Firing a Street Magician

My dad worked in one of those boxy modern buildings made of mirrors. Inside I had to take an elevator to his suite, that’s what it was called, a suite. Things don’t get much fancier than a suite when you’re twelve.

My dad had a secretary named Mona and other employees that I didn’t know what they did. Mona had long dark blonde hair and talked to me a lot. When she wasn’t talking to me, she was talking on the phone.

“…Mom knows that what she did was wrong and I know she’s sorry, because she bought me that Gucci jacket. And sure, I appreciate it, but I would rather she just say sorry. But she doesn’t say sorry, she just buys me something she knows I want. It was great when I was a teenager, I had all the nicest things, but it gets a little old when you’re thirty-five.”

I worked there. I’m not sure what I did all the time. I just know I was there a lot and paid something. I do remember laying papers out on the floor to organize them and I remember making copies. And when I wasn’t busy with my office work I typed stories on the typewriter. Everyone else had a computer and I had a typewriter. I was pretty excited about that. Clickety clack!

One Saturday I walked across the street to Mervyn’s where I bought a pair of jeans for $11 with my very own money. I felt so proud walking back to the office with my new jeans in the store bag. I was a working woman buying my own clothes.

A few months later I realized the jeans were hideous and I hated the way they fit, but the point was how momentous it was going to the store myself and buying my own clothes with my own money.

One time I sat in the front of the office waiting for my dad so we could go home. A white-haired man named Jack sat at a desk across from me. I had only ever seen Jack in passing and we never really spoken. But there I was, waiting for my dad and talking to Jack. Let me rephrase that, I did not talk to Jack, Jack talked to me.

Mona talked a lot, but she would have a conversation, Jack just talked into the air between us while facing me. He told lots of jokes. He had the air of a street magician, desperate to entertain and keep your attention at all costs. At the time I enjoyed Jack, but in retrospect, I may have only been laughing because he so desperately wanted me to. When you are twelve and a grown up cares so much about your opinion they seem really great for a moment. And because a moment was all I knew him for, I appreciated Jack. Perhaps if I had known Jack longer his desperation would begin to wear thin and I might have even found him pathetic, but I wasn’t used to grownups wanting my attention, so at the time I thought he was a very nice man.

Days later I asked my dad about Jack and my dad said he fired the fellow. My kind, soft spoken father was capable of firing someone? And firing someone so nice?

“But he was so nice,” I protested. “He was funny.”

“Maybe he should have spent more time making phone calls than making jokes,” my dad said. “He didn’t fill quotas so I had to fire him.”

“So he doesn’t have a job now?”

“I don’t know what he’s doing now. He wasn’t too happy when I let him go.”

“What is he going to do without money?”

“Look, Liesel,” my dad said, leveling his eyes at me. “I don’t enjoy firing people. But it’s part of my job. And when people don’t do their jobs, I have to fire them. It’s not because I don’t like them or because I’m mean, it’s just part of my job.”

It didn’t take long for my dad to shut down that office and work for himself out of a home office. I asked him if he would ever get an office again and he said, “I don’t like working for people and I don’t like people working for me. I’d rather be on my own.”

Maybe firing people bothered him more than he let on.

Metamorphosis

In the last three days I have started three posts and not finished any of them. Today I am starting a fourth.

Once upon a time I was skinny, then I gained weight, and then I lost weight, and then, recently, I gained weight again.

I knew I was on the heavier end of the spectrum, but I didn’t know how heavy until I weighed myself yesterday for the first time in two years. Lots heavier. I was shocked and upset by the number on the scale. For the rest of the day I thought about my weight. The truth will set you free, right? But I didn’t feel free. I felt upset. I never thought I would weigh that much again.

I had done so much emotional work on myself and expected the weight to melt off when I hit the right emotional issue causing it. Apparently I hadn’t hit it yet. Apparently I was fat again. Apparently my self-worth was wrapped up in a number on a scale. But I couldn’t help it. I wanted my body to look great, feel great, and fit nicely into my clothes.

I knew all the stuff people say: “Love your body as it is.” “Exercise and eating right make you feel better.” Blah blah blah. That is easy to say when you are losing weight and feeling good about yourself. But what if you are feeling fat? What if you are gaining weight and don’t fit your clothes comfortably anymore? What if you look in the mirror and say, “Yuck!”?

I thought about all these things yesterday after the scale incident. I thought about what I could do to lose weight, exercise more, eat less fat and sugar. And I felt the same futility I always do when I’m feeling fat, diet and exercise are a suffocating struggle that yield very little result, leaving me feeling helpless once again.

Eleven hours later, as I prepared to undress for the night, I saw my body in my full length mirror. “Not fitting,” I said. “My body doesn’t fit me. My body doesn’t fit my clothes. My body is not beautiful. I feel heavy and ugly.” I avoided looking at my body as I undressed, but then I remembered gratitude.

