The other day I was visiting a friend at their house for the first time. This house was clean.

Not just in the sense that it was recently dusted and there were no dishes in the sink. That, but also no clutter. The kitchen counters were bare (how?). The living room looked like a magazine shoot – not just elegant but no knickknacks, no magazines. The family room TV hid behind a cabinet and the blankets were folded in a corner, the coffee table a smooth shining expanse of nothingness.

It was some kind of miracle.

The next day I was hanging out with my cousin and his wife and they got to talking about how retirement is looming, so they’ve been aggressively cleaning out their house. Garbage bags full of stuff on its way out, their basement emptied and ready for house showings. The possibility of living abroad or travelling with literally everything they owned a real possibility.

I admit I was envious of both.

My house is in need of a cleaning on the surface level, and also underneath. Everywhere I look there is clutter – bank papers waiting for me to magically understand them before I can somehow find space for them in the filing cabinet, counters covered with an assortment of 50 types of tea and vitamins I’ll forget to take otherwise. Puzzles overflowing the so-called puzzle nook, waiting for my attention, and books – so many books! – stacked beside beds and family room chairs and next to bookshelves that just cannot accommodate them.

Oh, to live life clean, to live life with such focus and direction that you wake up each day to a clean slate and can decide what to think about, instead of having a million thoughts thrust upon you.

But the truth is, that’ll never be me, because I’m a scatterbrain, and I honestly don’t mean that in any kind of negative way. My brain scatters to the four winds at all times. Plans for tomorrow, next week, next year all live in there at once. It’s a tornado of creative projects and words coming in and words coming out and new thoughts and forward motion. It’s this but also that and that as well, and did I mention this other thing?

To me the world is so full of so many amazing things, so many experiences, that I want them all (cue Barbra Streisand: the world is juicy, juicy, and you see, I gotta have my bite, sir). And if my house is a visual representation of the inside of my brain – colours swirling, silly trinkets flashing, every outfit I tried on this week that didn’t quite fit and so lies discarded like a parade of who I was and who I might be again lying on the bedroom floor – then that’s maybe not so bad.

October was a hard month.

It’s been more than a year now that I’ve been doing the separation dance and we’re still not agreed, which seems like madness. There were some tough meetings and events in October and for the first time this year, I felt it.

The sadness of being The Bad Guy.

I am not one who sees the world in black and white. There are many sides to every story and my own point of view is just that, my side of things, one perspective only.

I’ve always trusted that over time, others will come to see me for who I am, will form their own truths and get to the heart of things. But I am learning that is not always true. Those that shout their own point of view the loudest are often rewarded with the Truth Label.

I have to admit it does all seem convincing. I’ll wear the Bad Guy label if it helps actually move things forward.

I cried a lot in October, alone, in my house, and one thing my World of Greys point of view tells me is that I have my own learning to do, my own growing to do. Maybe I’m not the Bad Guy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have some changing to do, as the main character in this life.

One thing I know I don’t do well is share. I don’t share my joys, I don’t share my sadness, even with people I’m closest too. One feels too much like bragging, the other feels like too much of a burden for others to carry.

But I’ve been invited out lately by a few old, dear friends I haven’t connected with in a long time and I’m learning to say yes, yes to coffee, yes to movie nights. I’m daring to trust them with my sadness and to share. To actually admit to it being hard and me being weak, to be vulnerable.

Not gonna lie, it’s quite scary, but I’ve been assured by many online therapy sites that it’s the right way to build a community and move forward. To share my World of Greys with others and stop feeling like the world will only ever see me as the Bad Guy, to quietly spread my own truths.

I am changing, my life is changing, the world is changing, and I feel like the key thing here is to take the wheel and drive it forward in my own way, on a better path, towards a better me.

See you all there.

The internet has figured out I’m single again, so I’m getting a lot of ads now on Instagram and YouTube for dating sites.

But what I really want is a connection site for gal pals. Buddies. Hang-out friends.

How do you make friends when you’re over 50? I was at the grocery store the other day and saw a lady about my age, with tattooed arms (same) and a Taylor Swift concert tee (same) and raggedy greying hair like a Macbeth witch (same) and I was like, I want to be your friend.

I was thisclose to handing her my number on a card and running away but it was just too stalkerish and weird. No one does that.

