2019

2016 was the year that broke me.
2017 was the year I fought for. It was a year of pain and parallel self-discovery.
2018 was a year of healing. Of rebuilding and moving forward.
2019 is the year I take it all back.

I love the idea of having a word for this year; one that captures what I hope for, how I carry myself, and what I intend to confidently claim.

I've decided that word is fearless.

As I continue to move along, I notice my pace transforming from trudging to dancing. My current wilderness that is reclaiming and redemption continues to reveal hidden places of pain and places of healing that are still in progress. I don't like looking over my shoulder, although I suppose I can be grateful for the reminder that the worst will always be behind me. It feels a little like having one foot in and one foot out, which will just be true for as long as it needs to be. Still, I'm grateful for the grace to step lightly and learn to dance as I go.

I read this quote several weeks ago, and I've been thinking about it ever since:

"Forever, Emily Dickinson said, is composed of nows. But how do you inhabit the now you are in? How do you stop the ghosts of all the other nows from getting in? How, in short, do you live?"
                                                - Matt Haig, How To Stop Time 

How can I be fully present when I still often inhabit the tension that exists between what I had and what I hope for? How can I best hold space for both healing and hope when they sometimes compete for my energy and attention? How do I thoroughly and intentionally live in this new year?

I don't have the answers yet, which is okay with me. I'm confident the answers will come as long as I continue asking the questions. So for now, here's my plan:

There is no plan; except to show up and lean in, fearlessly, one day at a time.

Cheers to another one 💋

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.

church-related heart vomit

I've been to church less than a handful of times in the last year.

In a lot of ways, it feels like that's where it started. We moved to Fort Collins to help with a church plant. We met her through that church plant because they led worship together.

Still cringing at that one.

I struggled a lot with church even before everything happened. When I think about it, going to church was hard for me for most of my marriage. I had a lot of anxiety about going, although I could never really pinpoint a discernible source. All of the fears I had about being inferior and inadequate felt magnified there. I was so bound by this crippling insecurity and self-consciousness that I couldn't even sit in a room full of (mostly) strangers without coming out of my skin the whole time. It certainly didn't help that in the same environment where I was constantly fighting to keep the panic at bay, my husband thrived. Being the introverted, anxiety-prone wife of an extroverted, outgoing worship leader was hard. Really hard. I constantly felt like a failure as a wife and as a Christian (a word I have come to seriously abhor; but more on that another time). I so desperately wanted to be supportive of him in this role, but it was so hard to be when I hated how I felt so much that I could barely make it through a service.

A lot of the time I left early. Then I stopped going altogether.

Then I found out about the affair. And still, almost a year and a half later, I can't seem to set foot in any church without falling apart. (My aversion isn't limited to a location, it seems).

Let me be clear: I don't blame the church. I never have. I don't blame anyone other than the two people involved. My church aversion started before the affair did, although I've never believed that's a coincidence. I'm also very aware that I'm no one's responsibility. I can speculate and do my best to be objective and give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to afterward. I'll be the first one to tell you that there is no good way to navigate or react to something like this. There is no right thing to say. Unfortunately, from where I'm standing, silence from the church felt like the wrong way and the wrong thing. To be blunt, I've struggled with taking offense and feeling bitter because of that silence; more things to add to my already exhaustive list of feelings to process.

I just have no desire to go to church, which I struggle with. Aren't you supposed to "hit rock bottom and have no where left to turn but Jesus?" That didn't happen for me. When I hit rock bottom, I didn't have the mental, emotional, or spiritual capacity to do anything but feel pain. It confused me for a long time, because somewhere along the line I started believing that if/when I reached that point, I would want to "run to Jesus." But I didn't. There wasn't space.

All along, I've felt this self-imposed pressure to hurry up and get there; to hurry up and want to go to church and have one of those Christian-esque relationships with God again. It got to the point where I was feeling seriously stressed out by it. This is a thing I do: I set these idealized expectations for myself, and then proceed to feel like a failure when the reality of where I'm at doesn't meet them. But I'm learning how to be honest with myself and about myself; so at the present time, church is off the table. Making that decision felt like a huge weight was lifted; I'm giving myself permission to just be where I'm at and let that be okay. It doesn't mean it's off the table forever; I'm just sparing myself the additional "Christian guilt" for the time being.

