High-Masking Happiness

What if every room you've built has been standing on a foundation poured by a child who never felt safe?

Have you ever spent so much time pretending to be something that you lose yourself?

There are buzzwords for everything these days.

High masking. High functioning. Toxic optimism. Delulu.

Pick your poison.

I know I have spent so much of my life trying to be what other people wanted from me because, somewhere along the way, I learned that was how you kept the peace.

Play the role my mother wanted outsiders to see.

Swallow my tongue around my stepmother to keep the peace.

Make my dad proud of me.

Be the adoring girlfriend so I'm needed and loved.

Be mature for my age.

Be responsible.

Be grateful.

Be fine.

People talk about having to "find themselves again," but I don't know if I ever got to be who I was in the first place.

I wasn't necessarily growing into a person.

I was becoming whatever version of myself seemed safest in the room.

And when you've been doing that long enough, how the fuck do you know where the mask ends and you begin?

WHO LET ME BE AN ADULT?

I joke all the time that I need an adultier adult.

Seriously. Who let me be an adult?

When people tell me I'm a good mom, my standard response is basically, "Thanks. I'm winging it."

Because I am.

I've been winging it for most of my life.

The weird part is that I've also had to be an adult for most of my life.

Those things used to feel contradictory.

Now I don't think they are.

I didn't necessarily have adult development.

I had adult responsibility.

There's a difference.

I worked before I was legally old enough because my mom needed help paying bills. I was expected to act mature for my age. Handle things. Understand things. Deal with things.

But I was still a child.

A child doesn't magically develop an adult brain because the adults around her need her to have one.

She becomes a child doing her best impression of an adult.

She watches.

Copies.

Adapts.

Figures shit out.

Builds an adult out of whatever materials happen to be lying around.

Adult responsibility without adult development.

That's not incompetence.

It's uneven scaffolding.

I built on an unsteady foundation because I was building while I was still supposed to be learning what a foundation was.

Which, apparently, means we've arrived at another fucking construction metaphor.

Welcome back to The Building Life.

I've joked before about being self-taught. Very Moana. Put me on the ocean and apparently I'll figure it the fuck out.

And I usually do.

But I'm realizing how much of adulthood I learned that way.

Recently a friend asked whether my son knew how to work on lawnmowers so he could keep ours running.

Nope.

Can you teach us both?

Then, just the other day, T asked me to teach him how to do taxes.

My immediate reaction was:

Why the fuck do you want to do taxes?!

Because apparently my child has developed a hobby nobody has ever had voluntarily.

His answer was much less dramatic.

"Because I need to know how to do them."

Well, shit.

He's not wrong.

And then I started thinking...

Who the fuck taught me how to do taxes?

No one.

I figured it out.

I researched.

I found people to ask questions when I got stuck.

And taxes and lawnmowers are funny examples, but the gaps go back much further than that.

There were basic things about growing up, taking care of myself, and even understanding my own body that no one really taught me.

My mother never took me to a gynecologist.

I know certain things seemed more taboo to older generations. Bodies. Periods. Sex. All the uncomfortable human-maintenance stuff nobody wanted to discuss.

But in hindsight, understanding how to care for the body I was living in probably warranted a little direction.

I could tell you the story of teaching myself how to use tampons, but my boys occasionally read this blog and I'd like them to continue making eye contact with me, so we'll abandon this particular road here.

You're welcome, boys.

I've always joked that I'm "not very good at girling."

I was a tomboy. Other than putting me in pink frilly dresses with bows in my hair when I was little, there was a lot about growing up that I simply figured out as I went.

And no, I'm not about to wander into some dissertation about what girls or boys are supposed to know. That's another post for another day.

The point isn't gender.

The point is guidance.

I was given a lot of responsibility without always being given the instruction that should have come before it.

Handle it.

Figure it out.

Be mature.

So I did.

And I got very good at figuring shit out.

That's still my approach to a lot of things.

I don't know.

Teach me.

Or I'll teach myself.

Money. Home repairs. Relationships. Attachment styles. Emotional regulation. Parenting. Travel.

This summer I planned an entire trip to Europe for my family.

