Emotions and Self

For my senior year and half my junior year of high school I attended a boarding school in western Massachusetts. My parents made the decision to send me to another school outside my “regular environment” so that I could succeed—do better in school and get away from the crowd of people I hung out with. Until that point, I had been involved in taking drugs, dating a boy who dealt drugs, and failing classes in school. On top of that, the previously strong relationship I’d had with my family members, especially with my mom, had begun to disintegrate due to a lack of trust and communication. I suppressed emotions at all times, and didn’t know how to express myself in a healthy or effective way. My family was worried about me. After meeting with an education consultant, and with a hesitant agreement from me, my parents chose a school in Cummington, Massachusetts that focused on adolescents like me who needed direction, focus, support, and discipline in their lives.
My mother, father and I visited the school a few months before I enrolled. It was love at first sight for me—New England was gorgeous, the people at the school were friendly, outgoing and genuine. The dorms were beautiful. Most importantly, the idea of “starting over” at a new school with new friends and a new atmosphere was the thing that attracted me to this school the most. Little did I know that the 17 months that lay ahead of me would be such an emotional rollercoaster…
The morning of September 6, 2002 was the last day of my life as a reckless, direction-less, failing teenager. My parents, little sister and I said our good-byes at the door of the lobby. I didn’t know at that moment, standing there that warm autumn day, that I faced most difficult seven months of my entire life. The program I was attending wouldn’t allow me to see my parents for four months, and my sisters another three after that.
I cleaned up my act at that school, but it was not easy. Coming away from an environment full of freedoms into an environment where I was powerless and completely out of control of my own life had ever-lasting effects on me. I was living without the comforts from home such as dressing the way I wanted to dress, driving privileges and the ability to communicate with my family or friends from home. Quitting cigarettes and drugs made me gain weight, and with the combination of strict dress code and bans on make-up, it was quite a switch for me!
I felt broken down for the first seven months I was at school. I hadn’t seen my sister, Cheryl (who is my best friend in the world), and I missed my parents and friends. The lifestyle adjustment never ceased being difficult and school was a struggle at first. I resisted my counselors and teachers, and even other students who wanted to help me feel accustomed there. For the first and only time in my life I had to be both physically restrained from hitting someone and punished for cursing out an adult other than my parents. My emotional reactions were extremely intense and inappropriate, but they were this way only while I attended this school—all my comforts had been taken away from me and broke me down so I had no way of calmly or rationally react to some situations. The reason I was so aggressive here was because I had no control over my life. I reacted in a way that was extremely closed-off and resistant to any help that was being offered.
The day finally came when I could see my sister for the first time since the day my family left me in the lobby of the school seven months earlier. When I saw her I ran and hugged her, and wanted to never let go. She had grown, and looked so different! It was so great to see her but it reminded me of all I’d been missing out on while I was here in Massachusetts, cleaning up the mess I’d made of my life.
When I saw Cheryl that day, I felt like my life was complete again and that it all made sense. All that I had been through was suddenly put into perspective, and I felt like I could attain any goals I wanted or needed to achieve because I knew she was there waiting on the other side for me. I was reminded at that point that that my life wasn’t a mess after all, it was just broken down and needed to be built back up. I wasn’t in trouble, I just had people in my life who cared about me and wanted me to succeed.
The following nine months were easier—I don’t know if it was the family visit that re-energized me or a feeling within myself that made me suddenly want to change, but it got easier for me. I stepped up as a leader in the school, I showed more respect towards my peers and counselors, set goals towards mending my family relationships, worked towards disposing of the toxic relationships back at home, and for the first time had a desire to be clean and sober.
I am not perfect but I do consider myself a success story. I went through a time in my life where I was hurting myself without even knowing it, then went through a year and a half period where I broke down and had to build myself up again without the help or influence of my family or friends. And, I did it. I pride myself in the strength it took me to overcome that difficult time in my life.
When I look at pictures of the school, or see pictures of my friends from that school, I can’t help but feel a tug at my heart or a little pang in my belly because of the love and the pain I felt during that time in my life. I wish I had access to more digital pictures from this experience that I could upload here, but I can’t access them at this time. The picture included is a picture that truly tugs at my heart strings and gives me that pang in my stomach because it reminds me of that time period that changed almost everything in my life, from relationships to academics.
When I look at a picture of trees losing their leaves, or a picture of autumn in New England, I get a feeling in my stomach that is very warm and cozy but makes me sick at the same time. The fall is so symbolic of change, and I walked into the building the first time in early autumn. I went through so many changes at that school, that when I walk outside on a crisp fall day that’s the first thing I think about. When I see a picture like one I just described, I feel the same way. Not one day has gone by in the 3 ½ years since I’ve graduated that I haven’t thought about my school or my friends that I left there. The emotional reaction to the fall season or a picture of something that reminds me of the changes I went through at that school are an emotional mix of sadness and happiness, pain and love, dying and rebirth, failure and achievement.

What is success?

What is success? I knew going into this assignment what my idea of success was, but I didn’t know what other people thought on the subject. To me, success, simply put, means feeling successful. Whether or not you perceive yourself as successful can determine if you are or aren’t. There is a lot written out there on the subject of success, and I made some interesting findings.

