Tomorrow Needs You

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day.

According to the World Health Organization, 800,000 people die by suicide each year. It's estimated that for every death there are at least 20 additional attempts.

Here is what I know:

Deciding to stay alive might be the hardest and bravest thing someone can do, because lies are loud, and sometimes pain demands more than we have to give. Being a person is hard, and hope is not always as easy as it should be.

Here is what else I know:

You have a light to shine and a story to tell. You're still becoming. So please stay. Be. Become. Break and then be stronger for it. Celebrate every tiny victory and believe in the good things coming. Tomorrow needs you.

The hard things are worth talking about and help is worth asking for. Let's love big and be kinder than we have to be. Let's be gentle with ourselves and with each other. Let's be safe places and fight to make our voices heard. We need each other. And tomorrow needs us.

Don't Wait

Sometimes I lose myself.
In the shuffle.
In the day to day.
In the waiting.
In the grieving.
In the vast chaos that is me.
It's always here, on the brink of whichever ocean I happen to have found myself standing in, that I am reminded that I am small. That I am currently x% of the way through my one and only human experience, and I have no idea what the value of x is. It could be 25% or it could be 95%.
Now is all we have.
So now is the time,
To bring your magic.
To do the thing that scares you.
To speak your mind.
To love your people.
To love yourself.

(06.30.18)

Letting Go & Dreaming New Dreams

"Happiness is letting go of what you think your life is supposed to look like and celebrating it for everything that it is." - Mandy Hale

This is one of the most humbling lessons I've had to learn for two reasons:

1.) Expectations are complicated.
2.) Letting go is hard.

Sometimes it's still easy to lapse into bitterness. I'm currently preparing to take what feels like a giant step forward into the future I never planned for. A future I know little about and certainly didn't ask for. This is where the bitterness comes in: when it feels hard and scary and overwhelming, it's easy to dissolve into but I shouldn't have to be dealing with this. This wasn't supposed to happen. It's not fair.

And it's not.

Something my sister said to me early on that has stuck with me ever since is that dreams can change. I know now that there is hope here; but for a long time it felt like my dreams were falling apart and being taken from me against my will. My dreams of being a wife and a mother suddenly became question marks. Dreams of happily ever after felt nonexistent. I was afraid to hope for second chances, because they were second chances I never in a million years believed I'd need.

This time last year I couldn't imagine ever really being happy again. Now, though, I'm happier than I can ever remember being. I regularly experience a joy I didn't ever believe was attainable for me. And I'm just getting started. I've found such beauty and freedom in learning letting go of old dreams and daring to dream new ones. It has been messy and painful and healing all at once. And now I can appreciate that I've got a lot of life ahead of me, and I get to make it up as I go.

For so long I've lived in this tension that is aftermath and transition. It occurred to me recently that for the first time in almost two years, I'm not actually transitioning anymore. I've adapted to life after trauma, and now I'm just living it. I don't have to keep thinking of myself and my life in terms of my past. It doesn't have to be my time stamp or reference point anymore. I'm ready to let it go and leave it behind me where it belongs.

Granted, things will still come up. I'll meet them when they do. Until then, it's full speed ahead into the big, beautiful unknown that's waiting for me.

And I get to do whatever I want with it. Dreamy, right?

recentering

I've been a little off center lately.

I recently started noticing that I haven't been showing up all the way; that most of the time, when I interact with people, I only partially engage. It's like part of me is having a conversation, but most of my attention and energy is focused on mercilessly overanalyzing every part of the interaction and worrying about how I'm being perceived. As I'm putting myself out there and meeting new people and making new friends, I've found that I'm basically holding my breath at all times waiting for it to come up.

It being the fact that I'm divorced. It feels like a defining characteristic. It also feels like some dirty secret I'm keeping from the people in my life now who didn't know me then.

It seems I've been making the unfortunate mistake of believing that my divorce is the most significant thing about me. I've been operating under the delusion that being divorced subtracts from who I am and what I have to offer. To be totally honest, I struggle a lot with feeling ruined because of it. Making new friends feels bittersweet, because I worry that when they find out, they'll think I'm ruined too. This headspace has been slowly sucking the life out of me. It was beginning to affect my work, my energy, my mood, my body. I was so stuck in my head all the time and starting to feel depressed and withdraw again.

