Truth and Personal Responsibility: Breaking the Cycle

This is the story of how I discovered the importance of truth and personal responsibility. It is not pretty or simple, but it is a crucial part of my journey, and it may become a part of yours as well. I hope so.

Abortion

I was 26 years old, and my boyfriend, the greatest love of my life at the time, was driving me to get an abortion.

A really big part of me did not want to have an abortion. I loved my boyfriend; I loved him the way the moon loves the earth, revolving endlessly around him, moving oceans and tides for him. I wanted to have what would be our baby.

He loved me too. But he loved me the way the earth loves the moon, deeply, but knowing that it will always be there.

We were lovers, but we were not partners. It was a messy, hazy kind of love, young, drunk and confusing.

So when I got pregnant and we discussed what to do, whether to keep the baby, I voted “yes,” and he, of course, voted “no.”

I had a decision to make. I could forge ahead alone, strong and willful as I’ve always been and end up, surely, evidently, raising a black child as a white woman alone. Sure, he would have stayed involved; he’s a good guy; but the child would have been raised by me.

I imagined it, us, another statistic, all of us. I didn’t want that. So I decided the “no” should win. I wanted a child, his child, but I only wanted it if we were both in.

I made the appointment for the abortion at six weeks pregnant.

Praying to a God I Don’t Believe In

Still, sitting in the passenger’s seat of his Silver Honda Accord, a birthday gift from his parents with whom he still lived, I prayed.

I hadn’t become an atheist yet, and I still imagined there might be some god somewhere listening.

“Give me a sign, any sign, that I’m not supposed to have an abortion. Or give me a miscarriage so I don’t have to have an abortion.” I thought for the thirty minutes south. We didn’t talk. We sat quietly. I prayed, with my forehead pressed against the cold pane of glass.

The day was gloomy, and as we pulled into the parking lot of the doctor’s office, it hit me: there would be no sign, no miscarriage, no help.

I had to take responsibility for this decision. This was my decision, and I had to own it. It was at this point in my life, 26 long years after I was born, that this realization hit me for the very first time. I was the owner of my own destiny. I was the only one to blame or praise for my choices.

What Was It Going to Be?

I walked into the office. I had the abortion, killing any chance of having a baby with my boyfriend, and effectively ending our relationship.

It took another month or so, but that was the first real nail in the coffin of what was already a highly dramatic and emotional relationship to begin with. The last day we spoke I picked up all of my things from his parents’ house, I dropped off the puppy he had insisted we buy together, I looked him in the eye, and I told him firmly, “Don’t call me. Don’t write to me. Don’t show up at my house. It’s over.”

We never spoke again.

My heart was broken, I sat huddled under my desk many days after that sobbing uncontrollably, my world ripped apart.

But my resolve was firm.

I began the process of owning my own life right then and there.

I was a bank manager at a huge, corporate, international bank at the time. I hated it. Only a few short months after that, I quit my job as a high powered career woman and registered at my local community college for my freshman year.

Life, Owned

I took two jobs, one as a bartender and one as a loan agent. I went to school in the early mornings before work and a couple of late evenings. I worked hard for straight A’s and transferred to the university two years later, graduating with my Bachelor’s degree, suma cum laude, highest honors, only two years after that, five years after I took control of my destiny.

I then charged ahead and worked to earn my Master’s degree, also with highest honors, turning in a 100 page thesis paper while pregnant with my first child. I graduated with her in a front pack.

I tell this story to my students all the time. I tell the story of how I ran away from home, supported myself, and didn’t go to college until I was 27, only to find huge success once I got there. I tell them this story to reassure them that they don’t have to have it all figured out by the time they’re 17, or even 27.

Now, I tell a different version of this story to say that the difference between the ability to move forward and finding yourself stuck in a cycle of failure, as I see it, lies in owning your own story.

For 26 years I drifted through life, letting life happen to me, suffering and struggling and crying at my misfortunes. I would pick up, forge ahead again, fight tooth and nail to gain one inch, then backslide several feet, and rage at my misfortunes.

Mom

Last week, I had a run in with my mother, only one of many we’ve had over the years, and it hit me that she is stuck in this cycle, this bubble of pain and suffering that she can’t seem to pop.