I'd been to Europe before, but I'd never actually been the adult responsible for getting everyone there. My first trip was in high school. My second was a school trip with my son where a tour company handled the infrastructure.

This time?

I was the adultier adult.

Which is frankly terrifying.

But I did it.

Adulthood isn't something you suddenly become qualified for.

But some of us are going back and installing the scaffolding that should have been there all along.

I DON'T WANNA BE BIG PEOPLE ANYMORE

My friend is constantly telling me I need a vacation.

Which is funny considering I just went to Europe.

But I know what he means.

I think I've been mentally checked out of adulting for a while, while simultaneously creating my own chaos through constant busyness.

Make that make sense.

There is a Rugrats meme of Chuckie saying something along the lines of, "I don't wanna be big people anymore."

Or, as the internet has so eloquently translated it:

I don't want sponserbilities.

Same, Chuckie.

Same.

When reality gets too heavy, I disappear.

Books.

Shows.

Fantasy.

Give me someone else's fictional apocalypse instead of my very real pile of paperwork and suddenly I'm thriving.

Or I swing the other way.

Projects.

Work.

Ideas.

Something for the boys.

Something for someone else.

Something to create.

Something to fix.

Something to research.

Anything that keeps me moving.

I've talked before about swinging to the opposite side of the pendulum when something becomes too much.

Apparently "do absolutely everything" and "mentally leave this dimension" can be different doors out of very similar rooms. See what I did there?

Because every once in a while, I can keep myself distracted enough not to feel how sad and alone I feel underneath all of it.

And that's harder to admit.

MAYBE I NEVER WANTED HAPPINESS

I've read the books.

I've learned the lessons.

I've done the therapy.

I've analyzed my attachment style.

I've dissected my reactions.

Sometimes I swear dating has become less romance and more field research.

Interesting. My attachment system appears to be doing something. Let's observe.

I've tried to take accountability for the people I've let into my life and the ones I allowed to stay longer than they should have.

I've tried to learn.

Grow.

Do better.

And for fuck's sake, I just wanted to be happy.

I wanted to steal back some of the things I missed because I grew up too fast.

But lately I've been wondering whether happiness was ever actually the thing I was chasing.

Maybe happiness always looked like safety.

Financial security.

A relationship.

A family.

A home.

People who stayed.

Enough money that one unexpected expense didn't send everything tumbling down.

The freedom to be my authentic self without worrying that authenticity would cost me any of those things.

Maybe I never wanted some glittery, permanent state of happiness.

Maybe I just wanted to fucking exhale.

People say that if you don't know peace, you'll create chaos because chaos is what feels familiar.

So what happens when you don't know safety?

Can you lock into stability when some part of you doesn't trust that stability exists?

Can you build a secure life if your internal blueprint has always assumed the building eventually burns down?

Hell, what kind of building is this even?!

I have the tools.

That's what makes this so frustrating.

I've talked about it in Routine Failure.

I've written an entire post called F*ck Finances that I haven't even published yet as I write this. Hopefully I get that one out before you read this.

I know what I'm supposed to do.

But maybe the missing piece hasn't been knowledge.

Maybe it's trust.

Trust that security can exist.

Trust that I can create it.

Trust that I can maintain it.

Trust that I can relax into something good without immediately becoming terrified of losing it.

Trust that if I do lose it, I don't have to lose myself.

THE FUTURE THAT WILL NEVER BE

I have had amazing experiences.

I have memories I wouldn't trade.

I've traveled. I've created things. I've raised incredible kids. I've met people who changed me. I've laughed until I couldn't breathe.

I know I have a lot to be grateful for.

I'm not ungrateful.

And yet...

I feel like I have had amazing experiences and memories, but at the same time life has passed me by.

Never fully relaxed or present.

High-masking happiness.

Holding on so tightly to a future that will never be and a past that never was for a present time that feels like a vortex.

When I was younger, I had the same vague picture I think a lot of us had.

I'd marry my best friend young.

We'd have a family.

A warm home.

Security.

Love.

Somehow we'd become adults together and everything would make sense.

Then there are the futures you build with individual people.

Sometimes the hardest thing to release isn't the person.

It's the future you created around them.