It was probably naive of me to imagine that I’d get to keep all my same friends after the split, and I have lost many, and am still losing some, and it hurts more than I thought it would. I have learned that while I never wanted any of my friends to have to choose, for my own mental health I have done some choosing on their behalf, and that has meant more endings in a year full of endings. Every new leaving brings more tears and more mourning and more raging against the lack of light at the end of the tunnel.

And I believe I may have mentioned this but there is just too much new right now and that sucks too.

I know I need people, and that means new friends, and that means horrifying things like leaving the house and exploring new hobbies and speaking to strangers. Honestly, THE WORST.

Where’s match.com for making friends? I feel like Leslie Knope would be all over this.

I feel like this blog used to be a shiny, happy place and I do apologize for the bleakness lately. Maybe I’ll write my way to joy, or at least Kit Kat my way to joy.

But really, it’s been a hell of a week.

My laptop hard drive imploded. Ironically, while I was trying to back up the 2TB of data that lived on there that was otherwise totally NOT backed up.

I lost years of storytelling. Family photos going back to 2001. My kids’ baby books that I’d updated since they were born. Fiction and non-fiction writing, completed, published, and in-progress.

I lost the graphic design work I’d done for every website I’ve ever worked on. My will. Taxes for the past 8 years. Documentation I wrote for dozens of clients.

I lost several creative works-in-progress I’d spent hours and hours on. Patterns for projects I’d created from scratch.

I cried about it, a lot.

(Before you ask, yes, I took it to A Guy, and said Guy confirmed it’s dead-dead, toast-toast, goner-goner, nothing can be recovered.)

Meanwhile, I met with my lawyer, and my banker, and they both sadly and gently told me to brace myself and prepare for the worst and think about cutting back.

And just then my gas fireplace quit, and my microwave/hood fan died, and I had to do several other major repairs on this house that I don’t know if I’m even going to be able to keep, and I feel like I’m bleeding money, and bleeding tears, and generally just bleeding, bleeding, bleeding.

It was unfortunately a rough week for all three kids too. School transitions, new places to live, hopes and fears but mostly fears.

It’s not a week to fall apart but screw it, let’s do that.

I already had too many new stories going on. Too many blank pages to figure out how to fill. Too many pivot points and rebuilding efforts and new-new things to juggle.

Deep breaths. One worry at a time. One fresh, blank, empty hard drive to try to see as a beginning, not an ending.

It’s the strongest, truest reminder that there is no going back, there is only forward, and you get on board with that or you bleed out.

I know I’m not the most optimistic person about love at the moment.

I mean, several months ago, when it became clear my marriage was kaput, my friend’s son got married (hi Lee Ann!). She showed me the pictures and the wedding was absolutely gorgeous, romantic and fun. The bride and groom had been together for years and were perfect for each other.

But still, a little part inside me was screaming at the bride, run, Shawna, run.

(I do realize my own baggage was a factor there. It’s probably a good thing I was not invited or I may have had a Speak Now moment.)

But still, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to love someone, and more than that, what it means to be partnered with someone.

It seems the very height of improbability.

I mean, here is someone you have to feel completely at ease with. They should give you that feeling like when you get home at the end of the day and sigh, slide out of your work shoes and into sweats, fully comfortable. This is not someone you have to be guarded or fake around. They’ve seen the best and the worst and they know who you are, and they’re still here.

But this is also someone you have to trust enough to be there when you call for help. Whether it’s hiding the bodies or finding a way to make that year exchange in Spain you always wanted come true or making you a cup of tea when you Just Can’t Even, you know they’ll be there. They are comfort and support, they got your back, they are your person.

And on top of that, they also have to be someone you are physically attracted to, someone you’d like to get your hands on. Someone snuggly who you really want to make feel good, who is hot enough that you can get past the icky parts of bodies and go straight to the delicious parts, on a regular basis.

It just seems like something magical and rare and quite unlikely.

I mean, I’m not saying it can’t happen.

But I am saying, if you have it, understand the miracle it is that you found all these things in one other person, and maybe figure out their love language if you haven’t yet, and buy them flowers or tell them they did a good job today or give them a hug just because or book a date night with them, as is their preference, from time to time.

We have a card game we like to play as a family, called Pit.

The way Pit works is, everyone gets a “hand” of cards of mixed resources. Then, at the shout of Go, everyone attempts to make trades of cards in their hands at once, back and forth, trying to get a matching set of one resources. There are no turns, everyone just yells out trade offers like in a real stock exchange pit, until someone has a set and calls an end to it all. It’s delightfully chaotic.