Things are always “happening” to my mom. Parents are neglectful, men are abusive or unloving, or both, children are rebellious or ungrateful, and life is unfair. This is not to say that these things are not true. They most certainly are.

My mother’s father was a horrid man who treated her like the red headed stepchild she was. She was indeed married to two abusive men, one abused alcohol and drugs, the other abused drugs and her. And her children are monsters; I say this as one of them. We do what we want, and we say what we want. We are certainly not highly obedient and respectful of our parents. And life, as we all know, is unfair.

But I noticed last week that my mother never had her “aha” moment. She never grabbed her life in her own hands and owned it fully. She never decided that her life was hers to live on her own terms, never took responsibility for all of her choices, good and bad.

And I don’t say this as a victim of some slight; I am almost 40, I have no time for victimhood.

I say this as the daughter of a lover of the law of attraction.

Law of Attraction

My mother found the Science of the Mind church when I was only 5 years old, and she has been teaching me about the power of the mind, about vibrational energy, about the law of attraction for the last 35 years.

The concepts of the law of attraction are so deeply ingrained in my brain that I see its evidence everywhere I go. I wonder at it, I am in awe of it, and I have recently begun to focus entirely upon it.

It is undeniable that like attracts like; it is a law of physics. Happiness begets more happiness; so it goes with sadness, anger, humor, etc. It is also undeniable that when you picture a goal and work towards it, never giving up, you will either achieve it, come damn close, or die.

When we don’t achieve our dreams, it is because we give up on them.

A big part of continuing the fight for the dream is personal responsibility. If you can’t take ownership of your failures, then you are not recognizing something. If you don’t recognize where you went wrong, you can’t go right. You will end up in the same cycle, that same bubble, over and over again. Coming from where I come from, I see this vicious cycle a lot.

My mother can’t get out of her cycle because she can’t take ownership of her role in its failure.

Every single time in my life that I have succeeded it has been because I have looked at my life with my eyes wide open and made my decisions accordingly.

It Is Not Easy

But it is worth it. And you can’t move forward without it. You will eventually backslide those several feet in a Sisyphus like self torture.

It is also not a matter of once and for all. After that first time I confronted my own truth and took ownership of my life, I have made mistakes, fallen into bad habits, and backslid again. But only by inches, only small errors, and I can see my bad habits forming and self correct.

Along that rocky road I met my husband, who, interestingly enough, was in the exact same place I was.

He was tired of living a life of “things happen” and was moving into an “eyes wide open” state of being. He had begun taking ownership of his life and his destiny, and we met while we were both still in our infancy of this new journey.

We found love, both of us, in the unlikeliest of places at the unlikeliest of times. And we found real love, a partnership.

One of the most important things to both of us from the very beginning, more than ten years ago now, was honesty. We had lived lives of lies and deception, of cheating and stealing for too long, and we didn’t want those lives anymore.

We are stars, neither star bigger or brighter, but each having alternating moments of bright flashes. We don’t need to compete or aim to outshine each other; we are happy to have collided on our paths and formed a mutual path that will shine all the brighter for having both of us on it.

Life, In the End, Is a Choice.

We say this all this time, but I think we forget that we are the ones making those choices, and that we then have to both accept the consequences of those choices, and take responsibility for those consequences.

Those are very mature things to have to do, and sadly, most of us have forgotten how to do it.

We have to be better, and it starts at home. This is work we can all do, each and every single one of us.

I have become the queen of accountability because of how much of a difference I think it can make. I am now the first one to say “Yes. I did that.” And sometimes that includes, “I am sorry. How can I make it right?”

Even for things I have not done personally. I recently read an incredibly compelling article by Jamilah Lemieux, a black woman, on white women as victims. I could have been defensive and angry; in fact, she expected me (all white women) to be; instead, I merely tweeted to her, essentially, I am listening. I will do better.

It is the most freeing state of being you can be in, and I now am kind of a junkie for it. Try it out, see how it feels to release all of the worry over being “bad” or “wrong” or “judged.”

I did that. I have a part in that. I own that. I am sorry for it.

Or Not.

You don’t have to be sorry.

I am not sorry I had an abortion. I would do it again. It was the right decision for me.

I own it. I had a part in it. Now I can move forward.

Forward, always forward.