Something that has kind of amazed me through all of this is that I still believe all the same basic things I always have. I still have a relationship with God, although it looks much different now than it ever has. Looking back, even to the very beginning when I didn't have the space to be intentional about prayer, or even just acknowledging Him, Jesus has been this subtle undercurrent. This pulse. I feel more connected to Him than I ever have before. It's hard to assign words to; but then again, He doesn't need my words.

I keep coming back to a journal entry I made last year, about two weeks after finding out about the affair. I've referenced it before:

I am reminded this morning, as I stand in the ocean and feel its power and listen to its roar, that God is bigger than my pain. I am also reminded of the beautiful truth that He knows the depth and magnitude of my pain, and that He is feeling it with me. While knowing this does not lessen the sting, it helps put my aching, restless heart at peace.

I am reminded that He delights in me. That He knows every inch of my wild and desperate heart and He delights in me, in all the ways I've always longed to be delighted in. He knows me in all the ways I've always longed to be known. For Him, I am enough.

I am also reminded that He doesn't need my words. He sees and knows my every thought, every feeling, every fear, every wish, every hope. For now, perhaps, it is enough to simply be broken in His presence and to know that I am understood. (09.09.2016)

Something huge shifted when I wrote this. For the first time, things that I had been trying for years to convince myself of finally felt true. I wasn't just writing the words, I was believing them. It felt like permission to be in it and feel it, whatever that looks like; permission to have my own process. It felt like validation. It felt like grace.

Ever since then, I've felt like I'm on a totally different wavelength. It feels fresh and unhindered and is not at all what I expected. But it's good.

I am in no way saying that church is bad or unnecessary, and I'm not championing the concept of a church hiatus. This is just where I'm at. My heart needed to be let off the hook for a while. I spent most of my life under the delusion that there is a template, a formula, a checklist. Understanding that there isn't is allowing me to experience grace in ways and in places I never have before. I'm slowly beginning to understand exactly how much I need it; every second of every day, in all my messy, broken places.

And I'm so grateful.

Bomb #3

I can't say I'm surprised.

Maybe that's because I've continued to assume that's the case, without actually knowing for sure, as a way of protecting my heart from exactly this.

But it still knocked the wind out of me.

I cried, because it still hurts. Even a year and three months after hearing it for the first time. Even seven months after hearing it for the second. Even divorced and moving on.

It hurts, but not like it used to.

I didn't have a panic attack. (I haven't had one since bomb #2).

I didn't even have nightmares last night.

Maybe it's because I finally stopped hoping in his direction.

Maybe it's because I just care less.

I'm angry, but less on my own behalf. Mine wasn't and isn't the only heart assaulted by this.

The places where I'd started to feel compassion dissolved back into disgust. Historically, it's been hatred. Disgust is not new, but it holds a different space this time. Where hatred feels invested, disgust feels more removed. That's an improvement.

Strangely, the strongest feeling I have is disappointment; and not even really for myself. I'm so unbelievably disappointed in the absolute depravity of it all.

I'm pretty sure I've felt enough disappointment in the last year to last me ten lifetimes.

But it didn't knock me down this time.

I can feel it without it suffocating me.

I can feel it and still be okay.

That's progress.

That's victory.

Illusion

I used to believe
That you were
The peace
To my chaos;
But peace was an illusion,
And all along
My chaos
Was you.


- kb

9 Years Later

I never thought
That I'd thank God
For the miles
And years
Between us.


- kb

#kailatakesLA

So, I did a thing:

I went to California.
For 3 days.
All by myself.

My primary motivation was to see my very favorite author, John Green, on his Turtles All The Way Down Tour, because unfortunately the tour didn't make any stops in or near Colorado. At first I just couldn't find anyone to go with me, but then the thought of going alone turned into this exciting, bucket list caliber idea.

