PART II: ADDICTED TO AMBITION
A magnetic attraction to chaos and unhinged enthusiasm launched me into my 30s which became a recipe for exposing my emotional bankruptcy. At the time, wealth and power felt like an adequate shield from my soul’s gaping hole. It’s what I was taught as a white American, and it felt like the new American Dream -- to strive to be as close to those who have accomplished massive financial success with the hopes that it might somehow rub off on me. I was a prostitute to the “hustle,” but all I was doing was avoiding the deeper lack within.
For most of my life, I was influenced by my family’s deep-rooted dysfunctional beliefs regarding money. My father was a workaholic, leaving his blue collar upbringing in Long Island for a chance to make it on Wall Street. He ingrained in my brother and I the notion that everyone else in our orbit (of manicured neighborhoods and private schools) had more than us and in turn instilled a belief that we were “not enough.” The feeling of inferiority was buried in between covert sarcasm (our family’s love language), good ole’ judgement of those who had more than us, and blatant jealousy. Money was meant to be saved, invested and not used for frivolous fun. We were also taught to be generous with what we did have whether it was money, possessions or time which I am grateful for. Like most things, I took that to the extreme.
My mom, on the other hand, was a lover of retail therapy. Every time a feeling was too painful to bear, we were off to Palm Beach Gardens for a full day of swiping plastic and bonding. In an emergency, we could hit up a TJ Maxx in minutes where spending had the illusion of saving.
I was falsely led to believe that the thrill of money and the comfort of love were interchangeable. Therefore, I strived to be financially free in order to feel love and worthiness. At the same time, I could not handle an abundance of money as it created too much stability, calm and predictability. The superficial high derived from an earning + spending cycle would never satisfy my baseline yearning for love and worthiness, so I was inevitably thrown back into a chaotic state of need and suffering.
Out of the blue, I received a fairytale opportunity to be the executive host of a beautifully renovated $17 million dollar home in the picturesque town of Georgetown, Washington DC. I was full of fire when I accepted the position, and could not wait to transform the space into a center for global thinking and positive disruption. I genuinely believed the opportunity would allow me to start over emotionally. However, I was unprepared for the deeper depression that the job brought on as the mansion’s glossy red front door closed behind me.
Leaving the daily organized chaos of the Four Seasons and colliding with the complete stillness of an empty mansion felt like whiplash. The guests that I am tasked to take care of are few and far between, and I was stuck with the most demanding guest I could imagine: my own mind.
On the outside, I had everything I needed. I was living like royalty, but none of it was actually mine. And although my responsibilities were large, they were unbearably infrequent. “You’re like a Maserati standing still in a long funeral processional line”, exclaimed one of my litany of bosses. A life of abundance couldn’t substitute for the lack of stimulation, and I turned to a litany of coping mechanisms in order to pass the time.
These coping mechanisms included sleeping until 10:00am, drinking rose at lunch regularly and piling peanut M&M’s into my mouth with a glass of cab for dinner as I plan for an upcoming stay. Overtime, the 15 pounds I gained during my house-sitting tenure provided a safe exterior for me to feel small internally.
One would think that I would create an exit strategy if I knew something didn’t feel right. However, I was in the depths of my codependency and we do not quit our suffering. We dig in deeper to try and make it work not to disappoint. Plus, I had no clue what I would do professionally. There was no way I was going backwards.
Once again, an unexpected opportunity breached my path and presented a new path toward my inner sanctum. And never in my wildest dreams did I think that the spiritual guides for the next length of my journey would be downtrodden Baltimore convicts, but alas, I still had a lot to learn.
To be continued....