One catch is that there are two special cards in the game. The Bull card is wild, and you can use it in place of any required resource.

The Bear card is bad news. When holding the bear, you cannot declare a winning set, even if you have one in your hands, and it counts as negative points against you on your journey to the eventual win.

We used to play this game at holidays as you can play with many people and it’s suitable for a wide range of ages.

But we rarely play anymore and that’s because we have a problem, and that problem is this:

I hold The Bear.

When you have The Bear, the goal is to trade it away to some sucker as fast as possible. Get someone to believe you’re offering two wheat when really it’s a wheat and a bear. Get someone to buy in that your offering has “never been seen” and then giggle with relief when they take The Bear off your hands.

But I can’t do it. I can’t pass The Bear to anyone else. If someone gives me The Bear, I just hold it in resignation.

Eventually my kids in particular caught on to this and realized what was happening. And now we don’t play any more – or at least, they won’t play with me – because me holding The Bear spoils the game.

It’s an ironic thing that I can’t pass on The Bear because I just can’t hurt them. But it’s also, apparently, no fun.

Good or bad, I have to say, “She Held The Bear” might be the best description of my personality of all time. Please put that on my gravestone.

It’s who I am, I’m a bear-holder. I’m starting to see it’s not always a good thing. It’s definitely not always an appreciated thing.

But I’m not sure, at this point, if I’ll ever be able to change. Acting in your own self-interest is a hard thing to learn, it seems.

My mother used to say this thing, from time to time as I was growing up, which was so funny. It was this: “I don’t ask for much, but just this once…” And then she’d ask us to do her a favour of some kind.

It was funny because sure, she didn’t ask for much with words. But she asked for things by expressing disappointment when things didn’t go her way, or reacting with stress and distress when everything was just too much. We learned how to read the signs and work around her, how to be quiet and good and just the way she needed us to be for everything to run smoothly.

In short, she didn’t have to ask; we molded ourselves to her needs until it was second nature. She might not have asked, but we were giving her things all the time anyway.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the fact that I don’t ask for much, or perhaps don’t ask for enough. That I have the right to ask for more.

I came across this meme and I thought, yes, this is it, this is me:

But then I got to thinking – if I told my kids that I don’t ask for much, that I only ask for the barest minimum, would they laugh? Is that a funny thing to them, because they’ve learned all my tells, all my little signs that they are asking for too much, that there’s too much weight on my shoulders, and so it’s time for them to be smaller and quieter and the very lowest of low maintenance?

Is “not asking for things” just another form of high maintenance?

It’s confusing.

I can say this: I’m a grown up now, this is my house, and what’s the beauty of being grown if it isn’t to take the space you want, be as badly behaved as you want, and make a few waves? Eat cookies for dinner and laugh very loudly and let everyone else just deal with it for a change?

Well. I can be low, mid, and high maintenance all at once, can’t I? There don’t appear to be any rules anymore.

I am really, really grateful to all my friends who haven’t asked what happened. So many people have just embraced me and told me they hope I’m okay and, without question, invited me to things and told me they love me and texted me “just because” and it kind of makes me want to cry with gratitude.

But the other day I caught my kids talking, and they said they knew exactly why their parents split up. BTS.

I was thinking, cheekily, of writing a post entitled “BTS broke up my marriage” – I’m sure it would go viral. But that’s not quite What Happened.

What Happened is this:

I was very young and determined to be everything someone else wanted, even at the expense of my own self.

I was very, very good at making everyone else feel loved and cared for, and told myself it really didn’t matter that there wasn’t anyone taking care of me or making sure I felt loved every day.

I thought I could make myself smaller and quieter and somehow, even though I was so, so burned out, find more corners of my heart to give and more energy to devote to others and somehow that would be sustainable.

I thought feeling guilty about spending time and money and energy on things I loved, even though it made other people unhappy or lost or lonely, was just how people lived, and I would have to make my peace with the crushing stigma of my secret passions.

Then I snapped.

I started to understand that no one is going to take care of myself but me.

I started to believe that what I wanted from my own life, these limited number of years I have left, was okay. Deserved, even.

