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s parking spot trapped may have been extreme and downtown an exaggeration given that it was only a five minute walk from her house but i had an agenda and i didn t want to waste time it was lunch with my mom then a quick dash to a nearby town for a mandatory starbucks run and then dinner at my dad and stepmom s also i was taking advantage of the luxury of suburban home washer dryers and wanted to squeeze in a couple loads of laundry in between starbucks and dinner while we were eating lunch the parade started to go by in front of the restaurant we were at and i kind of half paid attention and half didn t afterwards as we walked outside and were heading to her car a group of bagpipers and drummers marched by entranced by the music and the beat of the drums i told my mom to stop and that i wanted to stay and watch the parade for a little while it was mesmerizing looking the musicians and then the people driving by in convertibles and fire engines honking and waving and i got caught up in it cheering for the police and firemen we saw the father of one of the kids from my toddler playgroup who i grew up with standing at the side of the road and said hi the parade used to be bigger my mom remarked and there used to be more of a crowd i glanced around at the sparse bystanders and remembered being a little kid and the memorial day parade being a huge deal i remembered the year it was the biggest deal of all when i was four years old and in the parade with two of my nursery school buddies wearing a brown dress with flowers on it and a floppy matching bonnet drifting down the street in a baby blue convertible with a co op nursery school sign hanging over the side smiling and waving to the crowd and other years watching the cheerleaders and dance team march by to the beat of the high school band wearing the coolest short shorts ever with yellow jackets the school mascot embroidered on the butt dreaming of the day i d be a cheerleader or on the dance team marching in the parade in my own yellow jacket short shorts jenny garam someone yelled and i snapped back into today to see one of the firemen in the parade waving at me it was a guy i went to high school with who was a few years older than me and i smiled and waved back i felt at home and comforted by being from a small town where even though i hadn t lived here for almost 20 years someone in the parade still knew who i was shouted my name and waved it reminded me that i m more than who i think i am right now i m bigger and more expansive than my worries disappointments struggles and fears worries about being broke and what actions i should take disappointments from all the personal and professional rejections and life not turning out how i d hoped or planned or assumed it would for me struggles to make ends meet pursue a creative path cope with my obsessive thoughts grasp onto shreds of serenity and fears about what s going to happen or go wrong next i have this whole history and memories and hopes and dreams from when i was a child and teenager that are still alive in me somewhere as much as they get drowned out in my day to day 36 year old brooklyn life i have all these other experiences and stories that look very different from my life now as the fireman walked by waving memories of when i knew him 20 years ago flashed into my mind how daring i used to be the crazy parties i went to and all the drinking i did these days my life is a lot tamer and usually too tame i rarely drink which isn t a problem but i barely go out which is and i m never the last person at the bar with the craziest stories of all anymore i m the first person to go home who hears about the stories the next day thinking back to who i used to be i remembered hanging out in the firehouse late one night with a group of guys some of whom were volunteer firefighters when one of them accidentally set off the fire alarm the big loud one i remembered a substitute teacher from my high school who lived next door rushing in angry and appalled i remembered how soon afterwards i learned that my town s fire chief called a fire department meeting to address the underage girl drinking in the firehouse and how i was mostly mortified but also a little bit proud of my infamy i have this storyline that i was unpopular in high school cast out rejected and alone that i was invisible and didn t matter this is part of a larger narrative that goes i m still invisible i still don t matter except it wasn t true when i was growing up for most of my life my inner reality has been very different from my outer reality and i can t seem to make them match up the fireman i went to high school with shouting my name from the ranks of the parade reminded me that i wasn t invisible then and that reminded me that my overarching storyline isn t true today either i m actually not invisible now and i do matter after the parade i went to starbucks on the drive home i wound my way through the hilly streets past the house i grew up in that my mom moved out of 14 years ago past my high school best friends houses past my high school the parks and the homes i used to walk by every day i skipped doing laundry and relaxed opting for a real housewives marathon instead i hopped off my speeding agenda and slowed down i can do this when i go home in ways that i can never even come close to in grown up life in brooklyn every time i go home i feel like i m on some kind of excavation mission unearthing shiny parts of myself that got covered up and clouded over with rushing and stressing and loss going home i feel finally separate from the things that weigh me down daily i feel at home and at last like me tags authentic self growing up memorial day weekend memories small town suburbs comments 2 comments categories believe in yourself simple pleasures vacation i want to believe again or why i m ready to go back to self help 15 may i used to believe like really believe in self help i read self help books took classes and seminars recited affirmations wrote daily gratitude lists made and listened to inspirational playlists and much much more until one fateful october night two and half years ago i overdosed on self help and had a total meltdown i joke with a friend that this was what my life used to be like me crying in heap on my floor wearing ripped pajamas and surrounded by self help books but it s not so much of a joke that kind of actually is what my life used to be like i worked really really really hard via every