Do you have a close family? Or maybe you live in a town or city where you grew up, and you are surrounded by people you have known for decades. That feels nice, doesn’t it? Ultimately, you don’t have to try too hard because you have a community all around you.

And I envy you. More than you know.

For me, life has been anything but linear. I remember growing up and expecting to live on the same street as my best friend Catherine. Naturally, we would marry and have kids. Our kids would be friends with all my friend’s kids. You get what I mean. And I would remain close to my parents, sister, and cousins.

Life had other ideas. And for some reason, the small town that I think so often of now seemed impossibly small to me. I wanted to be in a busier place, branch out and explore. Meet diverse people. Have experiences that perhaps would never happen to me living in a town that had a population of 4,700 people when we moved there from Toronto.

At the age of five, the fact that there was NO MCDONALDS at the time, was a travesty! I still order 2 x kids’ burgers (no cheese) and medium fries, and a Coke. Well, Coke Zero now that I am of the age where I can wink at a Big Mac driving by and gain eight pounds. If it is a bad day or week, I have the Big Mac. And dip it in the Sweet and Sour sauce. The Big Mac is a barometer for my emotional state, IYKYK

I Was a Shy Girl Once (Seriously, Stop Laughing)

When I share these reflections, my dear reader, please know that at the age of fifty, my heart is no longer filled with rage. It is filled with memories, and questioning myself over decisions I made. Regret is frankly, a bitch.

Reflecting on my childhood now that I am a half-century old is different. I see things with maturity and distance that allows for compassion. Not really for myself, but for my parents. I see things differently now. And having experienced my own nightmarish marriage and divorce, I have more empathy for their state of mind, and why we were the unhappiest house on our country road.

Anxiety makes you overthink. All the things that made me feel like I was an alien or weirdo, I now hold differently. My idealism and big heart didn’t stand a chance in that toxic environment. But hey, I survived. Some animals eat their young.

They didn’t kill me on the outside; but their great dispair with each other, created necrosis in important places. Which I learned to hide very well. And I developed this really interesting side-effect; people pleasing. And that habit has messed me up consistently. It also makes me blame myself by default when a relationship goes amuck. At most, I am 50% of the equation. I know this, on good days.

Why Do I Automatically Blame Myself if a Friendship Goes Wrong?

No. You shouldn’t expect to be liked by everyone. Because that is an impossible expectation, isn’t it? If you are successful at being liked by everyone, I am going to call bullshit. Because one of two things is happening, either you are a doormat, and acquiesce to everything simply to be liked. Or you are lying, and can’t hack it when someone doesn’t vibe with your chemistry, and things don’t work out the way you thought they would. So you cover your dirt like a cat in a litter box.

I’d like to tell you I am a badass bish… that doesn’t give a flying F**k about whether someone likes me or not. I mean, I want to be that person SO BADLY but I would be lying. And I suck at lying. This is a mystery to me because I am a writer, right? Shouldn’t I be good at composition and fiction?

Moving on.

The community I wanted so desperately as an adult, I never really actualized. This made me try, and try and try throughout my life to create that close-knit community I always wanted to have. I had a taste of it as a child. I liked it. But slowly over time, my family dissolved through divorce, war, and adversities.

For the record, I was desperately trying to stay in the middle. That neutral ground that I can never seem to grasp footing on. Where I could love everyone equally, and not be part of their conflict. That’s what I wanted.

That is not what happened.

And when my Father told me I had to choose between him and my Mother? I chose him. When my Father told me I had to choose between my beloved Aunt (who was a best friend and Mom) and him? I told him to go fuck himself. My heart belonged to them. And I wasn’t going to lose the ones that had loved and sheltered me my entire life. Hard pass. I chose love and loyalty and walked away from my Father’s toxicity.

Of Course, I Am Going to Mention Divorces Again… Shocker!

After my family kind of imploded, I was heading into my first divorce. Great guy (you’d love him!). Not the right partner for me. I had to end things. But he went relatively peacefully and with the class and respect that I appreciate, even now. I left with nothing but some debt and gave him the keys to the kingdom. That was my guilt, and desire to see him thrive again, someday.

You see, I always blame myself 100%.

I rebuilt from the cinder blocks of a marriage that most women would have stayed in if for nothing else, than financial security. I’m weird I guess. I wanted to be happy. And the second marriage? Well, ouch. But onward and upward.

I promise I am not getting married again. Two strikes are enough for me. I am clearly not good at it. But I wanted to build a community. Online and offline. I wanted to fit in somewhere. I wanted someone to notice if I was quiet. I wanted to be present in the lives of others (and help where I could). And I wanted that feeling of someone having my back. Maybe more than a couple someone’s I could matter to.

Roots Like a Daisy (Damn It!) and Rejection of Diagnosis

My precious best friend was that, and more. Still is my safe place, and a source of great joy in my life. She always will be my Diane. She has roots like an oak tree, which I greatly admired and envied. Wonderful family and great friends!

Me? I had roots like a daisy. And was far too easily crushed, and felt very alone. After all, I had to share her with so many people who loved her. I so wanted to build what she had because I literally craved that kind of connected network of caring and wonderful people.

You can exhaust precious relationships if you are not able to stand alone. I learned this lesson in 2021. Since my life had already been a series of start and fail, restart and fail, restart (you get the picture), I decided it was damn well time I became my own community.

My therapist agreed with that. I disagreed with her diagnosis of C-PTSD and decided to stop seeing her. Not that I don’t value therapy (I had about four years of it bimonthly in my first marriage… miscarriage and infertility blues I guess). I think therapy is crucial and valuable. I just knew that if I broke something in myself, I should fix it myself. Because that’s how I roll.

