Breaking a Deal with the Devil

I had gone too far…and I was on my way back there. Home.

I was staring at the back of 11 rows of heads on a return flight following an epic weekend escape from my day-to-day. While contemplating if earbuds were a suitable replacement for a fancy seat, the movie in my mind had me stand up, rip my clothes off, and lap-dance the ghost in 12F just to feel something for one more second before I went back - followed only by the flight crew asking me to “please return to your seat ma’am”- and all I was really embarrassed about was being called ma’am. Fuckers.

I had gone so far in fact that I truly identified as nothing and was uncomfortable coming home to myself. Motivation reaching its familiar tantrum. Heart stomping. Hands grasping for air. Panicking in anticipation of being drawn and quartered. Wishing it was a dream. Knowing full well that I created this messy landing. Like a Carrier Pigeon with a set of encyclopedias. It hurt just knowing it was coming. Upon my return, where would I even begin? What. Have. I. Done.

I was trained to say yes. To everything. My self-worth relies upon it. What do you need? I can probably figure it out. Shapeshifter at your service. Although this way of being has led me quite far down several paths, the recurring pattern is to reach a point where I must retreat or die. And I find myself at square one. Starting over. Again.

Something’s missing…and it’s been a REALLY FUCKING INTENSE existence of looking for it. Is it peace? During the hypnosis of blow-drying my hair, every pull of my round brush brings revolving images of people waiting on me for something. The list of things to achieve. Vying for attention. Punching me in the gut as they pass. And here I’ve not even started whatever it is I’m getting ready for…

I accidentally gave myself a day off. As glorious as it felt, I woke up the next morning with the weight of my entire ancestry sitting on my chest. Actual pain. Intense guilt.

I’ve watched them. Those people that just say “No thank you 😊” when they don’t want to do something. WTF??!?

I learned what makes me a good person is whether I can be what people need me to be. Add to that the deep wound seeking confirmation from someone, anyone, that who I am is okay (whoever that is??!?), and an entire life can be built upon responding to requests. But eventually one looks around and sees that everyone else has an actual life and you don’t. Something they’re doing. Someone they’re doing it with. Some reason they’re doing it for. They’ve landed. And whatever their path, they’re on it.

It’s like my parachute got caught up in the trees and I’ve been dangling about trying not to strangle myself. Distracted by colourful subsistence vine-ripened within my reach alone, time has passed, but I’ve never forgotten why I jumped out of the plane.

Perhaps we all have a devil that distracts us from our journey. In exchange for never having to disappoint a person that had any capacity to love me, I simply had to agree to an existence of judgment. Every thought, word, and deed under self-scrutiny without the ability to self-direct. Reliant on the peanut gallery. Fuelled by the belief that I don’t get to choose. Want. Crave. Rest. Play. Don everyone else’s mask first. Suffocate in a martyrized sense of obligation and carry on. Or else. So, I never indulged in the art of saying no.

In grade 11 I failed a social studies exam on purpose just to see what it would feel like. I got 30%. OH, the tongue lashing! But it was fucking juicy...letting myself go there…to be a disappointment. And even though I’ve fed the monkey on my back cheap snacks for so long I can’t see past its flappy arms holding on for dear life, I remember what it felt like to have freedom of choice…just for that moment.

There are times, while we are (re)defining who we are, when it’s a good idea to say yes to everything. Throw it all at the wall and see what sticks. We’ll succeed and fail and discover what we like, need, want, and don’t. But eventually we get to a place where something fires us up and then we must start saying no. I rephrase: Until that path is satisfied, orgasmically, the answer to everything else, outside of our survival, must be no. Otherwise, the prize we worked so hard to find will pass us by like everything else that mattered less.

And this doesn’t mean giving up on relationships. The community in which you indulge in authenticity is the breeding ground of what will become your people. And landing doesn’t mean you’re stuck. You can jump again…if and when it’s time.

But choosing to jump can be messy unless you do what it takes to land properly. To stick a landing, which is a thing of beauty, takes focus, precision, commitment, strength, desire, and resolve. The reward is personal power. Self-actualization. The buzzing of pure life-force energy pulsing through your pores. Alignment. And for the love of all that is sacred and holy people WANT you to go there. People want to be around that feeling. That’s why they clap during the Olympics. The more of us that create bliss the happier we all are.

I’d like to say we’ve trained for this but…

When you’ve gone too far you have to gut it. Your life. Stop everything. Put tarps out on the lawn and sort what stays, gets given away, and what’s garbage. Face everything you’re doing and answer truthfully if they represent what you want to be. And even then…create a wait list. Perhaps figure out one thing at a time and face the music with everything else. Just tell them you can’t. Or won’t. Or don’t want to. Or at least where they’re at in the queue. It’s possible they’ll be fine.

When you’ve gone too far something must go. There are signs. Eating a protein bar in the shower, sitting up in the bath just to be closer to the towel that I’ll need any second now, shutting off the ‘remember to eat’ alarm so it won’t interrupt my next meeting, cramming in errands between other errands, hyperventilating at the sight of my own calendar, feeling relief when something I’m looking forward to gets cancelled, frequenting public washrooms because I haven’t had time to buy fucking toilet paper…and when did my neighbours put their fricking Christmas lights up? Don’t they work??!?

Don’t get me wrong. Some of the best ideas generate in the bath, while driving, on the bike, while working on something else, or while we sleep. That’s not the issue. That’s simply the workings of a creative mind. Bring it on. The problem occurs when the process of thinking about things is attached to resentment that you’re thinking about them.

Being unpracticed I simply must expect to fall. And expect it to hurt. In fact, I’ll pick the thing that will hurt the most. It’s obvious what it is…it already hurts the most. Pick that thing and say no because my truth requires me to focus elsewhere. Do it with gratitude and kindness. Say no. Disappoint. Clock the pain and let it motivate me the next time I consider taking on someone’s vision of what I can be for them. And when I walk away head down, look at my feet and see that I’m on some version of a fucking path … one that I’m carving out for myself … and notice the juicy sense of self that just grew a size.

It’s that thing we sell to the world that we do. “I’m a <fill in the blank>”. To be able to say that, with a sense of freedom, joy, and authenticity, I must be doing it. And if I’m wasting my life doing everything else instead that’s on me. Saying “no” has shifted from something that makes me a bad person to something that makes me a person.

Touchdown.