I started to think that there were probably, given the mathematical odds, at least a handful of people out there who liked what I liked and tolerated with fondness the way I talk through movies and found my fun facts actually fun and didn’t mind how I like to collect toys and other childish things, and found it all very, very charming, and it was only a matter of finding them.

(Actually, it turned out I already knew many of them and had just forgotten.)

And by coincidence, around the same time, I rediscovered my love of music, and found BTS. And it was fun, in so many ways. And that led to a community of other fans who I now talk to many times a day that I love, wholly and completely. People who get me and let me be stupid and adventurous and silly and never, ever ask me to be anything other than 100% what I am, through and through.

And I remembered I had sisters, and old friends, and my writer gals who seriously, I owe so much to, and these people also wanted me to take all the time to find myself and care for myself as I needed.

So one day, I chose that love over everything else.

No regrets. I hope my kids understand that someday.

I’d love to go back to 20-year-old me and tell her all this but I know I wouldn’t listen. It had to be lived to be learned.

I’d love to tell every 20-year-old girl that she’s worthy and worthwhile and that loving yourself first is the only way you’ll find true happiness, but I know that’s not something that can be told, it has to be experienced.

I hope I live the rest of my days as an example to my kids of what a life can be when you live honestly and don’t try to hide. BTS or no BTS, find the things you love and love them, hard and completely, and don’t be ashamed.

I love all three of them so much, for exactly who they are, for all their quirks, for their deep thoughts, for their annoying habits, for their delightful senses of humour. I hope they find a dozen, a hundred, a thousand people who feel the same way about them, and I hope they settle for nothing less.

But if it takes them a few years and a few mistakes to get there, I’ll understand, and I’ll be there.

Thanks to all those who didn’t ask What Happened, but who I know will read this post with compassion and love. I love you all too.

Here’s an incident I think about a great deal.

One day, several years ago, I was driving to the grocery store on a Sunday morning and stopped at a light. I happened to look in my rearview mirror and had a clear view of the woman – about my age, wearing glasses like me – in the driver’s seat of the car behind me.

She was grooving.

Dancing her little heart out. Shoulders shaking, hands waving, singing with passion. I flipped around on the radio – remember when people still listened to the radio in cars? – and found the song that matched her movements and lip-syncing perfectly, and suddenly my own car had the right soundtrack.

(It was Mambo No. 5 by Lou Bega, in case you were wondering.)

One, two, three, four, five
Everybody in the car, so come on, let’s ride

It was just so delightful. I couldn’t stop smiling.

Because I totally get it.

When I drive, I sing. It’s not possible to drive in silence. I boogie, I jitterbug, I disco, I conga.

And mostly I belt. I love a good belter. Bops also welcome.

I think my kids are used to it. I rarely feel shame.

But I do look around whenever I stop at a light to see if the drivers in front of me, or beside me, are looking. It’d be embarrassing, but also, a bit of shared joy.

It hasn’t happened yet, but I like to think someday I’ll be somebody else’s Mambo No. 5 lady.

Keep an eye out for me!

I’ve become a person who travels for concerts. Is that a weird thing?

It’s totally normalized for me now. I’m some kind of Grateful Dead style groupie and I’m probably way too old for that kind of thing but it’s awesome and I love it.

In April I took my two daughters to see SUGA in NYC. We drove there, saw him twice over two days, and then drove home, stopping at Dia Beacon, an unbelievably beautiful art gallery in an old factory, on the way home.

In May, I took the youngest – Little Miss Sunshine, now there’s a term from the vault – to see Taylor Swift in Philadelphia, again for two nights. We drove down, had an amazing time, saw another gorgeous art gallery, drove home three days later.

At the high school, word got around that Little Miss Sunshine was heading to Philly for the weekend for the concert and she became a minor celebrity, with the girls in the hallway whispering reverently as she walked by. I was surprised, I mean, wasn’t half of Ottawa going?

I’ve been brainwashed into thinking this is normal.

I like to think of it is my New Normal, in any case. There aren’t a lot of bands I’d travel for but it just happened the two of these landed within driving distance just 10 days apart (would have been too much to ask them to coordinate their dates?) so off we went.

I’m saying Yes these days to things I want and having a marvelous time. I’ve got my play clothes on and I’m not holding back. I’m making the costumes, I’m trading the friendship bracelets, I’m handing out free photo cards. I’m all in.

Welcome to the Groupie Years, I like it here.