Soul for Sale

I tried to run and hide. I tried to justify it.  All those years of working my way up the corporate ladder, I told myself, was making a difference. I was building a life for my family, I told myself.

I was building a future.  A some day kind of place where everything would be  . . . easier, more satisfying, justified.

I cut myself thin. I learned to function on 3 hours of sleep. (Seriously. It works like this:  Sleep for 3 hours / night for 3 days and live on adrenalin, and on the fourth day, prepare to crash.)

I told myself someday . . . somebody will appreciate all this. Someday my boss will appreciate me for such dedication. My profession will love to have me at dinners and speaking engagements.

My fashion sense and Beardsley prints were so beautiful and elegant. (I drifted into a Rod Stewart moment, I am back.)

I worked hard to build what I thought was an image, but which turned out to be an amour. My perfectly situationed suits and shoes would make Kim Kardashian proud.

I told myself that I was keeping "them" out by dressing with finesse.  I told myself it was part of the game. My armament. My offence and defence.

An accessory for this incredible brain housed in my head.

I told myself that I never wanted to live with regret. That I never wanted to say, "I wish I had done _________________".  So I did things.

I bought china.  I took ballet and jazz lessons as an adult, I finished 2 degrees as a mother of 2 small children while working as a school bus driver for "easy" money. My husband and I bought, renovated, lived in 4 houses and sold 3. We raised two great young women whose intelligence and free spirit amazes me despite their cookie cutter model mother.

Somehow I have managed to stay married to the same man for 30 years to date through everything from job changes to layoffs, long distance work, to school, to sickness. (The secret? Humility, forgiveness and just not looking sometimes.)

I set goals along the way, naturally. I am a planner. I wanted a formal education, so I got one.  I wanted to someday be a fitness instructor and I now am.  I wanted someday to take a vacation, and we did twice go to Brazil.

I wanted to be a senior manager and an executive, and I was for 9 years. I wanted to be a published writer, and I am, mainly because writing and story telling is as natural as breathing to me.

A friend recently asked me, "so Lynn, what have you learned?"  I thought hard.

I learned you can't go back to a place you've already been.I learned  that tolerance has a limit, even for the purest of heart. I learned that opening and closing doors requires courage. I learned that I detest that question, "what have you learned" because it makes me feel stupid, like I failed the game show section of my life. Like everyone has the answer. Just not me. I learned that I am an ok person and a work in progress.

And now, I am here. At this place of what's next with no tangible plan for the first time in my life.  No path.  Just questions and a very funky business card.

As I look back on the dedication that I gave to my career, it was a necessary to support my family.  It was not necesarry to tie making money to self esteem. It was necessary to take the bumpy roads to get to the roads that I will now choose, because now I know where never to go again.  It was not necessary to accept anything but respect. It was necessary to stand up for what was right for myself and others.

But I did catch myself telling my daughter the other day not to sell her soul to the devil, or she would someday be trying to buy it back.