You can keep holding onto who someone could become long after they've shown you who they truly are.

You can keep trying to reconcile that future with a past that hindsight has made much clearer than it ever felt while you were living it.

And somewhere between mourning the past and negotiating with an imaginary future...

you lose the present.

Eckhart Tolle talks about this in The Power of Now, a book I read years ago and apparently need to pull off the shelf again.

So much of our suffering lives outside the moment we're actually standing in. We replay what already happened. We anticipate what might happen. We let the past explain the present while simultaneously asking the future to save us from it.

Which is a little inconvenient when the present is the only place I'm actually fucking living.

I know this.

I've read the book.

Apparently retaining the information and actually applying it are two wildly different subscription tiers.

No wonder happiness has always felt just slightly ahead of me.

THE STRAY CAT PROBLEM

A guy on a dating site once told me I was a stray cat.

I was offended.

Excuse you, sir.

But I've had a few years to mull it over and...

Fine.

He might have had a point.

I want connection.

I want community.

I would love someone beside me.

But I don't fully trust people with my safety.

Even my closest friends don't know everything about me.

That doesn't mean I've never let anyone close. I have.

I've handed people vulnerable pieces of myself.

I've trusted people with things I considered precious.

And some of them didn't value what I gave them.

So now I'm selective.

I've even worried that maybe I'm emotionally unavailable. And maybe, for a time, I was.

But I can be open without giving everyone access to every room in the house.

And Lauren without a relationship has done a lot of healing.

But I also know there are things I'll probably only recognize or heal while I'm in a relationship.

You can study your attachment style all day long.

It's a little different when another human being shows up and starts pushing buttons on the control panel.

Interesting. We appear to be activated.

Please stand by.

But I don't think healing means becoming so fiercely independent that I don't need anyone.

I've been accused of that.

But I don't want that.

I want to love people without giving them my power.

I want someone to be able to add to my safety without being my safety.

Because Little Lauren never felt safe alone.

So she held onto people too long.

Adult Lauren is learning something different.

If someone walks away, it can hurt.

I can grieve them.

I can miss them.

I can be disappointed.

But they don't get to take my safety with them.

They don't get to take the whole fucking house.

I LEFT THE DOOR OPEN

That's also where accountability gets complicated.

It used to be easier to focus on what other people had done to me.

And people have hurt me.

That part is real.

But eventually I had to ask why I kept opening the door.

There is a running joke online about women seeing a wild animal and immediately deciding:

I could domesticate that.

Unfortunately, I am also the kind of person who has looked into whether I could legally own a raccoon in Alabama, so this metaphor is fitting as fuck.

At some point I can't keep inviting metaphorical raccoons into my house and then acting personally betrayed when somebody pisses on the carpet.

The raccoon is responsible for being a raccoon.

I'm responsible for opening the fucking door.

Accountability doesn't mean the damage someone else caused was my fault.

It means understanding what part was mine.

Who did I let in?

Why?

What did I excuse?

Why did I stay?

What was I so afraid of losing that I abandoned myself to keep it?

Why did I keep looking for safety in people who repeatedly showed me they were unsafe?

And now that I don't let nearly as many people through the door, I've had to confront an even more annoying truth:

I'm fucking up well enough on my own.

Rude.

I can remove every villain from the story and still have patterns to unlearn.

Eventually you're alone in the house with the wiring.

And the wiring still needs work.

No one is holding my safety hostage, but I'm still paying the ransom because I don't know what that freedom looks like.

COOL. MY TURN?

One of the strangest things about becoming a parent is discovering how easy it can be to give your children the things you never knew how to give yourself.

When my son was struggling with everything involving his father, he couldn't understand why he wasn't enough for his father to do better.

And I knew what to tell him.

Therapy helped him understand it too.

Other people's actions don't determine your worth.

Someone else's inability to show up for you isn't proof that you weren't worth showing up for.

I know this.

I believe it.

I could probably make you a fucking PowerPoint about it.

FFS, I have a blog that keeps expressing these ideas to all five of my loyal readers!

And yet the wounded kid in me still takes rejection personally.

Adult me knows.

Little Lauren doesn't.

That's the weird thing about reparenting yourself.

I became the person I needed...

but forgot that I still needed that person.

I learned to give my boys space to become themselves.

I've talked about that in Paint the Walls Black.

I try to let them feel their feelings, develop their identities, explore things I may not understand, and know that my love isn't contingent on them becoming miniature versions of me.

But I'm realizing that giving my kids what I didn't have can't just mean material things.

Or experiences.

Or trips.

Or letting them paint the proverbial walls black.

It has to be a foundation.

I have always told people that I want to give my kids a childhood they don't have to heal from.

Which sounds lovely.

Also mildly delusional.

I'm going to fuck something up.

I'm their mother.

I'm sure one day they'll be sitting in therapy explaining some completely reasonable thing I did that their brain filed under Formative Childhood Trauma, while I'm somewhere yelling, "THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED."

I can't promise them a childhood they'll never have to heal from.

Life will happen to them.

I will make mistakes.

They'll interpret things through their own experiences in ways I couldn't possibly predict.

But maybe I can give them a foundation sturdy enough that whatever they eventually have to repair doesn't require demolishing the whole damn house.

I hope their rebuild isn't as costly as mine.

And sometimes I catch myself understanding exactly what I'm trying to protect.

My boys keep asking me for a sister.

I keep reminding them that I'm currently missing a fairly key component for that particular project.

T, being T, informed me that I could just buy that.

Which...

technically?

He's not wrong.

WTF, T.

I told him that was true, but I didn't want to do it alone.

His immediate response was that he would help.

And that hit me harder than he probably realized.

Because it was incredibly sweet.

I love the young man he's becoming. I appreciate every time he helps me with Nugs when I need backup.

And, to be fair, I've already raised two kids largely on my own.

But I never set out to do it alone.

More importantly, I don't want his willingness to help to quietly become a responsibility that was never supposed to be his.

I told him I don't want him to have to become a parent before he's supposed to.

I want him to be fifteen.

I want him to deal with fifteen-year-old problems.

I want him to be a big brother, not a backup parent.

I have to remind him of that sometimes even now.

He's not Jax's boss.

He's not responsible for raising him.

He's his brother.

Because helping isn't the same thing as being responsible.

And maybe that's a distinction I wish someone had made for me much earlier.

I want him to grow into adulthood.

Not be drafted into it.

I think a lot of us were drafted.

We were the mature ones.

The helpers.

The babysitters.

The peacekeepers.

The kids who "could handle it."

And somewhere along the way, capability became obligation.

Being responsible became part of how we earned our place.

We learned how to carry adult weight before we had the chance to develop the muscles for it.

Then everyone acted surprised when we grew into adults who were very good at handling crises and strangely unsure what to do with peace.

I don't want to hand that down to him as some kind of family heirloom.

"You can handle it" is a powerful thing to teach a child.

"You have to handle it" is something entirely different.

I want him to know he's capable without believing capability means obligation.

I want him to know he can help without believing everyone else's stability is somehow his responsibility.

I want both of my boys to have the time and space to actually develop into the adults they'll eventually become.

And part of that foundation is incredibly simple.

Someone to ask.

My boys ask me things all the time that I don't know.

Sometimes they're practical.

Sometimes they're philosophical.

Religion.

Relationships.

Bodies.

Life.

Sometimes they're questions that make me deeply regret creating an environment where my children feel comfortable asking me anything.

There are things about teenage boys I could happily go the rest of my natural life without knowing.

And yet...

I want them to ask.

If I know, I'll tell them.

If I don't, my answer has always been:

"I don't know, but we can figure it out together."

And if I'm not the person they need to have that conversation with, I can help them find the resources, tools, or person who is.

Maybe that's one of the biggest differences.

I've worked hard to create a network around my boys too. Men they can learn from, ask questions, and look to when I'm not the person with the answer. I talked about some of that in To the Good Men.

Safety isn't one person having all the answers. It's having a solid enough foundation that you know where to reach when you don't.

Sometimes that's me. Sometimes it's someone in their network. Eventually, more and more, it will be themselves.

Which, I suppose, makes it an actual safety net.

I'll see myself out.

