Laugh Out Loud, LOL, 😅😂🤣

I just remembered a time in my life where I never laughed out loud.  From my teens into my late 20’s, I seldom laughed out loud.  If something was extremely funny, I may smile, but I seldom even chuckled. I remember at the time there wasn’t much laughter in my life, having recently quit drinking and using drugs and trying to learn how to live life with no alcohol or drugs without sinking into the abyss.  Not too much to laugh about back then.

Since that time, I’ve learned how to love myself and share the love and laughter with others.  Today, I am more likely to burst into laughter at any given time. The people in my life over the years have showed me how to live my life the best I could and I learned to be able to share the tears and the laughter with others, bringing me closer to the point where I am absolutely loving my life, in spite of the struggles life brings.

My husband also taught me by example, how to laugh at myself.  He has a wonderful sense of humor and got such a kick out of making me laugh.  In my insecurities, I was always trying to protect myself from anyone seeing my true emotions and who I really am.  Inside of the true love he showered me with over the years, he taught me how to laugh again and his love and total acceptance of who I was and loving me anyway went a long way towards giving me the confidence to take on the world and let them know who I am.  Since the world I took on was primarily the corporate world, I quickly realized that I was a square peg in a round hole and I had some work to do to fit in and make a career for myself.

This was in 1981 when the corporate world was very formal with a whole crapload of written and unwritten rules about “professional dress and conduct.”  Enter a young woman:

Age 25; High school dropout with a GED; About to get married for the second time; First husband had custody of her boys; She rode a motorcycle; She lived in jeans and shirts, no bra; 2 Years Sober; She had come a long way from that woman on the back of a motorcycle in borrowed clothes with a quart of rum in her pocket the last weekend she drank.

Qualifications for a secretary job:  Typing test score of 83 words per minute, no errors.  When asked if I could use a Dictaphone I said “Sure.”  I didn’t know what it was, but I was sure I could figure it out in no time, they never needed to know.  I did fine until my boss used an acronym (LOA) with her Finnish accent.  For the life of me I could not figure out what she was saying and finally had to break down and ask.  But, she never knew I didn’t know what a Dictaphone was until years later when I no longer worked for her, but we were still in touch.

And, so started my career.  I found out quickly that I couldn’t share too many personal details in that environment.  After about six months I told a “friend” in confidence that I was a recovering alcoholic, sober two years.  Soon, everyone in the department knew.  Oops.  TMI.  Whispers behind my back.  After another three months, I got the opportunity to work in a different department at headquarters.  I learned my lesson.   I didn’t share too many more personal details with people at work.  I learned to filter my words and my actions.  This worked well for my career, but I wore that protective shield around me for most of my career.

When I retired 31 years later and dropped the cloak of functioning in the corporate world, I found myself to be a woman that grew up, conquered her world and could now enjoy the fruits of my labor in retirement. Since retirement, I really feel like I’ve come into my own.  Living life on my own terms and even with the traumatic events over the last two years being able to laugh about life and keep moving on.  I much prefer to laugh vs. cry.  I am so enjoying just being myself and loving the people in my life.

Love and Peace

Chick