No Is A Complete Sentence

I think that it was the Olsen twins that coined the phrase "No is a complete sentence".  

I have a checkered past with the word no.  Something suggested to me that would push me out of my safe zone, past the walls I had built; that was an easy no.  Saying no to someone wanting me to do something, change myself for them, give in to what they wanted over what I wanted, impossible.

But I grew slowly to discover is this.  Saying no is liberating.  Not changing or giving in, feels wonderful.  Every day, I take a step further away from whom I was and walk towards who I am.

Take hobbies for example.  I love writing and usually try and get something written down, even if it is only a paragraph or two, every week.  At the moment, I try to write a post a week but it depends on how I feel on any given day.  You cannot force writing.  It just comes.

My partner has many hobbies.  He is always doing one hobby or another in the evening and one night he suggested that I should get another hobby for when the writing did not come. He doesn't watch TV and does not understand the binge watching of TV series.

I laugh now, but I thought that getting another hobby would please him so....I came up with knitting.  

I got some needles, some wool and one night, I gave it a go.  Except.  I did not want to fucking knit.  I wanted to watch the damn TV.  I lasted a night.  There was a lot of swearing.

I think that probably shows just how comfortable I already felt with him back then.  Giving up after one night.  The old me would have tried, and tried and tried.  I would have made it my vocation to please him.  To succeed.

I remember him laughing the next night when I threw away the needles and gave the wool to the cat to play with.  He said "Baby, just because I suggest something, doesn't mean you have to do it.  You don't have to try to please me.  You already please me, just as you are.  You need to please you."

You need to please you.  How often do we just stop, and please ourselves?

That was one of the many steps that I learned.  You don't have to try and please people for them to like you.  They either like you, or they don't.  You do not need to earn anyone's approval.  If they think you do need to earn it, screw them.

I have discovered that there are many phrases I that I did not feel comfortable saying.  It is only in the past year that I find myself able to start using them again.  

No.  

I don't want to.  

You can do that yourself.

I was always the caretaker, the organiser, the fixer.  

The one who always said yes, even when I secretly thought no.  

On the outside, I was the good organiser, the one who you could count on to take care of the "thing" that needed sorting.  But the truth was that I was trying to find love and acceptance by giving, then more giving.  I gave so much of myself that I thought that there was nothing left.

I am still the organiser and the fixer.  I have found that it is a part of me and I do enjoy it.  But the difference now is that I take a step back when I want.  I say no when I have too much on my plate.  I say no, just because I do not want to.

The temptation to help people will always be with me and is part of who I am.  But now, it is on my terms.

Trying saying no.  I don't want to.  Leave it to someone else for once to arrange.  If you are like I once was, it will be hard.  But you can do it.  You owe it to yourself.  You deserve it.

And if you fall off the bandwagon, just remember, no is a complete sentence.

The Curved Opinion Short Stories Part 10: Where Did You Go?

I heard the bike before I saw it.  But I did not need to see the bike to know what it was and who was riding it.

I had heard the sound of that motorcycle going up and down our driveway every day for twenty years.  Like clockwork.  6.15am and 4.45pm on the dot.

Except I had not heard that sound for the last two years.  Not since my husband had left for work at 6.15am on a Thursday, 13th February 2024 and never came home.

There was nothing special about that day.  I had made his breakfast as usual, packed up a large lunch for him as I always did.  A flask of strong coffee, two huge turkey sandwiches which were his favourite.  Another flask full of homemade soup.  Working as a machinery mechanic he put in a long day overhauling and fixing the equipment for a local factory and he worked hard.

We had spoken that morning about it being Valentines Day the next day and he told me that he planned to take me out for a meal.  This was unusual.  He did not normally do romance.  He showed me he loved me in the things that he did, but he did not like what he called "performative love".

Adam and I met when he was 21 and I was 18.  It was more than just love at first sight.  It just was.  We were together; and that was that.  We married two years later in a local orchard.  He worked hard to provide for us, I ran the home.  It worked for us.  Children were wanted, but that turned out not to be possible.

I remember the day that we found out that we were to be a childless couple.  The problem was with both me, and him.  It could have broken us, but it didn't.  We created a beautiful home, cultivated our hobbies, him with his love of motorcycles, me with my love of felting, crafting and baking.  It worked for us.

So when the day came, 18 years into our marriage that he disappeared, there was no reason.  We were happy.  He just drove off on his motorcycle that morning and did not come back.  He did not arrive at work, no one remembered seeing him.  It was as if he had been simply plucked from the earth.

I reported him as missing, but the local police did not seem to take that much interest.  They did all the usual things of course that you expect when someone goes missing.  They interviewed friends, work colleagues, his family; although there was little of the latter.  They checked the local woods and canvassed door to door.  But after three weeks of searching without a lead, they lost interest, suggesting that he had left me for another woman.  But that was not Adam.  Cheating in any form was something he could never abide.

My heart was broken.  To never find him, never get an answer as to what had happened that morning was more than I could bear.  Yet, somehow, I knew that somewhere, somehow, he was alive,  I felt it.

With no money coming into the house now I got a job with a catering company.  I loved baking so it seemed an obvious choice.  I made cakes and desserts for weddings and events.  My career flourished, but the rest of my life did not.  I could not move on.  I would not.  He was out there, somewhere.

So when I heard the familiar rumble of the motorcycle that morning, two years after he had disappeared, part of me was not surprised.  I had been waiting.  Waiting to hear the sound of that engine that told me that he was home.

I raced through the kitchen and on to the porch as he pulled up.  He looked the same.  No helmet because he said that his head was hard enough.  The same leathers.  The same stubbly beard that I loved.  That look of love in his eyes that he had whenever he saw me.

I shouted, no, screamed at him "Where the hell have you been?"  He looked at me as he climbed off the bike, looking more serious than I had ever seen him.

"Do you still love me?" he asked.  "I never stopped" I whispered as he approached me and pulled me into his arms.  "Do you trust me?" he said looking directly into my eyes.  I shouldn't.  He had been gone for two years without a word.  Yet I nodded.  I did.

"Then pack a bag.  As much as you can fit into a rucksack.  No time for questions.  Will you come?"

I looked into his eyes once more for a long minute and smiled.  "Give me 15 minutes to pack".