I'm so very thankful for my therapist and my people and safe places and gentle, yet fierce reminders of what's true:

Being divorced doesn't define me and I am not ruined.

Who I am today is objectively my best, strongest, most confident self. Who I am has been to hell and back and is braver, wiser, and more self-aware for it.

And so I'm learning to be mindful and intentional about checking in with myself:
- What am I believing today?
- How am I showing up?
- Where is my head?
- How is my heart?

I'm learning to ask these questions, answer them honestly, separate truth from lies, and re-center as needed. I want every interaction to be intentional, because now is all we have. I want people to see and experience my best and most present self; the vast and dynamic person I am, chaos and all. Because I fought hard to become her. Because I'm proud to be her (even if I still need reminding from time to time).

I also find myself humbled and challenged (and re-challenged) by this quote:

"What people in the world think of you is really none of your business." - Martha Graham

People are going to draw their own conclusions. What other people think of me is out of my hands and shouldn't affect how I carry myself, anyway. All I can do is be who I am. My people know and understand me, and the right new people will get to know and understand me.

I'm a work in progress, and learning (again) to be okay with it.

grief, again.

I had almost forgotten what it's like to have the wind knocked out of me.

Almost.

There's space for gratitude here, because there is something to be said for the ever-lengthening blocks of time in between my rough days. The stretches are, for the most part, getting longer and sweeter as time goes on. For that, I'm very grateful. But then grief sneaks up, sometimes seemingly out of nowhere, and gets the better of me.

I'm finding it difficult to move forward while still juggling varying degrees of grief and loss and anger and pain; especially when forward motion is all anyone else sees anymore. What I'm still working through and processing has become past tense to the people in my periphery, which makes sense. The truth is that I'm okay. Very okay. But that doesn't change the fact that the being okay and the moving on were not things I ever anticipated having to do. The reality is still that I never wanted any of this.

There are a lot of external expectations when you get divorced. There are additional expectations when you get divorced for the reasons that I did. It's as though I'm expected to have nothing short of a "f*ck him" attitude at all times. Once those papers are signed and sealed, it's supposed to be full speed ahead in any direction that is away from him. No looking back. Even a glance over my shoulder is enough to make the people who love me squirm.

Again: I didn't ask for this. I've got 9 years worth of letting go to do here.

It's not easy.

Sometimes I feel things that I don't even allow myself to assign words or give conscious attention to because it seems wrong to feel them. I feel things that don't make sense given my circumstances; I miss things I don't want to miss. It's hard and confusing, and you don't get it unless you get it.

Sometimes it's hard to just let true things be true; but I'm in the business of breaking all the way open. Today in therapy, I finally spoke aloud the things I've been most afraid to feel. There is so much power in simply saying what's true and in naming hard feelings and emotions. It felt like finally releasing the breath I'd been holding for months and opening my heart as wide as it can go. And where there is mostly pain and grief, there is also freedom in giving myself permission to feel it all and let it be what it is. Because I am vast and turbulent I refuse to limit myself by trying to be less so. I'm an ocean learning my tides.

Today, I filled the last page of the journal I took to hell and back. It feels like a milestone. This journal is probably about 60% curse words, and I've chucked it at the wall more times than I can count; but I discovered and rebuilt myself on these pages. Even on the rough days, I can see a fairy tale beneath the horror story.

Life is weird and hard. 

Even so, it's a beautiful day.

The Love I Believe In

I've always sort of loved Valentine's Day. Sure, it's corny and commercialized and various other things that people hate on it for, but giving/receiving gifts is far and away my top love language, and I love any excuse to celebrate things. Plus, I am of the opinion that love deserves it's own holiday. Historically (more specifically, in the context of my marriage), I was made to feel dumb for getting excited about it, which often resulted in a certain degree of shame. Currently, I'm in the business of reclaiming the parts of me that I allowed to shrink and that began to suffocate as a result. That said, I'd like to make it clear that I like corny/commercialized holidays, i.e. Valentine's Day and also that I'm not sorry about it.

