply