The Aftermath Part 3

The conclusion of a three part series where I explore the question "Am I happy?"

Read The Aftermath Part One here

Read The Aftermath Part Two here

Photo by svklimkin on Unsplash

In case it wasn’t clear, I have a history of dating not safe men.

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I signed the contract from the Ningbo school before Mac returned home from the concert. No talking it out. No explicit break up. We both knew there would be no Mac and Lori 2.0 reboot, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t waste my breathe trying to convince my partner or myself that love will conquer all. The hours passed, and it was time to go. There was no way in hell I was going to let Mac walk me down to my Uber. I opened the door when he, once again, grabbed me by the back of my arm. Every muscle in my body tightened as he pulled me back and said, “Lor, you know, I’m always going to love you.” I held my breath and looked up at his baby blue eyes that were the same color as the liner in his pool that we swam in as children. The only response I could muster was, “Yeah, I know,” and with that, I walked away from one of the only two people in this world who called me “Lor.” When I recounted our good-bye to my mother, her insight was as sharp as a laser point, “He’s always going to love 19 year-old you.” She was right, and it was the old version of Mac who I loved, not this one. Nineteen year-old Mac was safe, but as it turned out, 46 year-old Mac was not. By going to Vegas all I was doing was repeating my cycle of jumping from one man to another in order to avoid facing myself. But by leaving Vegas and Mac behind, I finally began breaking that pattern. I didn’t know what would come next, and I didn’t need to. Instead of looking for safety, joy, and peace in the arms of another, it was time look within myself.

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I have officially left Shanghai and now reside in Ningbo, which is a three-hour drive south of my former city. My apartment here is gorgeous. It is also much larger and cheaper than my previous place where I lived for four years. My school, however, is much less famous and less resourced than my previous employer, making my job more difficult. On the positive side, I have had to learn how to teach younger students and have had to become much more creative in how I teach. These changes, and arguably hardships, have leveled up my professional resilience, and in an unexpected turn of events, I was promoted to lead foreign teacher after five weeks. I wrote in an earlier post that I was being promoted into the leadership at my previous school, which obviously went away when Him got me fired (If you are unfamiliar with who Him is, see my post Let’s Start at the Ending here). Well, that which Him tried to destroy failed. He may have taken my city from me, but professionally, I bounced back stronger than before. Now, when days are tough and I feel like I am not making an impact in my classroom (hello, welcome to teaching in China!), I still feel a sense of purpose knowing that I am in a position to guide and mentor our novice teachers. This is a responsibility I have always wanted as an educator and one that I take seriously.

On my first weekend in Ningbo I looked down at the tattoo on my feet that says, “Live Bravely,” and I decided to do just that. I found an advertisement for a bar playing live music and decided to go alone. During that outing, I met my first Ningbo friends. I found a neighborhood spot that has become like a second home, and I am now good friends with one of the owners - a 70 year old British bloke who regards me as his “little bouncing ball.” I have also fallen in with a group of women who are helping me heal in ways I never thought possible. I am cultivating a social group in which I feel wanted, valued, and accepted. I feel enriched by their friendship and in the ways that they receive mine. They have introduced me to new things such as boxing, rock climbing, and networking. I am busy nearly every night of the week now with activities that broaden my perspectives and provide me with opportunities to feel proud of myself. My inner child - Little Lori - is healing through the love I am giving her by doing the things I want to do with the people I want to do them with or doing them alone.

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As promised, let’s get back to the question at hand - Am I happy? I hate to tell you this, dear Reader, but that is a terrible question. In fact, the world would be a much better place if that question was never uttered again to anyone, anywhere, and here’s why. Happy is not the emotion we should be striving for. Happy is fleeting. Happy is shallow. It’s surface. It’s as fickle as the springtime weather in New York. We never know when happy will come or go. Case in point - Am I happy? Sure, I am…at this very moment. I am, once again, writing this piece from the 4th floor of my school, but this time with a hot grande vanilla latte to keep me warm on this blistering Ningbo afternoon. Now ask me again in an hour when I walk into my classroom of 10 toddlers in wet pull-ups screaming their heads off because nap time is over, or in 90 minutes when I am losing my mind trying to teach these darling babies who can barely remember my name much less understand a lesson in English. Will I be happy then? If you said yes, then you haven’t been paying attention. If you said no, then winner, winner, chicken dinner. I will tell you exactly what I will feel. I will feel discouraged, like my effort here is pointless. I will feel lost, not understanding what I am meant to do here. I will feel rage and once again silently curse Him and his covert narcissism for successfully destroying my Shanghai life. Suffice it to say, I will not feel a single shred of the happiness I feel right now.

You’re probably wondering if not happy, then what should we be striving for? Excellent question, so let me tell you what I have learned in my 46 years on this planet and what I know to be true:

                       We should run to safety, cultivate joy, and protect our peace... 
                                                 until the death and at all costs. 

Your safety - physical, mental, emotional, and social - exists within you. It is up to you to find it by learning how to discern who and what is safe or not. We must look at every situation, every person, every relationship and ask ourselves, “Is this safe for me?” We must trust our intuition fully and without judgment when trying to answer this question. We must let the people in our lives and who enter our lives become trustworthy because what we are trusting them with is our safety. For the record, I have been terrible at this: I believed that she would believe me. I believed he would chose me instead of her. I believed that I wouldn’t get hit or choked when he got angry or drunk. I believed that the time, energy, and love I invested in a friend about to end her seven year marriage would be returned when I needed the same kind of “ride or die-ness” I gave her. I repeatedly handed my safety over on a silver platter to people who didn’t actually earn my trust. The fault is not theirs. I sought my safety in others instead of cultivating it in myself. The fault is my own.

How do I keep myself safe? I trust myself, first and foremost. Nobody knows me better than me! I sink into my depths to recognize and acknowledge my needs and desires. I work on prioritizing my needs over the wants of others. Instead of being the people pleaser I have always been, I work on pleasing myself. If I want to stay home in yoga pants without showering for one or six days and binge watch past seasons of Ink Master, so be it. I am fortunate enough to not have responsibilities to a husband, partner, child, pet, roommate, or plant. The only responsibility I have is to myself. So I check in with myself, often, and I ask - Lori, what do you need today? - then I provide that to myself. What if you do have responsibilities to another? I am not suggesting that you abandon those who count on you, but instead, you carve time where and when you can to do things that are pleasing to you. It does not serve anybody for you to give yourself 100% to the needs and wants of another at the expense of your own. You’ll suffer, and when you inevitably burnout, the one(s) you are responsible to will suffer as well. To quote author and activist Greta Christina:

                                                   “Self-care is not selfish!”

So we keep ourselves safe by caring for ourselves, prioritizing ourselves, and discerning who and what deserves our trust.

I have made a claim that happiness is fleeting. I will now make another - joy is deep. Joy exists in our deep down insides. It’s harder to lose and harder to take away. When I feel bad, sad, or mad (clearly I am an early years educator!), I can still feel joy. Like when I want to bang my head against walls every time my darling twin students simultaneously wet themselves during snack time, but feel an indescribable amount of joy when the older one, Carter, pats my chest and says, “Lorriiieeee,” (being able to say my name is a new development). Or when I feel ridiculously frustrated at the lack of institutional resources for Leo, my special needs student who can only say about five sentences in his first language and almost nothing in English, but experience a depth of joy and connection when he runs up to me and says, “给我报报,” (Gei wo bào bào, or Give me hug) with his arms stretched wide open. I would argue that feeling joy is a much richer experience than feeling happy, and because I believe this way, I will always do things to cultivate joy in my life.

So what do you get when you add safety and joy together? Simple - peace, which for me, is what’s most important. The world will not give you peace, and so if you find a way in which you manage to achieve peace, you protect that S&!% until the death and at all costs. My life has been in a constant state of chaos since for always. I’ve read scriptures about God’s peace. I’ve studied Buddhism to try and find the path to Nirvana. I’ve self-medicated with uncountable substances trying to reach a state of euphoria. I watched a number of friends get “peace” tattoos over the years and wondered if it were really that simple. The truth is we don’t find peace accidentally. We don’t attain it from that little paper inside of a fortune cookie, nor do we get it on a vision quest. Peace comes when we do that hard work of facing ourselves, healing ourselves, and truly loving ourselves. The fact of the matter is I didn’t find my peace until I lost everything and experienced a trauma that, quite frankly, made me rise up and say, Enough is enough! I had to unpack all the reasons I kept experiencing the same hurt and betrayal over and over and over again. When I finally faced myself - my insides, my darkness, my demons, I finally found the roadmap to Peace. And you can bet your ass I’m never letting go of it, and I’m never letting anybody take it away from me.

So forget happy. What I believe you want to know is if I am safe, if I have joy, and if I found peace. My answer to THOSE questions, dear Reader, is yes. I hope you do too!