That I'm reclaiming the part of me that loves Valentine's Day probably sounds relatively insignificant, but it represents something so much bigger. I made myself so small for so long. I'm rediscovering the parts of myself that shame taught me to hide and shrink and edit. I'm rediscovering them and learning to love them. Reclaiming these things like this feels being able to breathe deeply for the first time in a long time. It feels like coming back to life.

This time last year, I was in a very different place than I am today; separated, halfway through a months long communication hiatus, constantly in or on the verge of tears, still trying to piece myself back together enough to make a decision about the fate of my marriage. My sweet family rallied around me with distraction and preventative measures in the form of gifts and breakfast dates and expensive steak dinners and bottles of wine. This year, surprisingly, I'm somewhat unfazed. I'm not sad, exactly, and I don't have the urge to destroy the Valentine's displays when I go to Target.

This feels like a pretty big victory to me.

For the longest time, I felt caught between a rock and a hard place; stuck between believing that big love exists and also feeling so bitter that it was stolen from me. Discouraged to think that maybe I never even had it in the first place. I've seen love twisted and distorted until it's completely unrecognizable. I was deceived and betrayed and lied to, supposedly because of "love." I'm still dealing with bitterness and disappointment at the unfairness of it all.

Over the last year and a half, though, I have been shown love that is bigger and deeper and more real than I've ever experienced in my life. If I'm honest, my family and handful of close friends are the main reason I believe in love at all anymore.

But I do believe in love.

I believe in love as a force. I believe in love that serves and heals and believes for good things. Love that unites the masses.

I believe in a love that is blind.

I believe in love as a decision. Love that resolves to sacrifice and negotiate and compromise.

I believe in hard love. I believe in love that exists even and especially where feelings are fleeting. I believe in love that stays. Love that fights. Love that keeps promises no matter what. Love that stands in the gap.

Do I believe in fairy tale love? Sure. A version of it, anyway. But most of the time I only believe in that love for other people. (For now).

It occurred to me recently that I don't really think of myself in terms of a relationship status. Saying that I'm single feels weird, even though it's true. Saying I'm divorced feels worse, even though that's also true. I guess I don't feel the need to assign myself a category. I'm just here; which honestly, I'm so completely okay with. I'm not anti-men or anti-dating by any means, and I'm also not pining for love. For now, I'm content, and ready for whatever comes next. Honestly, I'm surprised by how true that is.

It feels like hallowed ground.

Not for Nothing

I used to spend a lot of time worrying that moving on and being okay would somehow invalidate everything I've been through or negate all the hard work I've had to put in to get to where I am. I had this fear that if I could get to being okay, it might mean that what happened to me wasn't that big of a deal after all. But the more time that passes, the more my heart heals, the more I'm understanding that the opposite is true. I'm not the same person I was. I'm stronger, braver, and more self-aware than I've ever been. I've wrestled with varying degrees of anxiety, panic, self-injury, suicidal ideation, betrayal, grief, and the deepest heartache; and I've walked away stronger. I've even been told that I look and sound different.

Objectively, my ex-husband's affair was a very big deal. It was a trauma; one that I genuinely thought was going to kill me. Just because divorce is common doesn't mean it's not a big deal. It leaves nothing untouched and comes with its own specific renditions of breaking and pain and grief. Regardless of the circumstances, it's devastating.

AND, (I'm learning to replace my "buts" with "ands" to hold space for more than one true thing at a time).

I'm still here. Standing taller than I ever have. Having more good days than bad ones. Confident. Loving myself. Feeling proud of who I am and how hard I fought to get here. Almost entirely anxiety-free (which I never thought I'd be able to say). Healing. Happy. Hopeful.

Very few people are going to really understand the extent of what I've been through, and I'm learning to be okay with that. The control freak in me really struggles with the reality that people are going to make assumptions and draw their own conclusions when they learn that I'm divorced. I feel this constant, frantic need to explain, fueled by the fear that being divorced reflects poorly on me. (Cue the inevitable downward spiral that is oversharing and never not awkward). But I'm learning to let go of what's not mine to hold and to hold loosely to what I can't control. I'm humbled again and again by how true it is that other people's opinions of me are none of my business. The people closest to me know, and that's all that matters.

