2008 was the year I walked away from a business that I had been with for 7 years, a business that I became an owner and partner in, a popular local business that I had given no less than 120 percent of my time, energy, creativity, and hard hard work to. I had built that business into a ridiculously successful business, and the more successful it got, the more my former business partner wanted me to do while she did what she wanted with the profits (in the most non transparent way she could, and did). Over time in my life with that business, I became somebody I didn't like very much. I worked sixty to eighty hours a week, developed nagging health issues, snapped at the people around me, and eventually... spent every day seething in resentments knowing deep down I'd been duped by my partner, who was a most masterful manipulator hiding behind a sweet and grandmotherly voice. Gradually the sincere love I once felt towards her was replaced by a feeling of utter contempt. I also, sadly, lost a few friends in that time, by putting the business first. Looking back, I realize I even came dangerously close to destroying my marriage, because business always came first. My many sleepless nights in that period were spent quietly obsessing over the business, and when the business partnership finally soured, I began obsessing over how I could get out of it all. Then... one day, after seeing a draft of the profits and loss for the year, it all became painfully clear, so.... I calmly, and rather resolutely walked away, literally. I called my former business partner to inform her that I was done, and I meant it. I never spoke to her again. Leaving my business behind was one of the hardest things I ever did. To put my coat on, and walk away from a business I built, a business that a few months after I left, was sold for profit, and one that upon leaving, never again yielded me, the creative heart and sole behind it, one. red. cent.... though I was owed thousands...As painful and scary as it was, walking away was necessary and a matter of survival.
The hang over, anger, shame, and the emotional pain from that experience was fierce, and it lasted for a few years. Initially, I started litigation, but had neither the emotional strength or funds to get very far, and decided that the lawyers involved were jerks anyway. Besides, my contract was weak, which in itself was a hard and shameful lesson. So, I simply had to keep moving forward, despite having left a part of my identity behind. I felt very lost for a time. In early 2009 I took a job as a waitress in a really grueling and abusive environment, went back to school for a graduate degree in English, worked as a graduate assistant, and all the while, I secretly blamed myself for the past, and worried that I was "too old" "too out of place" and that I had pretty much failed at life... and that life had failed me...
By 2011, after I finished my courses in grad school, I spent four months looking for work and sank into a deep depression. It was actually a deeper depression, because looking back, I now realize I was depressed all through grad school, and before grad school. Nothing was clicking. Then, out of the blue, in July, when a former employee's husband asked me to help him open his new business, I was only too grateful to be working again... and it was in the role of a business manager in the craziest of environments that I finally bottomed out on my own stinkin thinkin. Something in what turned out to be a highly dysfunctional environment forced me to turn the corner, and when I finally found the strength to let go of the dysfunction around me, I let go of a lot of my anger and the resentment, and my own dysfunction. It was time to let go of the past. The experience of helping someone open their business made me remember what I am capable of, both the positive and the negative. So, I consciously chose to go with the positive because simply put, I'd had more than enough of the negative.
By the end of October I left the job, threw out the Wellbutrin, reconnected with my community of healthy minded friends, and even gained a few new smart and loving ones. In November I shed a few toxic people. In December, just before the holidays, I braved a much needed sugar detox and began a new healthy diet regime with lots of leafy green vegetables, and shed 8 pounds of my 20 lb weight loss goal by the first half of January.
My most important goal for the new year however, is to do one kind act per day towards another person, to stay in a positive mindset so as to allow new things to come into my life, and most of all, to be grateful for all that I have. I have a lot. I have a higher power, a husband, family, and friends who care about me and who I care deeply about, two dogs who rule my life, and really, all that I need for today....To keep what I have, I need to give it away, hence, the thoughtful act for another person per day...
In a few days I will be starting my new full time job as an editor/curator. Time heals all wounds. Beautiful things are coming our wayhttp://inoyan.narod.ru/
Time wounds all heels too. Great blog. Your kind act to me could involve a road trip. And my kind act to you could involve letting you win at Scrabble. Love you.
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