But really, I want them to have a network they can draw from without making any one person responsible for holding them up.

I spent so much of my childhood figuring things out because I had to.

I want them to learn how to figure things out because they know they can.

Those aren't the same thing.

One is survival.

The other is confidence.

I don't have to be the all-knowing adultier adult.

I just have to be someone they feel safe coming to when they need one.

Which is both beautiful and absolutely fucking terrifying when I'm still trying to figure out how to be that person for myself.

I'm repairing my foundation while simultaneously trying to pour theirs.

No pressure.

I see so many people in my generation trying to do some version of this.

We give our kids what we didn't have.

Sometimes we overcorrect.

Sometimes we swing so far away from our parents that we create an entirely different obstacle.

Maybe that's part of parenting while you're still reparenting yourself.

Healing isn't necessarily doing the exact opposite of whatever hurt you.

The opposite side of the pendulum can still be another room.

Maybe the goal is the middle.

Feel your emotions without letting them drive the car.

Give your kids freedom without leaving them without guidance.

Let them become themselves while still being their parent.

Be someone they can come to without trying to control every road they take.

And meanwhile, Little Lauren has apparently been watching me work this hard to create that foundation for my kids, my friends, my family, my communities, and damn near anyone else who needs me.

Cool.

My turn?

Fuck.

Fair point.

OPA! THERE GOES ANOTHER PLATE

I tried learning tennis once.

My instructor told me my form was perfect right up until the last moment.

Then I would completely spaz.

Everything was there.

The setup.

The form.

The mechanics.

And then...

Follow-through.

System failure.

That might be the most accurate accidental assessment of my personality I've ever received.

I know how to prepare for success.

I'm less sure I know how to trust it.

Some part of my brain is always waiting for the good thing to end.

Because good things don't last.

And if it hasn't fallen apart yet?

Give it a minute.

So I brace.

I overthink.

I grip tighter.

I sabotage the follow-through because apparently my nervous system would rather be right about impending disaster than surprised by it.

Then I pray for redemption.

From myself.

From the universe.

From the Sky Daddies.

Anybody accepting applications for mulligans.

Because I know I can do it.

I just need to try harder.

Apply myself.

Take responsibility.

Get organized.

Make the plan.

Follow the plan.

Do all the things I've always done to piece my life back together like precious porcelain at the Greek wedding of life.

Every time I glue another plate back together, life screams OPA! and launches another one across the room.

At some point you start wondering how much of you is still porcelain and how much is glue.

But knowing I can do it apparently doesn't inherently mean trusting myself.

I'LL BE EXCITED WHEN I GET THERE

A few years ago, I was flying to Vegas for a girls' trip before we headed out to hike the Mighty 5.

People kept asking me if I was excited.

And I kept saying:

"I'm sure I'll be excited when I get there."

One of my friends finally questioned me about it.

Of course I wanted to go.

Of course I was looking forward to it.

But so many things could happen between Point A and Point B.

Flights get canceled.

Plans change.

Things happen.

Why let myself get completely excited about something that might not happen?

I'd be excited when I got there.

At the time, I thought I was just taking things as they came.

Now I hear that sentence differently.

I'll be excited when I get there.

Holy shit.

How conditioned for disappointment do you have to be before you need physical proof that something good is actually happening before you allow yourself to feel happy about it?

Maybe I wasn't protecting myself from a canceled flight.

I was protecting myself from disappointment.

Excitement requires anticipation.

Anticipation requires believing something good is coming.

And believing something good is coming requires trusting that you can survive the vulnerability of wanting it.

Apparently I needed boots on the fucking ground.

I couldn't relax into happiness while it was still something that could be taken away.

And that is high-masking happiness.

Not pretending I'm happy when I'm miserable.

Masking how afraid I am to be happy.

Keeping happiness contained.

Tempering excitement.

Managing expectations.

Don't get too comfortable.

Don't get too attached.

Don't celebrate yet.

Don't believe it until you're standing there.

And even when you're standing there, stay vigilant.

Don't trust it enough to relax.

Because if you don't fully let yourself want the thing, maybe losing it won't hurt as much.

Except I'm starting to wonder how many things I've finally arrived at only to discover I missed half the joy because I wouldn't let myself experience the anticipation.

How many good moments have I stood inside while some part of me was already calculating how long they could last?

How many beautiful things have I dismantled because I couldn't trust the beauty of what I'd created?

Picking them apart to prove they were unsafe before ever giving them the chance to be.

Self-sabotage, say what?!

I've spent so much time thinking happiness was somewhere ahead of me.

Maybe part of the problem is that when it arrived, I didn't always feel safe enough to let it stay.

WHAT DOES SAFE EVEN FEEL LIKE?

That's a good fucking question.

What does safety actually feel like?

Because I don't know that I could have answered that before.

I know what I thought it looked like.

Money.

Love.

Family.

A house.

A partner.

Stability.

Being wanted.

Being needed.

Being successful enough that nothing could be taken away from me.

Safety was an external thing built out of tangible things and other people.

Now?

I think safety looks quieter.

Peace of mind.

Everything nurtured, full, and thriving.

It still has some of the same core pieces, just with a twist.

Money in the bank.

A happy home.

Kids who are okay.

My cup filled enough that I actually have something left to pour into the people I love.

I might have a black thumb, but this is the kind of growth I think I can cultivate.

I'd still like someone beside me.

But safety looks less like something another person gives me and more like something I build that another person gets to share.

I spend so much time creating safe places for everyone else.

Safe for my kids to be themselves.

Safe for people to tell me things.

Safe to create.

Safe to speak.

Safe to say I Will Be Heard.

But where am I safe?

Safe to be myself.

Safe to speak my mind.

Safe to be creative.

Safe to succeed.

Safe to provide for myself.

Safe to rest.

Safe to fuck up without believing I've ruined everything.

Safe to let someone love me without immediately preparing for what happens when they stop.

Safe with them, not because of them.

Safe to get excited before I get there.

Safe to want something without needing a contingency plan for losing it.

Safe to believe something good can last.

Safe to be happy.

Maybe that's the mask I've actually been wearing.

Not happiness.

Fear.

Maybe I've spent years appearing happy while underneath it I've been gripping happiness so loosely that I could drop it before anyone had the chance to take it from me.

Maybe high-masking happiness isn't pretending everything is wonderful.

Maybe, for me, it's being genuinely happy and still being too afraid to put my full weight down inside it.

Because what happens if I get comfortable?

What happens if I trust it?

What happens if I finally believe:

This is mine. I'm safe here.

And then lose it?

Maybe safety isn't knowing I won't.

Maybe safety is finally knowing that if I do...

I won't lose myself with it.

Maybe my house being cluttered isn't some grand metaphor.

Maybe sometimes my house is cluttered because I have ADHD and too much shit.

But I can't ignore how much of my internal world seems to orbit the same question.

My relationship with money.

My relationships with people.

My constant busyness.

My need to escape into fantasy when reality gets too heavy.

My inability to completely relax into good things.

Even my body makes me wonder.

Fibromyalgia has made me think a lot about the relationship between the brain and the body. I've read books like The Body Keeps the Score. Then there is the spiritual language I use to understand myself too, and the fact that my worst pain settles into my hips, the area associated with the root chakra.

Grounding.

Stability.

Security.

Safety.

Science gives me one language.

Spirituality gives me another.

I'm not claiming to know exactly what any of it means.

I just find it interesting that I keep stumbling over the same fucking word.

Safety.

I AM THE DIY PROJECT

In Destroy to Become, I wrote about the things that break us apart and give us the opportunity to rebuild stronger.

But what if the foundation wasn't solid to begin with?

What if every room you've built has been standing on a foundation poured by a child who never felt safe?

That's where this gets uncomfortable.

Because I can't go back and become the child I would have been.

I can't retrieve some untouched version of myself from before all of this.

I'm more like a photograph that started developing and got interrupted halfway through.

Who would she have been if she'd felt safe?

If she'd been allowed to be a child?

If she hadn't learned to become whatever other people needed?

If she'd understood her brain earlier?

If she hadn't spent decades masking parts of herself?

I don't know.

And maybe I have to stop trying to know.

I have to release all those versions of myself.

The person I thought I'd become.

