Why I Park in Dark Alleys and Blast ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’

My favorite, personal maladaptive condition is my deranged views on what makes me feel unsafe. Overcoming childhood trauma isn’t exactly a straight path—sometimes it feels more like a ride through a dark alley with the radio cranked up, but hey, it’s part of the process, right? I’m the reason the police have to post reminders on their social media pages saying things like, “Lady, do not park your car in a dark alley, smile and greet the man fiddling with himself behind the dumpster, mess around with eight shopping bags, then climb into your driver’s seat and blast, ‘Don’t Stop Believin” with your doors unlocked, while balancing your checkbook.”

Every time I read those posts, I’m like, “Duh, I haven’t balanced a checkbook in decades,” so I roll my eyes, smdh, and assume the post is meant for someone else, not me, and I carry on parking in dark alleys, messing around with packages, and cranking up the radio.

The Perils of Over-Praising

(Off-topic/on topic, as a side note, years ago, when Uber was new, I was with a friend in NYC who told me she was pretty sure our Uber arrived. I followed her into the back seat of this guy’s car, which was stopped in rush hour traffic. She told him where to drop us off. When we got to our destination, he asked for money, we paid him cash and got out, only to find that our actual Uber driver had texted to say he was waiting for us in front of Madison Square Garden, and where the hell were we? We laughed until we wet our pants. Our children were horrified. They have forbidden us from going to NYC together anymore. So, you get my point about the safety thing, right?)

When ‘Safety’ and ‘Risk’ Become the Same Thing

Weirdly, my childhood trauma around safety activates like dry hair on an electrostatically charged balloon when people needlessly praise me or Pac-Man me ~ you know, chomp away at me, being overly gushing. But, conversely, and quite low-key, who doesn’t like a bit of validation every once in a while, amiright? I mean, I love positive feedback! It is conflicting for sure: praise is unsafe. Dark alleys? Sure, why not?

Laughing at My Parenting Failures (And Why My Kids Laugh Too)

So, yeah, I’m always walking a tightrope of tension, trying to enjoy a modicum of validation while also keeping my savage, Jack-in-the-box/guerilla-warfare-trained childhood trauma snoozing in its cave.

(Last side note, I swear, but shoutout to my poor, long-suffering husband, who also gets to navigate this tightrope of tension alongside me ~ Ha! He had no idea what he signed up for.)

So, if you are still reading this, I’ll get to my point, which is that I’m far enough along in my journey to have kids far enough in their journeys to have their own childhood shit. I tried really hard not to have that happen, but here we are.

The Irony of Protecting Our Kids From the Hard Stuff

Occasionally, I’ll call up one of my adult kids and apologize for some heinous, shameful thing I said or did to them when they were younger, and they have, without fail, laughed at me and said, “That? That’s the thing you lose sleep over?”

Then I feel worse, but hearing them have a good belly laugh warms my heart, so there’s that.

Tough Lessons

A Truth (with a capital T) that we forget, or maybe we are never told, is that humans are meant to lead complicated lives. We are built to handle stress, heartbreak, and even my personal nemesis, overwhelm. Even if some well-intentioned soul bulldozes a path for us to make our lives easy and pain-free, this act of denying us hardship will also give us hardship. This is one of life’s cruel ironies.

How Our Struggles Shape Us Into Better, More Compassionate People

Watching people we love, especially our adult kids, learn to navigate setbacks is miserable. Just the thought of it gives me a tummy ache. The whole idea is not a popular one. Somehow, we are made to believe that if we try hard enough, we can make everyone happy.

Repeat after me: making people happy is not our goal. Loving people is.

Loving People Over Making Them Happy

Difficulties give us grit and resilience. Wisdom comes from living through adversity. I’ve learned more, gained more compassion, found more empathy, problem-solved more effectively, and loved more deeply because I have lived through some tough stuff. This pain also makes the happier times all the more sweet.

Preventing people from experiencing their dark night of the soul robs them of one of life’s greatest pleasures: getting to the other side.

And the other side is where we take what hurt us and we build meaningful, beautiful lives.

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