self help avenue available to me to improve my life but after years i was still a broke date less depressed administrative assistant plus i was exhausted from compulsively reading about how everyone else was rising up out of their dark nights of the soul to transform their lives and achieve greatness and depleted from all the exercises and activities that were supposed to help me do the same except i seemed to be permanently stuck in my dark night of the soul sick of lying in a crying heap on my floor i did the only thing i could i shunned the self help that had done me so wrong i stopped perusing the self improvement section at barnes noble and if i accidentally caught a glimpse of some stylish smiling smug self proclaimed guru who had it alllllllll together on the cover of some cheerful book promising me 5 easy steps to a new improved me i shuddered and turned away as fast as possible my gratitude lists had become an exercise in ocd and compare and despair at the height of my gratitude i wrote out 40 50 things i was grateful for a day emailed my list to about 40 women and received daily lists back from most of them while i desperately wanted to be not single not broke not living in a studio apartment and not an administrative assistant i d read others gratitude lists about the thoughtful things their husbands did for them or how much they were enjoying a new duplex or phenomenal career success and get plunged into a deep depression about how much of a failure i was as part of my self help detox i gratefully abstained from writing and reading gratitude lists earlier this year someone invited me to join an email gratitude group i had to decline and explain my gratitude list trauma last month a friend told me that she was thinking of throwing a vision board party and asked if i d be interested in going thanks for asking i replied but i m recovering from an addiction to self help so i can t really collage but here s the thing before self help failed me so miserably it used to work that s why i believed in it and it felt so good and hopeful to believe before my gratitude lists spiraled out of control they brought me joy and made me feel connected to and supported by the women i exchanged them with to acknowledge what i was grateful for to hope that things can be different better not always so hard to have a vision and believe that it can come true is an amazing thing before self help made me feel like a complete failure as a human being for not being further along having this kind of belief and hope had initially helped me enjoy my life as it was and also brought more good things to me which then made me feel even more hopeful and joyful after my self help overdose i threw the baby out with the bath water i became so averse to all things self help and the expansiveness i used to have pre meltdown contracted into cynicism and thinking that everything was nauseating bullshit but now two and half years later i m ready to shed that cynicism i ve been craving the hope and possibility that belief brings i recently picked up a scrapbook i made seven years ago during my self help heyday it was overflowing with my lists and visions and collages and dreams tentatively i flipped through the pages some things in my vision had miraculously come true like being a writer who writes for websites and magazines about the exact topics i write about today dating yoga and spirituality some of the things in my vision had not see husband child brownstone abundant bank account balance in all fairness though it was a 10 year vision i still have three years left to manifest the rest so check back with me in 2015 page after page whether they contained parts of my vision that have materialized or pieces of it that went by the wayside my 29 year old enthusiasm hope and belief leapt out at me at every turn holding the book in my lap i felt like even though that hopeful girl may have been lost for the past several years she still existed somewhere within me and i could find her again i also felt like parts of the scrapbook were somewhat hyper and manic if i resurrect the me who believes in self help i d have to do it differently today with some discernment maybe i lost the all encompassing absolute belief of my younger days but that s what led me into destructive magical thinking instead now i d want to have a belief that s more grounded and stable that won t mutate into desperation and despair that won t leave me crying in a heap on my floor last month after a long period years of constantly ruminating about everything that did or would go wrong and stewing in catastrophic thinking i felt compelled to start focusing on things i was grateful for in list form i started small taking a baby step back into gratitude sending my daily list of only about 10 things i m grateful for to one friend who sends me her list in return it felt so good to sit at my computer first thing in the morning and write my list like returning to an old friend who d i d forgiven for betraying me no hard feelings maybe i ll expand my list to include more things or more people but for now this feels right last week my friend who d mentioned her vision board party sent out an email confirming the date and i said yes i even volunteered to make the inspirational playlist for the party this feels good and right too after being so skittish about self help for so long i can t believe i m actually going to be collaging my vision again and i really can t believe how excited i am about the party and my playlist i m accepting any song suggestions in the comments below there are still some things about self help that make me want to barf like those books with their extravagant promises provided you do all the exercises and follow all the tips that convey the message that you re not good enough as you are and have to do this that and the other thing to have more and be better like the stylish smiling smug self proclaimed gurus raving about how amazing their lives are and that for several thousand dollars yours can be too but i don t have to throw it all out because other things about self help like the hope enthusiasm energy and optimism it can provide bring me joy i m finally ready in my own grounded way to welcome it back into my life to write gratitude lists to collage to make the playlists and read the books i m finally ready to believe again tags gratitude list self help self help overdose vision board comments 7 comments categories having 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