Vindicated – Dashboard Confessional

It is strange to look back at your life and find the things you neglected over the years that gave you peace. Don’t get me wrong. The last 15 years I accomplished a lot. I had two wonderful children, and they are my favorite people on the planet. I traveled and crossed a couple of new countries off my scratch-off map. I had three surgeries. Oh, and after spending ten years working in a place where I just felt like a cog in a massive corporate wheel, I made the move to another company where we built something from scratch. Pulled together a team comprised of people whose company I truly enjoy, both inside and outside of work. We built a book out of essentially nothing, supporting each other as we crawled through the perpetual trenches of an ever-changing underwriting world. They are all weird but loveable and super driven, teaching me the kind of manager and the kind of leader I want to be. However, somewhere in the middle of all that, pouring all my energy into taking care of all of the people in my life, I lost sight of something. I lost sight of me. Everything became about how I could make other people happy. I thought it was just normal anxiety, but over time something in me snapped, and everything just started to hurt. I would cry on my days off when I was alone in the house, wondering what was wrong with me and why I was starting to dream of a life that looked very different than the one I built – one that any other person would feel lucky and happy to have. I had to remind myself to breathe, but even that felt heavy and strained, when in reality, it should feel like the most effortless thing.

The last year has been a journey rediscovering the things in my life that made me feel happy versus what made other people happy. I started reading again, watching movies, and even started practicing my guitar and ukulele every day (even on random occasions the piano) again. I went back to school and I am halfway to getting my MBA with a concentration in Energy and Sustainability Studies. I finally got a tattoo. I even started journaling again. The particular journal I have been writing in has certain themes with daily questions. Last week on the plane ride out to a work trip to Boston, instead of flipping to the next sequential page, I let fate decide what it wanted me to focus on and opened to a random page. The prompted question was this – What is giving you energy recently? Here is what I wrote:

I have been afraid of so many different things in this life, but nothing scares me more than making mistakes. Plagued by this constant fear of failure, I built a life centered on perfection, only to have my worst fear come true. I failed…as a wife and as mother who once promised in a letter that I wrote to my unborn kids 13 years ago, that I would build a life for them that would not mimic the broken home of my own childhood.

I have spent a year grieving that failure. What is giving me energy now is that the kids and their father, at this point, are NOT irreparably broken. While I am still seeking redemption and navigating what feels will be a lifetime of guilt from having fucked up their lives, today, the future feels less scary. Dare I say, there is a slight glimmer of hope that while there are so many mistakes that I can still make or that I am currently making, the future pains that follow those mistakes will certainly pale in comparison to having already failed at the biggest thing I ever wanted from this life.

Also, when I really look back I don’t really feel like I failed completely as a mom. Is this the life that I wanted for them? Not even close. But the greater tragedy would have been to stay, and teach them all the wrong things about love. Christopher and Elise – you are all I have ever wanted, and all I ever truly needed in this life. If I put you and your happiness first, life will always be good, and I will be the mom I always wanted to be. I know that I do not deserve your love, and you will have so many questions later in life that I won’t ever have all the answers for, but I hope one day you will understand how much more present and healthy I want to be for you. You deserve more than a mom that puts on a fake smile, and cries behind closed doors when you are not looking. I hope you will understand like I did when I was a child and saw my dad cry, that your happiness cannot be fully complete, unless your parents are happy too.  

Oh, so the other thing I rediscovered is how much I love music. This blog has been quiet, because the music, the soundtrack of my life, suddenly stopped. Like a needle stuck on a record and there was just ambient noise. This is me resetting. I have always loved live music. Last week, I was lucky enough to be able to schmooze my way into scoring free tickets to 3^rd row center seats at PNC to see two bands I truly love – Dashboard Confessional and the Goo Goo Dolls. The soundtrack of my life started again.

Can I just say that 1) Chris Carrabba has aged quite nicely, 2) both him and John Rzeznik, after 26 and 40 years, respectively, still have the ability to captivate an audience and 3) we’re all hella old.

“I am flawed, but I am cleaning up so well. I am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself.” – Dashboard Confessional, Vindicated