I remember, back in the LiveJournal days, I was in a community for abuse survivors. I never posted my own story. I just commented on those that did – I was never brave enough.

Something I did notice:

Over the years, the women I have kept up with (I am friends with several of them still, sheesh, 25 years later) are still posting their stories and have collected so many more of them since.

Do we manifest more of the same when we tell them our stories on a loop?

I have a friend that I adore more than anything. She seems to attract more crap than a long-haired cat’s butthole.

I get these long-winded messages from her regularly. Admittedly, I do not always read each syllable – I know what these messages will say. I can change the man’s name, but the story is the same.

If she asks for advice, I tell her the same thing. She agrees that I am correct, but she never follows through.

Then the desperate messages will begin:

“He has stopped talking to me, he does not love me any more, he_____. What should I do? What did I do wrong? I am a mess, I cannot think.“

Patterns, it seems, we write ourselves into.

So often, we will say, “Why do I always attract the same kind of person? Why can I never seem to catch a break? WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME?”

Reading through the highs and lows in my journals, I am perplexed by how familiar each “low” episode was.

And they got worse.

The highs are never very high but when they were, I was having a good time and not paying much attention to what was going on, I was living my life, learning, and hanging out with the kids and my friends.  The best periods were when I was always focusing on myself. These were very few and far between, admittedly. How can one tell when I am doing well? I am absent from social media.

I do not enjoy being online any more. Without the community aspect, it just feels like re-runs of The Oppression Olympics.