Very, Unsmart, Things

I did a thing. I did a very dumb thing. I did a thing that was very un-smart.

I have been trying to write this particular piece for a week, now. I was having a hard time because I wanted to tell all the things. Share EVERY detail. Revel in how I didn’t do a DUMB thing, but a GOOD thing; a MORAL thing; a KIND thing. I am good. I am helpful. I am kind. I do the right things all the time and deserve love and friendship and support in return. I wanted to explain everything so that I can find solace in pats on the back and accolades and reassurances that yes—you are a GREAT PERSON!!!

Except: that’s not why I did the dumb thing.

I did the dumb thing, because trauma programmed me to do it.

I did the dumb thing, because it’s what I’m socialized to do what I’m used to doing and what I was taught was the only correct way, to do the thing.

I did the dumb thing, because I know I’ve grown past doing that particular dumb thing, but I did not clearly understand how to function in my new truth.

And so, I did the dumb thing.

The story on what the dumb thing was, is this: I let a virtual stranger stay in my home because they were in need, and I was role-playing as Captain Save-a-Hoe, again.

We’ve relocated and my husband and I are about to rent or sell our home. We actually needed some help finding tenants via word of mouth, and this person I let stay was insistent they could help us do that. As we were talking, though, I heard their whole truth even though they presented it in the best light possible.

– They relocated in the spur of the moment, packing their belongings rather quickly, putting their kids in a car and driving over 24 hours straight to get to a new city, for reasons that seemed to have something to do with other people, but were not fully explained.

All of their plans fell apart:

– The apartment they rented ended up full of lead, so they could not stay there with young kids.

– The student loan money they planned to use to survive for a few months was yanked back by the government for reasons undisclosed to me.

– While we were on a video call—their car was repossessed.

And still—cause of the programming—I moved heaven and earth to make sure this woman and her two babies, strangers to me, had a free place to stay for a week. I figured that would be it, but I also saw a clear opportunity for us to help one another after that week was up—if she was able to do what she claimed she could do. If not, we would wish each other well and part ways.

She said she was on board with this. She said she lived by the law of reciprocity. She promised she would help us find tenants through the extensive network of friends she built the last time she lived in this city long-term. She promised she would easily find a job, with plans to apply for, in her words, “those jobs nobody wants that she could get in a heartbeat”, like teaching in a preschool or working afterschool programs if the higher-paying gigs didn’t pan out. She promised to borrow money from friends and crowd source if need be, all so she could could stay in the house long-term and share the house with the tenants she was sure she could wrangle.

Suffice to say that once the week was up—we still had no tenants, no prospects for tenants, and the cadence of her days did not seem to match the urgency of her situation. By the time week two of her stay was approaching its end, it was clear she somehow thought our goals had changed and she was going to stay on until the next month, by which time she would somehow be able to pass a background and financial check for tenancy, AND come up with rent money.

As I tried to refocus the communication process on the actual goals and the realities of the entire situation, there was pushback. I tried to explain the mundane legalities around even attempting to get her through an approval process—which was the biggest issue, and the thing that I was turning myself upside down and inside out over to figure something out that was both legal, and still offered some kind of sane financial protection for my husband and I. The paperwork she wanted to use to prove financial solvency was the student loan approval—and we both knew that money had gone away.

I didn’t want her to leave. I wanted her to have stable ground under her feet. I wanted her to live in the safety of the house where I raised my kids, where I knew she would be safe, where it would have been convenient to walk to every amenity she would have needed. She told me that those were my problems to figure out, not hers.

And they were legitimate problems. The landlord -tenant laws in the city where we own are layered and complex, and they favor tenants to the extreme. We could have written whatever lenient rules we wanted to make sure she could pass a background check–but we would have had to apply those same rules to everyone else who applied and accept them as tenants–first come, first served–leaving ourselves open to having several tenants who had no money instead of just one who was struggling. She suggested that this was exactly what she expected us to do, and that I lacked faith in my own magical ability–that I was a coward–for choosing to acknowledge and address the mundane realities rather than just setting my intention and waiting to see what would happen. 

In the moment where she told me it was my problem…when she said she wasn’t scared or nervous over the prospect of being homeless with her kids, I took her at her word. My real problem you see, is that I always try and reinterpret someone else’s intent, or their levels of intelligence, or their motivations. I always assign the highest good, even when faced with evidence to the contrary. When people seem like users, or grifters, or thieves, or psychopaths, or just heartless and lacking all empathy–I never want to believe that they are exactly who they present themselves to be. I always want to offer grace. Much more grace than I should. And so I twist myself into knots to re-write their script, for them. And you know what? That has served me in certain ways, because sometimes, you write someone off as not so smart, and they turn out to be an amazing resource of knowledge and wisdom—it’s just, y’all communicated very differently. Sometimes, you write people off as untrustworthy, but it’s really your own triggers and traumas whispering in your ear.

