Making an Honest Living

“The truth reads like a tshirt: you can’t look back until you’re past it.”

-Amy Bagwell “The Lie and How We Told It”

This summer I joined a writing group. It is actually the exact same faculty members who are in my book club, but we decided we should read and write. One of our first prompts was to write about an unexpected call or email. I decided to write from the perspective of my 20 year old self.  That silly, young thing thinks she is so smart. She sees my present day self and calls to express her anger, disappointment and shock with who I have become. She is pretty adamant that watching my life might very well ruin hers.

With Brent at my college graduation.
21 years old.

As I began writing in her voice, it felt like an out of body experience. She could hardly recognize the skin I was in, and likewise, I shed her skin years ago. Remembering that time in my life, I can feel my chest tightening as her fear engulfs me. My early twenties were filled with fear. Fear of failure. Fear of exposure. Fear of disappointment. Fear of being fat. Fear of being alone. Fear of being weak. So much fear. I went to bed with fear. I woke up with fear.

Thankfully, here I sit as a 37 year old liberated from so many of those fears. To say I live fear-free would be ridiculous, but most of those irrational, nagging fears have been exposed and realized as my own misuse of imagination. My 20 year old self envies this newfound lightness and freedom. “How do I get from where I am to where you are? I am afraid the transformation is going to require more than time...I don’t want it to hurt.”

To which my present day self responds:

Suck it up, buttercup. Sometimes you will think you are buried but realize you are planted and just need to grow. Your life is full of rich, fertile soil. You are right where you need to be. But if secrets don’t make friends, please know that truth can make instant enemies. You will experience truth and honesty about yourself that will crack you wide open. Listen to it. Then get to work.

Honesty has been my recipe for change. Ironically, my earliest years were missing truth, even though I come from a very religious family. I was conditioned to see myself the way my parents saw me and that was on a pedestal. I even remember my dad describing me in so many words: pedestal. Then at 22 years of age all my smothering fear led me to grab a reckless, irresponsible boy and marry him.  Emboldened by this new union, we tested the waters of my fear and headed to the Big Apple for new jobs and graduate school.

Our newlywed
battleground in NYC.

It was in those first years of marriage that my pedestal failed me. It was totally irrelevant. I painfully learned to see myself for who I really was: a scared, broke and unhappy new teacher with a strong academic resume and a brand new failing marriage.  The plan for my life so meticulously detailed in my mind was crumbling in reality. I hated myself for letting everything spiral out of control. I hid in the shadows and labored to control my panic.

Then, in the midst of the muck and mire of my shame, slivers of sunlight began to break through. I cautiously started to seek the light. There were moments of great epiphany; realizations that who I thought I was, was not in fact who I really was to the rest of the world. The most painful arguments in our early marriage, now I understand, all involved truth, even if it was hurled at me through a rocket launcher. I am not recommending a tumultuous young marriage as a personal growth plan, but it just so happens that I grew out of those ashes. If people ask how we built such a strong marriage, we attribute it to the fact that we worked on ourselves a lot. We grew up together in a tiny 400 square foot NYC apartment.  There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Fear and truth collided.

In my present day life, I contend there are no greater tools for growth than honesty and seeking truth. I am not talking about seeking an outside truth but striving to see the truth about myself. When I am vulnerable and all my secrets are exposed, it makes most of those silly fears from my early 20s void and null. Transparency is actually quite liberating. And perhaps more importantly, surrounding myself with people who care enough to fire truth at me on a daily basis keeps me grounded and growing towards the light. Yet still, my 20 year old self is horrified. I blew up her plans. “You teach at a community college? Really? You just threw away our career to get married and have kids!” Yep, Pedestal Girl, it is raw and uncensored down here with my toes in the dirt. It’s honest living at its best.

Embarrassing my 20 year old self as a 37 year old faculty member.