I was on my way, all right. A serious helping of doubt left a sizable fork in the road I was travelling. There were two tines on this fork, one was straight, and one was slightly bent. Naturally, I took the one that was bent.
After convincing myself that I hadn't packed enough in my suitcase to get me to the Grammys, I decided to pick up a little more baggage. Maybe, if I learned a little more about business in general, I would be smart enough to handle the business of music.
Using my gift of putting together words that sounded nice, I crafted the ultimate resume. It was quite impressive. There weren't any lies in it. If my children had known, however, that they were the employees of an extremely successful, small business, they would have sued for back pay.
How do you go from handling the problems of two pint-size disgruntled employees, to telling sixty people how to handle thousands of frustrated shoppers at the peak of the Christmas Season? You draw on those acting skills you honed as a child! I must have given a performance worthy of an Oscar, because I kept getting promoted.
That road I chose, back there at the fork, led me straight onto a battlefield. Donning a nicely tailored suit of armour, I was prepared to fight in a battle of egos. Proving that I was more capable than the next person, allowed a surprising number of people to relax, while I did a lot of work!
Somewhere along the way, my acting had turned into bona fide skills. I suppose I had learned how to come out of my shell a bit, back when I was pursuing a music career. Music career! What was I thinking? Now that I was a hardworking businesswoman, with a promising career in middle management, I realized how much better off I was. So what if those voices had returned in the middle of the night. At least I had the respect and admiration of my peers. Most of them. Well, some of them. OK, so I really hadn't been noticed by a great number of people yet, but I was working on it!
I needed a new way to relax. Something to take the edge off at the end of the day. Alcohol was a taste I had never acquired and drugs just plain scared me! But I found out, if you wish for something hard enough, it will walk right up to the counter. He did. My distraction.
No woman could have painted a more perfect picture of chiselled good looks and magical charm. Every woman's fantasy! The kind of guy you take home to meet your mother. Someone I could really get used to. Someone to help me forget all the stress of the day. Someone to help me forget about everything. Including me! My distraction became my addiction.
I am sure I don't have to tell you how lost you can get when you are overcome by an addiction. It creeps into your life and little by little, begins to take over. You don't even notice that you have stopped doing things for yourself. You can't remember ever having any other interests, let alone bother to miss them. This addiction was so strong, it engulfed my entire family! I had exposed them to my habit. They too, looked forward to a daily dose of his intoxication. We were all left in a state of shock when I was suddenly cut off! I don't know who took it harder when he left, me or them!
How do you get through withdrawal pains? How do you face each day, knowing you won't be able to get another fix? What did I used to do every day? Who did I used to be? Where had I been? I still had one thing that was very familiar to me.
Voices. Ah, those wonderful, terrible voices. Funny, this time I could almost swear they were making sense. Telling me to close that door on addiction and open up my front door.
At my front door stood my opportunity to see that I was going to be all right. A chance to see the sun rise on a new day.
A chance to see . . .
. . . there's still me.