Looking back, I realize that my life has been built up around a deep feeling of worthlessness. After enduring the “cut-throat” business of acting in NYC for five years, I came back to Vermont and got a job on a farm. When my boss asked me about my work experience, I told him that I was rejected in the cattle call line up: a failed actress. He laughed and hired me on the spot. During my time at the farm, I worked hard, played harder. Parties were frequent, and eventually my drinking habits took on such grandiose and destructive behavior that my partner of five years suddenly packed up and left the house one evening as I stumbled in from work. Eventually I ended up in a toxic relationship. This toxic relationship was the Greek tragedy of “Echo and Narcissus,” and I was a perfect depiction of the classic echo role. I tried everything to make this relationship work, which only rendered me powerless until I eventually didn’t recognize myself. I finally sought help with a therapist who gave me the courage to finally leave my toxic and abusive relationship, and to start over with my sobriety and my life. Coming out of the fog of this abusive relationship, and learning more and more about narcissism, felt a bit like Plato’s “Allegory of The Cave.”
There were many explanations for why I had landed in this predicament. People speculated I had hit my “Saturn Return,” or that it was my karma from a past life. Whatever the explanations, I see it all as a blessing in disguise. This relationship was my crocodile, or trickster, spinning my life around and around until it shattered into pieces. The idea of being lost, uncomfortable, disappointed, heartbroken, hurt, is the last thing anyone would want to embrace. Yet it is during these times, when we are powerless, that the Goddess that is “never not broken”, in Hindu they call her “Akhilandeshwari”, who courageously rides a crocodile that spins her completely out of control, comes into our lives and teaches us to pick up the pieces of our lives and to put it back together the way we want it to be. Bob Dylan always said, “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” It is often in those moments of powerlessness that we become the most creative. For the painter, it is like a blank canvas. Powerlessness is like the foundation of a house, or the soil in which you plant your flowers. When one allows things to fall apart, there is a surrendering, a letting go that allows room for reflection, where we can look back on our lives and wonder how we got here and who am I really? What’s holding me back? We may use this desperate time to seek out therapy for the answers, trying to see the patterns of behavior that hold us back from our true aspirations and values, or from our connection with a higher Self or higher power. Pain indeed is painful, but it can be a powerful motivator that one needs in order to act. My sponsor, during times of distress, used to tell me: “oh it’s just A.F.G.A; Another Fucking Growth Experience.” Sometimes it can take years to break certain behavioral patterns, but it is usually during those desperate times, when we have hit rock bottom, that we wake up to the reality that something must change. My ex- narcissist changed me in a life altering way. I learned that I think I am worthless; an echo, with no boundaries, who will never be able to fix or people please anyone enough to feel worthy enough, to feel like I exist. I learned that I never learned how to set boundaries and say “No” to others. Learning to say “no” was part of learning self-care. In order to stay sober, I had to really focus on my own wellbeing and practice self-care every day. At first it felt like I was a bit like a parent for my own inner child, or inner wellbeing, making sure that I never get to H.A.L.T (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) and that I follow the “basic safety” rules of regular sleep, diet, prayer, meditation, Yoga, meetings and step work. Going from destructive and unhealthy behaviors and habits such as people pleasing, smoking cigarettes, drinking or engaging in toxic relationships to healthy and caring behaviors was not easy at first, but it certainly feels much better now. However, I would not have been able to move on from this destructiveness if I hadn’t hit rock bottom with it and truly come to terms with my feelings of worthlessness. So next time Alkhilandeshwari, the Goddess of never-not-broken, the goddess of worthlessness, comes riding in on her crocodile to swoop me up, and spin me around until I collapse into nothingness left to start over, to rebuild, to reflect and re-edit my life, I will embrace her. For it is within the nothingness that lays infinite possibilities, and as a Buddhist once told me: “compassion tells me I’m everything, wisdom tells me I’m nothing, and between the two my life flows.”
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