And sometimes? You know exactly what the truth is, and you just don’t want it to be true.

It was apparent what was about to happen, and I didn’t want it to be true. But when she said it was my problem, something in me clicked. It clicked into place that she was right—it WAS my problem. It was a problem of my own making and a problem I could easily get rid of. And I was choosing ME, this time.

After that little click cut through the noise in my head and heart, we gave her a move-out date, put her in a hotel for a few days, and helped transport her there.

The saga continued afterwards, but everything she did after the fact showed me that yes–she was exactly who she appeared to be on the surface, and I was lucky to have been able to disentangle from her without as much drama as there could have been. I will never again allow my heart or my hopes to override my inner voice. She wasn’t in a position to help herself. I don’t know why I was pretending she could help us, at all.

You know what the kicker is? In all the time she was there, the actual words, “Thank You….”…..never crossed her lips. She made her claim on the house the day after she arrived, announcing it on social media as her permanent home, even though at that time–we had only agreed to a week. She marched her kids through the house and chose the bedrooms they would stay in after my husband had fully vacated.

But she never said thank you. And it’s telling that I didn’t even realize that, until after she was gone. 

Programming is a bitch.

Let’s talk about self-betrayal for a moment, shall we?

I may have done a very un-smart thing but I’m actually a pretty smart person. I knew exactly what the deal was—because she told me upfront and even if she hadn’t? I knew. Wisdom knows.

I have spent years doing shadow work, learning, healing, growing. I know this is not a process that ever ends, but I truly thought I was beyond this type of behavior—the kind of behavior where I offer all of me and my resources and my time and my energy because I think that is the only value I have inside of any relationship, and people will at least stay for a little while, if there’s something they can get from me.

There’s this idea that I held that DOING, is more important than BEING. That DOING GOOD is more important that EXISTING. That WORTH is inherently tied to what you have…how much money you generate, how much service you offer…how much time you freely give.

What the healing process has shown me is that none of this is true. We deserve safety, and love, and healthy food and a safe place to live and a loving community and just…..love…because we exist. We are worthy because we are.

I am. I am. It is such a hard thing to wrap my brain around.

I remember when I was little, I was watching a movie about the 10 commandments. I couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8, but the Christian cult I was born into was very heavy into studying the bible, so I was pretty familiar with it—so I thought. When Moses saw the burning bush and asked God who he was, his response was, I am that I am. And I laughed! I gleefully went to tell my mother how wrong the movie got it and thought she would be so proud of me for noticing. The entire point of our cult was to notice when other interpretations of the bible were wrong so we could teach people the correct way. One of the tenants of the cult was to use god’s name and build a personal relationship with him, and they prided themselves on “restoring” his actual name in the bible in those places where they claimed his name had been stripped away, to keep him far away from us. To keep him unknowable to us. To keep him impersonal, and strip away the power of his name.

Imagine how surprised I was when she told me that was actually true? That god did, indeed, respond just that way, to Moses? I did not believe her. It was incomprehensible to me that an almighty being would respond in such a confusing way. I was a big fan of my little book of bible stories, and I did NOT remember that part at all, so I looked it up in the actual bible. Lo and behold: She was right.

I struggled with the concept at the time, and still do down to this day. But in the healing process, I began to see it’s foundational beauty…

I Am.

There’s such power within the concept…

I exist.

There is a lack of explanation because no further explanation is needed. A being, utterly undefined by anything other than their existence, because that is what matters. They exist.

And therein lay their power.

I am. To quote my mentor,” I am a universe-approved expression of the all…”, and I don’t need anymore permission beyond THAT, to justify my existence.

I don’t have to prove my worthiness.

I don’t have to beg for what I need, because the universe is abundant in its beauty and resources and when we align ourselves to who we are at the deepest, most intimate level…all that we need comes to us.

A few weeks, ago, when I lost my mind and did that very dumb, very un-smart thing, I think I was shaking off the last bits of the old me, like a wet dog shakes off his coat to release the weight of all the water and bits of detritus stuck to his coat after swimming through the muck. I think I was trying to remind myself that this lesson? I really had mastered it already. The universe was just asking me to be sure; asking me to walk into my future with strength and knowing.  I was being reminded that to move into greatness, you have to leave behind what is no longer beneficial.

No more explaining. No more bribing, cajoling or begging.

I am.

And that’s more than enough.