A while ago I discovered the power of gratitude, but recently I have been working on feeling grateful for everything, especially when something upsets me. I find something to be grateful for within that thing and then my whole perspective changes. But here I was, being ungrateful to my own body. How cruel of me.

I undressed all the way, then stood in front of the mirror. I looked at my body. The first word that popped into my head was, unacceptable. I have always told my body it was unacceptable. My mid-thirties body had lumps and bumps and discolorations and scars. I looked at it and said, “You are perfect. Thank you for being perfect.”

My body sighed and said, “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” I said again. “You are perfect.” I said it again and again. “You are perfect. Thank you for being perfect.” With every thank you, my body released tension. That was all it needed. It didn’t need diet and exercise to lose weight so it could be loveable. It needed to be loved right now. Loved and thanked for all its hard work.

As I thanked my body, it transformed before my eyes. What looked like a frumpy unacceptable body before, was suddenly beautiful and perfect.

Thank you for being perfect, body. I love you.

Freedom and Fear

So here is an update on my auric walk. (I can no longer call it my success auric walk because I think the word success is attracting the intensely ambitious, extremely intimidating, and possibly crazy, entrepreneurs to my site. Not that they read my blog, they just read my “success” tag and assume that I am a super ambitious person obsessed with making money without doing any work. I guess if you take out the words “ambitious” and “obsessed with” and replaced them with “awesome” and “who wouldn’t mind” that sentence is true. Either way, I could spend this whole post talking about how much I hate all those people and they wouldn’t notice, because they don’t actually read my blog. But I don’t hate them, and talking about them is boring.) 

Now, as I was saying about my forbidden-word auric walks, the most surprising thing that has come from this, is my ability to leave my house. Perhaps you don’t know this about me, but I don’t leave my house unless I absolutely have to. Because I don’t want to.

Now let’s go back in time for a little history lesson.

Liesel, that’s me, has a very early memory of being in kindergarten when the teacher announced that the class was going outside for story time. Apparently everyone in the world wants to be outside in the spring, everyone except me. At the mention of going outside, fear hit my stomach. I didn’t want to go. Please don’t make me go outside! But I went, and every step out that door was agony.

You might think there was something outside that scared me, like monsters, tornadoes, or old people asking for help, but no, the fear was for the outside itself. I never imagined ninjas under my bed or ghosts in the garage, the words “Let’s go outside,” were enough to send me into panic for the rest of the day.

Most counselors or psychologists would say I needed to be acclimated to the outside. A little bit at a time, day after day, and soon I would see there was nothing to fear. But that never worked for me. My fear wouldn’t be argued with. After going outside countless times, it never got easy. In fact, it only got worse.

Then, last Saturday, I wanted to go to a yoga class.

This yoga class situation would usually go something like this: I would pump myself up for days beforehand, telling myself I was going, there was nothing to be afraid of, it would be a good experience. I would do visualizations and take deep breaths, promising myself it would be a good experience and I will go.

The day of, I would still debate about whether I should go. I would hem and haw and do things like cleaning the bathtub when I was supposed to be leaving. Secretly I would set myself up to leave much too late, then I could justify staying home. Whew! That was a close one. I didn’t have to leave the house this time. Good. It is better this way.

If I managed to force myself out of the house, I would be extremely late. In my anxiety, I would get lost while driving there and arrive even later. When I finally got to the class, I would be such a mess, my lips would be numb from fear and embarrassment and I would be quivering uncontrollably. I would force myself through the class, doing all the poses no matter how uncomfortable they were. When it was all over, I would rush to my car, take a few deep, panicky breaths, then not breathe again until I got home.

That is what usually happens when I leave the house.

What happened last Saturday was this:

I thought about the yoga class. I really wanted to go, so I looked up the address and time. I figured out what time I needed to leave, and I got ready. I made a list of other errands I could run while out.

I was nervous about going, but my desire to go outweighed my anxiety. That never happens.

I arrived at the yoga class on time. It was a wonderful experience, and I even ran errands afterward. When I finally got home hours later I was in awe. How did I do all that without one panic attack? Granted I was tired, running around all day is not my favorite thing to do, but I did it, and I was fine.

I started these auric walks two weeks ago. The yoga experience was last Saturday. In an effort to be candid, I never want to do the walks. I force myself through the process every day because I need it. But so far it seems they’re working. During the walks, I symbolically break down a membrane blocking my success, this time I broke through it for real.

I spent this week running errands I would normally not do, like investigating a gym membership, going to the dry cleaners, and the store, twice. Maybe this sounds silly, but this is really big for me. I used to avoid this stuff until it didn’t matter anymore, or someone went with me.

This week when I left the house or stayed home, it was by choice. I have given so much of my life and my freedom to my fears. I didn’t see how much they controlled my life until they lost their power. I thought I made all my decisions based on what I wanted to do, but that wasn’t true. Little by little, I’m getting my choices back and I’m starting to live.