For a long time, I had to keep telling myself over and over that "I can do this." Eventually, that became "I am doing this." Now I'm beginning to feel the shift toward "I did it."

I did the thing I thought was impossible. And it wasn't for nothing.

Thoughts on Forgiveness

Sometimes forgiveness is simple.
Sometimes it can be hard and fast and over before you even have to think about it.
But sometimes it's not simple.
Sometimes the thing you're trying to forgive feels too big to even acknowledge, let alone afford the conscious thought required to process it.
Sometimes forgiveness is complicated by too many moving parts.
How do you forgive what doesn't change?
How do you forgive the person who isn't sorry they hurt you?

I'm learning that it's okay to forgive in parts when forgiving all at once feels impossible. Healing occurs gradually and in stages. Forgiveness can, too.

I'm learning that sometimes forgiveness has to be fluid. You choose it and you keep choosing it because at the end of the day, you're only human. But maybe one day you choose it, and the next you feel so much that it seems impossible again. Two steps forward, one step back is 1,000% an an acceptable model, because emotions are hard and feelings are valid and "pain demands to be felt*."

I'm also learning that forgiveness is for me more than it is for anyone else. For so long, I resisted; in part because forgiving something this big felt like letting them off easy, or like I was doing them a favor. It felt like self-betrayal. But recently, I've begun to truly appreciate what it means when they say that to withhold forgiveness is like swallowing poison and and waiting for the other person to die. It's been costing me. Whereas to forgive, to let it all go, and to move forward without any of this holding me back or weighing me down feels like the best gift I could ever give myself.

And so slowly, clumsily, I'm learning how to dance this particular dance.
Always to the tune of grace (upon grace, upon grace, upon grace).
In the name of healing;
In the name of moving forward;
And in the name of freedom.


*John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

2018

Historically, I've never been all that into celebrating New Years, mostly because I've never had anything cool to do. But the last couple of years have me appreciating the symbolism now more than ever. I love the idea of celebrating the closing of one chapter and the beginning of another, of reflecting on the past and looking to the future. I love the newness and the possibility. The proverbial blank slate.

In my blog post from last New Years Eve, I wrote the following:

To me, 2017 is full of possibilities and trips and bucket list check marks because I desperately need it to be. I need to believe that 2017 can be better because I can't imagine how it can possibly be worse. Every day I'm fighting and clinging so tightly to hope that it hurts, and I need the newness, even if it's simply buying a new day planner and training my brain to write a 7 instead of a 6.

This year is about healing and taking good care of me. It's about challenging myself and putting myself out there and doing things I've always wanted to do, because why not? If not now, when? Right now, so much of this new year is a giant question mark. The only things I know for sure are the very few plans I've made, which is just the way of it, but it's still completely terrifying. I have no idea how a lot of things are going to shake out. So many things that I entered 2016 believing to be true have turned out otherwise. As necessary as the newness of 2017 feels, the uncertainty of it makes my head spin. (12.31.16)

2017 was the year I fought for. At some point I started referring to it as the Year of Kaila. It was a year of firsts and achieving goals and traveling the world. It was also a year of breaking and healing; a year of feeling, of exploring my deepest and messiest places and learning how to love them. It was a year marked by hope and self-care. A long and grueling journey through pain, heartache, grief, rage and a million other things; and learning how to begin to forgive the seemingly unforgivable.

It was a year of doing impossible things.

I am so grateful for the contrast between this New Years and last. Where 2017 began full of heartache and fear and uncertainty, 2018 has begun with feeling ready for whatever's next. Where last year was about healing, this year is about reclaiming: Truth. Identity. Self-worth. Confidence. JOY. Life to the fullest, and a future that's mine to create.

I'm making it mine. I'm making my own rules and I'm making them up as I go.

2018 is about freedom; recklessly pursuing, maintaining, and guarding it. It will be a year of adventures and #yolo and trying new things and carpe diem. Of traveling the world. Of setting goals and achieving them.

2018 is living my best life and becoming my best self.

So, cheers to contrast; and to what's new and what's next.