“Autobiography in Five Short Chapters” by Portia Nelson
Chapter 1
I walk down the street and there’s a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost; I am helpless. It isn’t my fault. It takes me forever to find my way out.
Chapter 2
I walk down the same street and there’s a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe that I’m in the same place, but it isn’t my fault. It takes a long time to get out.
Chapter 3
I walk down the same street and there’s a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see that it is there. I still fall in; it’s a habit. My eyes are open; I know it’s my fault. I get out immediately.
Chapter 4
I walk down the same street and there’s a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.
Chapter 5
I walk down a different street.
I don’t know about anyone else, but when I heard/read the above I thought, Who’s been watching me and following me around all these years and logging my life?
Chapter 1: I have been meandering through the better part of my life like a horse with blinders on most of the time, or a sight-challenged person depending on the kindness of strangers. I have been throwing my life up to chance. I believe now the lack of direction has had to do with not wanting to take responsibility for my own life. At the time I couldn’t see that, nor did I want to. When you play victim your discontent is always someone else’s fault. It was never my fault. How could it be? Doesn’t growing up in a dysfunctional family count for anything? Doesn’t growing up poor mean something? Those are all rhetorical questions and meant to be facetious. My finger pointed straight out at the world for many, many years. It wasn’t until my late twenties when I realized that three of the fingers were pointing back at me! It was in that moment that I became cognizant that this is MY life and no one else’s. How to proceed after that epiphany was the next big hurdle.
Chapter 2: I was a creature of habit and still to this day relapse into old patterns of learnt behavior. It is, after all, genetically encoded in my DNA, this martyrdom I have acquired. I have to put up a conscious effort to move past deeply ingrained belief systems. So with my newfound awareness in my twenties of how I lived my life, I began to see how I operated and had more understanding of the whys. But taking full responsibility for my life was a task I didn’t want to take on … well … not fully anyway. I continued to lean on people for answers and for care—emotionally and financially. I hovered in this realm for about the next decade. By thirty-something the blinders went away and the rose-colored glasses of my denial came off. To say the view was a shock and daunting is to put it mildly.
Chapter 3: Habits are hard to break. Especially ones you never knew you had; and ones that you’ve carried with you for your entire life. My view of life was clearer, but my eyes still needed to adjust to the light. I knew more of the whys and could reason and rationalize my life and behavior away with insight and understanding but (and this is a big but), the knowledge was coming from my head and hadn’t found its way from there into my heart. I could act and do what I thought was best, but being that was a different story entirely. Fake it till you make it is an adage I began to live my life by and it served me well for many years. I felt an internal strength I didn’t know I had. I began to live my life more for me and dismissed guilt and obligation from my sensibility as much as I could. When I did that, however, the people in my life didn’t know how to receive me. The complacent, dutiful, ever-kind and self-sacrificing woman was disappearing and many didn’t like who I was becoming. I was stepping into me and my personal power.