The person someone else wanted.

The person trauma created.

The person masking protected.

The person I thought someone would love.

The person who might have existed if everything had been different.

I'm happy with the person I'm becoming.

That's important.

But I'm also finally realizing that finding myself isn't really about uncovering someone who was there all along, perfectly preserved underneath everything.

I am still developing.

Still learning.

Still filling in the missing scaffolding.

Still teaching myself things I should probably already know.

Still asking people to teach me things I don't.

Still examining my reactions.

Still learning when I'm triggered and when I'm actually seeing something clearly.

Still trying to understand the difference between accountability and punishment.

Still learning how to hold Little Lauren's hand instead of expecting her to figure this shit out too.

I became the person I needed.

Maybe the next step isn't becoming someone else.

Maybe it's trusting the person I already became enough to actually experience her.

Without sabotaging the good thing before it has the chance to become real.

Without creating the worst-case scenario because some part of me would rather control the ending than be surprised by it.

There is a strange comfort in being right about disappointment.

If I expect it to fall apart and it does, at least I was prepared.

If I end it first, I don't have to be left.

If I don't get too excited, I can't be that disappointed.

If I assume the worst, nothing can catch me off guard.

Except that's not safety.

That's control dressed up as protection.

And maybe I don't need to control the ending before I've even allowed myself to experience the beginning.

Maybe I can trust the life I've created.

Maybe I can reach back and bring Little Lauren into the light instead of leaving her somewhere behind me, still bracing for everything to disappear.

There is a gap between us.

She had to grow up before she was ready, and I kept running forward from there.

Adult responsibility without adult development.

Uneven scaffolding.

A child building with whatever materials she could find and an adult who has spent years reinforcing the structure without always understanding why it felt so unstable.

Maybe the work now is bridging that gap.

Maybe.

Apparently maybe is my favorite word. Somebody buy this girl a thesaurus.

Or maybe...

Fuck.

Anyway.

The work now is bridging that gap.

Letting the woman I've become show the girl I was what we know now.

We can learn things we weren't taught.

We can ask for help without being incapable.

We can make mistakes without everything collapsing.

We can lose people without losing ourselves.

We can get excited before we get there.

We can build something good and actually trust ourselves enough to live inside it.

And maybe when neither of us knows what the fuck we're doing, I can offer her the same thing I've always offered my boys:

I don't know either. But we can figure it out together.

That's how I start cultivating the kind of safety I've spent my whole life looking for in other people.

Not because I don't need anyone else.

I do.

I want love.

I want community.

I want people beside me.

I want someone to build with.

But I don't want another person to have to be the foundation.

They can add rooms.

Knock down walls.

Hang weird shit on them.

Maybe leave their socks all over the floor.

They can make the house infinitely better because they're in it.

And if they leave, I will hurt.

I might grieve.

I might be angry.

I might sit on the metaphorical kitchen floor eating ice cream and questioning every decision I've made since 1997.

But the foundation stays.

Little Lauren doesn't get abandoned again.

Because we're both still here.

I think that's what reparenting actually looks like for me.

Not telling her to toughen up.

Not telling her everything happens for a reason.

Not another lesson about gratitude or accountability or trying harder.

Not telling her not to get too excited yet because something might go wrong.

Maybe I finally get to tell her:

You can be excited.

You can love this.

You can want it.

We can be happy here.

I've got you either way.

Who am I to tell anyone else who they're supposed to be or what the meaning of any of this is?

If you're reading The Building Life, you're basically just along for the journey while I unravel myself in real time.

Maybe something in my unraveling resonates with yours.

Maybe you're watching from a safe distance thinking, Girl, what the fuck? Because sometimes, same.

Both are valid.

The shift for me has been learning to stop focusing entirely on what life, other people, or even my own mind have done to me.

Yes, acknowledge it.

Yes, understand it.

Yes, hold people accountable.

Yes, hold myself accountable.

And then ask:

Okay. What am I going to do about it?

For years, I thought The Building Life was about all the things I was trying to build.

A career.

A home.

Businesses.

Projects.

Kids who have the space to become themselves.

A life I actually want to live.