When I was searching Lexis Nexis to see what kinds of studies and journal articles have been written about success, I was overwhelmed by the digital avalanche of search results, nearly all falling from business and investor publications: Newsweek, Business Week, and The Investors Chronicle, to name a few. One article I found particularly interesting delved into such celebrity money-makers like Donald Trump and Richard Branson (entreprenurial founder of the Virgin businesses-Virgin Mobile, airline/travel business, music, and more). I was interested in reading that article not because I agree with success being entirely financial-based, but because in the world we live in (I mean the ‘Western world’) there is so much emphasis put on being the best, making lots of money, ‘getting to the top’ and oftentimes trampling over your peers to get there.

My father retired last year from a 30-year long career in pharmaceuticals. He has achieved many great successes in his life, but in his career in particular he has achieved great financial success that I pray I can achieve at least half of in my entire life! However, his success is measured in the pride he takes in his work, his children, his hobbies and his relationships. At the end of his career, just before he retired, he was stressed out to the point where he couldn’t even sleep! He was doing great in business and bringing in lots of money, but he was no longer proud of the work he was doing, and everything else was beginning to crumble around him. I won’t get into details, but in the end he retired because he couldn’t handle the toll his work was taking on him, both mentally and physically. So, he quit. Now he spends some of his time leading a private consulting group and most of his time mountain biking, boating, cooking, reading, writing, and spending time with his friends and family. I’ve never seen him in better mental and physical shape, and I know he feels the same way. His favorite thing to preach about is the importance of achieving a balance in life. Upon achieving that, he considers himself successful. I consider him successful, too.

In my life, I haven’t gotten a chance to make financial success yet—I get a monthly allowance from my parents while I am in school for basic things like food, and I babysit three times a week for some extra cash. Talk about minimal funds! But I do have a savings that I contribute to, and I make it work because I know (or hope) that someday I will have more. However, having lots of money doesn’t mean you are successful and being successful doesn’t mean you have lots of money. Regardless of the number staring back at me when I check my bank account balances, I consider myself to be a very successful person, even at a young age. I work hard and play hard, I have great friends, and I keep my relationships alive. I have a balance of self-discipline and weaknesses. I have somewhat of a feel for what I want to do after I graduate from Rider in May, and I’ve had great jobs and internships and subsequently a growing newtork of contacts that can help me get there. I try different things even when they are difficult or scare me, and I have hobbies that I take great pride in. I have positive and negative experiences in my past that I have learned from and therefore treasure. I have goals and dreams that I can’t wait to achieve.

Feeling good about what I do and the decisions I make is on of the most important things I have in my life. The great thing about success is that you don’t have to follow someone else’s definition of success—you can make it your own! To some people, the success they have is shown by the car they drive or the house(s) they have. To some, it is shown in the number of friends they have. To others, it is their ability to argue someone to the death and come out “the winner” of the argument(I just came from babysitting). To me, success is a feeling all my own. I feel successful when I try something that scares me and I come out in the end feeling like I could do it all over again. I feel successful when my sensei (teacher) at karate tells me I grappled the best he’s ever seen me grapple, and that he thinks I’ll be an amazing sempai (black belt) someday. I feel successful when I make The Dean’s List. I feel successful when I look back on fun times spent with my friends and family. I feel successful when the kids I babysit give me a hug when I’m not going to see them for a while. I feel successful looking back on my travels around the world. I feel successful when I think about my internship at Bristol-Myers Squibb this summer, knowing it was a competitive one to get and feeling like I really made a difference working there. I feel successful when I surprise myself with my self-discipline. I feel successful looking back on my relationship with my boyfriend how it ended this summer in the most difficult breakup I’ve ever had, knowing that it was the right thing to do, and knowing that I’ll be OK in the end. Right now, success for me isn’t monetary. It is in the way I feel about my life as a whole.

Not that I wouldn’t love to be wealthy—I visited my friend who works at Mercedes-Benz a few weeks ago and it was after-hours, so the dealership was closed. But we were in the garage where the shiny German cars sat awaiting a detail, polish, or some other glamorous service. Upon laying my eyes on a beautiful, shiny, sporty, black car, I asked my friend if I could just sit in it and start the engine—I just wanted to see how it felt. He handed me the key, that tease, and I took the driver’s seat in the 2008 CL-65 (I don’t know, or really care, what the “CL” or the “65” mean, but it was just plain awesome…as one of the comments says on the MB website, it is “sweet sassy molassey”). As I sat there, I wondered, “am I ever going to have enough money to be able to afford a car like this?” (the starting price of this car is $137,000). The answer is: maybe someday. I would love to have that car, partly because (a) I drive like a bat out of hell and it would be fun to whip that thing around turns and feel like I’m about to lift off into the air when I’m driving a starightaway at God-only-knows-how-many-miles an hour, but partly because (b)the car is a symbol of high status—it demands attention and admiration of both itself and its driver. I don’t think it is a silly thing to desire, because of the emphasis put on success in our culture. But I think success is more than money, more than a car.

To me, success is knowing that you have tried your very best and knowing that you received some gain from doing so. What success is not, is feeling like you have to be successful or feeling like you have to achieve this or that, or comparing yourself to someone else who is ‘successful’—rich, happy, etc. As Katharine Giovanni writes in an article on measuring one’s own success, success is an “inside job”. She uses her own business success as an example. She says that you can have all the money in the world and all the houses in all the beautiful places in the world, but if you do not feel successful on the inside or feel proud of your work, you’ll feel like you are going around in circles, chasing your successes and never catching up to them. If you’re never able to feel success, then it doesn’t exist for you. (It’s kind of like the analogy of the tree falling in the woods when no one’s around: does it make noise when it falls if no one’s there to hear it?)