Long story short, I was talking to someone recently about how I was dealing with a situation that I wasn’t particularly happy about. I was concerned about future problems that may arise because of what he was doing when he said something that I found very profound and haven’t been able to stop thinking about. Basically he just said “You can’t help yourself”. He was talking about the ramifications to me because of how I was dealing with the situation but that’s not relevant to the rest of the story.
I was amazed at how perceptive he was in being able to pickup on one of my life’s major flaws, because truth be told I can’t help myself. For as long as I can remember I’ve been doing things that I knew I shouldn’t be doing and were somewhat self destructive but I did them anyway.
When I was a little kid I used to sneak into my fathers study and look through his desk drawers. Once I found some “dirty books” and I can say that was quite the eye opening experience. When I was a little older I babysat some of the neighbor’s kids and used to look through their stuff as well. One of our neighbors worked for the FBI and one night I found his revolver in a cupboard above the refrigerator. That really scared me so I quit being so nosey after that.
When I was in Junior High I got in trouble for playing with fire. My friends and I used to light strips of Magnesium and watch them burn because it reminded us of the stuff they used on Mission Impossible to cut through metal. The way I got caught was stupid and I knew better, but I took a test tube full of gasoline on a school field trip where it came open in my pocket while riding in one of the teacher’s cars. I almost got kicked
out of school for that one.
In High School I started doing all sorts of thing I knew I shouldn’t do. I skipped classes, smoked Camel non-filters, drank booze, did pot, and enjoyed the occasional trip with the help of some psychedelics. I argued with my parents and lost any direction I had in earlier years. It all became just about the party and having fun with my friends. I hated studying (now I would have been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder) and school so I didn’t go to college even though I had the opportunity.
As an adult I continue to be “self destructive”, not physically because I quite all my smoking and only drink moderately, I continue professionally sabotaging myself and I can’t help it. I’ve been fired from two good paying management jobs because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut or my displeasures to myself. The first time I “tattled” on my substance abusing boss to his mother (see my column titled “I should have taken the watch”), the second time I had the owner’s daughter working for me and she was (and I don’t say this lightly) an idiot. She drove me crazy and I guess I ragged on her one to many times because out of the blue my position was eliminated (her brother later told me the truth).
Then there’s the story of Steady Eddy’s Café in the Flint, MI farmers market and how I gave it away. This was our second restaurant and it was a restaurateurs dream (in hindsight), we were only open on market days so only 4 days a week, it was an all cash business, the equipment was included, and the rent was very low. We had year round steady business and on Saturdays we kicked butt, we were non-stop from 7am to 3pm. It was a comfortable income and not that hard of work but as usual I got bored and burnt out. One day in our third year my wife Diane got really mad at me for some joke that the cook and I were pulling on her and she stormed out for the day. I got angry back and said F**k It, let’s just sell the place. I placed an ad in the paper and had a buyer within the week. That was 15 years ago and he ran it until his death in 2009, his daughter runs it now and it’s still called Steady Eddy’s with most of my items still on the menu.
So what have I learned about why I sabotage myself? I’m not sure but as my therapist told me years ago, one of these days I need to get over “my fear of success”.
To view the column in it's original form go to page 14 of the following link. Winters Express 7/14/11