But somewhere in all that building, I realized the biggest DIY project I've ever taken on has been there the whole time.

Me.

And it's not like I've neglected that project.

If anything, I've been working on it obsessively.

I've read the books.

Done the therapy.

Asked the questions.

Examined the patterns.

Taken accountability.

Learned the attachment styles and diagnoses and coping mechanisms and all the other language that helped me understand why the hell I do the things I do.

I've been renovating this whole time.

I'm not finding myself.

I'm finally getting the chance to build myself intentionally.

To shore up the foundation.

Replace some shitty wiring.

Stop painting over cracks and calling it healed.

Learn the skills nobody taught me.

But I don't want to spend the rest of my life under construction.

And I don't want "working on myself" to become another reason I don't fully live.

Another finish line.

Another version of:

I'll be excited when I get there.

I'll date when I'm healed enough.

I'll relax when the finances are perfect.

I'll enjoy the house when it's clean.

I'll feel successful when I reach the next goal.

I'll let someone really see me when I've finished fixing all the parts I'm afraid they'll judge.

Except there will always be another room that needs work.

There will always be something unfinished.

And if I wait until I'm a perfectly renovated human being before I let anyone all the way in, I'm going to die in a beautifully restored house no one was allowed to fucking visit.

There will always be something to fix.

Something to learn.

Some old wiring I'll discover behind a wall and think, Who the fuck installed this?

Probably me.

At twelve.

With no permit.

But at some point, you have to live in the house.

And maybe you have to let people in while there are still tools on the floor.

Not everyone.

We've already established that we're no longer operating an open-door policy for raccoons.

But the people who have earned access shouldn't need a completed renovation to come inside.

Maybe neither should I.

I've spent so much time trying to build a life that would finally feel secure that I've struggled to actually live inside the life I've already built.

To get excited before the plane lands.

To enjoy something without calculating how long it might last.

To love someone without simultaneously rehearsing how I'll survive losing them.

To appreciate where I am without immediately looking toward where I'm supposed to be next.

I've spent years believing that if I could just get everything into place, then I could relax.

Then I'd be happy.

Then I'd feel secure.

Then I'd exhale.

But life doesn't really work that way.

There will always be another repair.

Another bill.

Another heartbreak.

Another plan that goes sideways.

Another version of me that needs a little work.

The goal can't be building a life where nothing is ever taken from me.

That's impossible.

Maybe it's trusting that losing something doesn't always mean I've lost.

Sometimes it means there is finally room for something else.

I've written before about different doors leading out of similar rooms.

Maybe this is another door.

I can keep gripping everything I've managed to build because I'm terrified of ending up empty-handed again.

Or I can trust myself enough to loosen my grip.

Not because everything that leaves will automatically be replaced with something better.

I can't promise myself that.

But because sometimes what leaves creates room for something different.

Maybe something better.

And whatever comes next, I trust the person who will be standing there to meet it.

Me.

That's different.

I used to think security meant finally building something no one could take away.

Now I think it might mean knowing that even when life takes something, it doesn't get to take me with it.

Maybe the point isn't to finish myself.

Maybe it's to stop treating myself like a project that has to be completed before I'm allowed to enjoy the fucking house.

There are rooms here worth living in now.

There are people here worth loving now.

There are things growing here now.

I might have a black thumb, but apparently I'm getting better at this kind of cultivation.

So maybe when something good is coming, I don't have to wait until I get there to believe in it.

Maybe I can be excited at Point A.

Maybe when something beautiful is here, I can stop measuring the distance to the exit.

And when something ends, maybe I can trust that the empty room isn't proof that the whole house is falling down.

It's just space.

I don't know what will fill it yet.

I don't know what I'm going to build there.

But maybe I don't need to know yet.

I've spent enough of my life trying to predict the ending so I could protect myself from it.

For most of my life, an empty room would have terrified me.

Now?

Maybe I can stand in it without immediately trying to fill it.

Maybe I can look around at everything that's still standing, take Little Lauren by the hand, and remind both of us:

We don't have to know.

We'll figure it out together.

And in the meantime?

At some point, you have to live in the house.

Unpacking my shit. Might even trust it enough to stay awhile,
Lauren