And that is exactly what I did. With a little help from three people who loved me. Every step of the way, watching me extrapolate the five stages of emotional death and dying. Until I found myself again.

Knock me down and I will always stand back up. I may be dead inside, but I will stand… because I have never had any other option. And I don’t think I would allow someone to rescue me, even if they wanted to. I’m a speshul kind of stubborn.

But from the scorched earth of that transition, there are flowers blooming now. And sometimes, in my best and most positive moments, I consider that I am not always to blame when sh*t goes south. In a relationship, in a friendship, or with acquaintances I “try on” to determine compatibility.

I do trust my ability to (however slowly) judge if someone is my kind of person. And if they are not, I step away and remove them from my life.

Being Too Nice is Counterproductive and Invites Disappointment

Please stop telling your daughters, nieces, or granddaughters to be ‘nice’. The reality is that the world isn’t nice. Not remotely. And while you can find little pockets of niceness, they are in fact, pretty rare. But what you do encounter are other types of not nice.

People who are:

• Selfish
• Exploitative
• Dishonest
• Controlling (man, you get my dragon if this is your personality type!)
• Manipulative
• Gossips
• Liars
• Malicious
• Jealous
• Not a fan of dogs (hate those f*ckers). 🙂

But be nice ladies. Always be nice, and sweet. Forgive repeatedly, even if the same person injures you over and over again. Forgive slights. Forgive! Aren’t you a Catholic, after all? Forgiveness is required if you are a good person. But forgiveness is also not a license to tolerate unkindness. From anyone. Or accept persistent disloyalty, malice, dishonesty, and all the bad things that sh*tty people do to you.

If you are nice, you will get nice back. It is one of the fundamentals that polite society is based on, right? But what if I have learned, by the ripe age of 50, that being nice requires a layer of protection and discretion? You need to be selective where you spend your ‘nice’ and sincere “give a f*cks” or you are doomed.

When you are really nice and generous, or when acts of service or providing are part of your love language (mmhmm, that’s me in spades) you also open yourself to exploitation. Particularly if you had trauma as a kid. Because guess what? Weirdos like me know how to take sh*t and keep taking it, thinking eventually, our nice will be transformative. And the people causing us pain or stress, will adopt your niceness and stop being a$$holes.

[Insert blank stare]

It didn’t work when I was a kid, and it sure as hell doesn’t work now. But it is a paradigm I am caught in. Sometimes, but not always. I am equally capable of cutting someone off in the “Vaya con Dios” way when I figure out their scripts and the score. And when I get there, I not only burn the bridge. I blow up the f*cking embankments.

Forgiveness is important. I haven’t quite mastered that yet.

Person: 21 crit hits!

Lori: 0 (the f*ck is wrong with you???)

It takes me much longer to give up on someone than it should. I am stubborn AF! And I feel that if I see something beautiful in someone (whether a potential friend or a partner) I can make it work. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have felt attracted to them, right?

Right?

With most people, giving good nets good in return. It is not very Catholic of me to have this transactional perspective. After all, Jesus said “Do good and tell no one” which I fundamentally agree with, and do often. But I am pretty sure that Jesus wasn’t dealing with the level of a$$hat-try that modern life provides. I liked the Old Testament better anyhow. Life was simple and better. Unless you were a goat or sheep.

Maybe I am not nice. Maybe I perceive myself to be nice, and I am in fact, an a$$hole. Maybe that is why every once in a while when I give my best, I get stabbed in the back. Nooooooooo… it’s not my partner (he’s wonderful and still makes me tingle when I see him). The common denominator is me, right?

Or maybe I just want to have roots like the oak tree that was in our yard. The one that bent heavily under the weight of the ice storm this year. And then finally split down the trunk. I begged for her life, but the landlord sent Mexican men with chainsaws to cut her into little pieces. I kept it for firewood and promised to do some beautiful carvings to keep a piece of that tree with us. Honor her existence and ultimately, remember her after her demise.

Even strong things break if things around them are weighted against their happy existence. Have you ever noticed how cedar trees really don’t break? They bend and then pop back up like nothing happened. Because they never extend their branches.

Maybe that is the correct way to be emotionally, at this stage of my life. I don’t know what I am trying to prove to myself or accomplish, by spreading my arms to a world that, in most cases, would rather take than give. I mean, I am kind of sick of it, yanno?

I often ask myself why I care so much when I give good and get sh*t in return. It does NOT happen all the time, but when it does, I am very emo gushy wound leaking everywhere when it happens. I guess because I let in so few, and extend trust so sparingly, when I am wrong, I am angry.

Not with them. With myself.

HOLD ON HERE … WHOA GIRL THAT LOVES TO BLAME HERSELF FOR EVERYTHING…

No sooner do those words appear on the page than I realize something important. It takes a great deal to piss me off. It takes a lot to make me ghost a human. It’s not in my nature. I was generous, loyal, and kind. You were not. I am open and accepting and loving. You seem to enjoy control. And I really, really, really REALLY dislike controlling people.

You keep asking, but the answer remains the same.

NO!

Like that?

NO!

Have another one…LOL!

NO!

Okay okay… I will stop. 🙂 It’s just so silly and childish, isn’t it? [insert extra long stare] I’m kinda getting flattered by all the attention, even though, yanno, it’s super weird. Here I thought adults that don’t get along simply walk away politely.

Crazy, right? 🙂