Have you ever watched one of those dramatic movies where the star finally figures out how the pieces of a mystery fit together and realizes it all goes back to a singular event? That event started a reaction, and those events end in dramatic fashion, someone gets rescued, and the world is saved. My life is not that dramatic, but I do feel that I can go back and understand how a few events really changed my path.
My linchpin moment came several months after the mess (see previous blog post “The Mess”). I was still going along trying to keep myself together and pretending that everything was okay. But fixing the mess was definitely a process.
It was tax time and in dealing with the mess, I had not gotten the papers to the accountant. He gave me a call and said, “We still have 5 or 6 days before the deadline so throw me bone here and bring your stuff by!” I said I would stop by after work. I went in with my papers and sat at his conference table. I gave him the papers and told him how busy I was, just busy, busy, busy. He flipped through the papers and looked at me and he asked if I was okay. Normally I am very good at keeping the door closed (that is how I could hide the mess) but this caught me off guard. I teared up, those hot stinging tears that just sit on the edge of your eyes. I had known the accountant for many years, and we were casual friends, but we had never had any deep personal conversations. And now I am crying in his office all because he said are you ok? Once I sort of composed myself, I said that I was not okay, it had been really hard, and things were really bad. He said to me, “I don’t know what is going on in your life and you don’t have to tell me. But I do know this, you deserve to be happy.”
He said that several times to me, “you deserve to be happy, you deserve to enjoy life, and you need to figure out how to make that happen.” He could see me, really see me. He could see that I was hiding, that I was miserable. He revealed to me much later, that he was surprised he said that to me because it could have gone badly. Meaning that I would have been mad at him for sticking his nose in my business. But I was glad he spoke up and I told him so! I needed to hear that message at that exact time.
I deserve to be happy. I deserve to be happy. I deserve to be happy! I had lost sight of my happiness because the taker had made it my job to make him happy, and guess what? Takers are never happy, and they always blame you.
I could not stop saying that to myself, I deserve to be happy. This was a linchpin moment, an epiphany. It was the next revelation in getting back to being me! This moment gave me a vision for what my life would become. We all deserve to be happy in who we are and enjoy the life we create.