I'm not exactly sure how or when I became this person who is completely comfortable traveling across the country alone, but it feels pretty great. I never even felt nervous or awkward, really. It kept reoccurring to me at semi-regular intervals, this somewhat alarming realization of what the heck I'm 1,000 miles away from home and I'm not scared and I don't hate it and I'm really enjoying myself and what is happening.

I did things I wanted to do, and I did them on my own time; it felt like this incredible gift to myself. To feel that level of confidence and independence was such a new/strange/unreal experience for me. It was all so liberating.

I ate alone in restaurants.
I took a narrated tour of the city.
I saw Justin Bieber's house (which I'm still low-key freaking out about).
I did the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
I saw John & Hank Green at the Alex Theatre for the last stop of the Turtles All The Way Down tour.
I walked around downtown L.A.
I took a shameless amount of snapchats and selfies.
I ate Sprinkles cupcakes.
I saw dolphins at Venice Beach and walked up the coast to the Santa Monica Pier.
I watched the sun set over the ocean, which is one of my all-time favorite things.
I had brunch in Pasadena with a girlfriend I went to Burkina with in January and hadn't seen since.
I even obnoxiously (and mostly satirically) live-tweeted it all with my own hashtag and everything. (Shoutout to my tweeps who totally humored me on this. You are the real MVPs)

I loved every minute of it.

I've had a hard time giving good enough words to how this experience has made me feel, I think because part of me is still pretty surprised at myself for doing it. Surprising myself has become something of a theme lately. I don't think it's a secret that I've struggled a lot and for a long time with my self-image and self-worth. I've always had this negative, condescending view of myself: I've always thought of myself as this small, anxious, fearful, insecure person, and my self-talk has always erred on the side of unforgiving and critical. The more I'm learning about myself, the more I'm understanding exactly how distorted this view has been. I'm surprising myself over and over again by proving myself wrong. My comfort zone is turning out to be so much bigger than I thought it was. I am turning out to be so much bigger than I thought I was. Honestly, I think one of the most prominent things I'm feeling right now is pride. I'm really proud of myself for doing this. It's taken me a while to call it what it is because I don't actually know the last time I felt proud of myself. It feels completely amazing.

Sometimes I don't even recognize myself anymore.

I've said these things before. Usually I say them in attempt to encourage and convince myself. But today I can confidently say that I believe them to be true:

I am brave.

I am strong.

I can do hard things.

I can do scary things.
I can do impossible things.
&

I know I'm gonna be okay.

Time & Metaphors

It's been a year, two months, and a week now. Apparently I'm still counting, and not even really on purpose anymore. It's true what they say, that trauma changes the way you perceive time. Everything gets categorized and processed as either before or after. I'm so painfully aware of the reality of my particular after; especially when it feels like all I can do is impatiently wait for it to hopefully become a different kind of before someday.

It seems like waiting is all I ever do anymore.

I have this fear that moving on and being okay will somehow invalidate what I've been through. That this earth-shattering thing that happened to me, this thing that caused my gravity to shift and damn near killed me will fade into the background and somehow become null and void. This pain, this grief has been my lens for so long now. It's changed me. It's not nearly as big and ominous as it was in the beginning, but it's still my constant reality. Maybe I'm hanging on to things I shouldn't be; maybe the grief has become too familiar. Maybe it's the uncertainty of whatever is next that scares me. Until last August, I had a pretty good idea of how my life was going to turn out. Now, my future feels like a giant question mark, and that's terrifying. Everything I thought I had is gone, and I have no way of knowing if it will ever be replaced.

Please don't misunderstand me; I want to be okay. I want to heal and be whole and fall in love again. I ache for the day that this is all a distant memory; a before that hopefully precedes something loosely resembling a happily ever after. But I'm already watching the people around me forget. It's not that I need those people to stay constantly aware of it, but I am still constantly and very aware of it. It's hard when something that still feels so huge and difficult to me is becoming a thing of the past to other people.

This morning, I got a text from my mom sharing part of her morning devotional:

"I've heard that the hardest part of running a marathon isn't the end. It's the places along the 26.2 mile route where there is no one along the path cheering. The hardest sections are those places where you feel like you could quit running and no one would even notice. I've found the same is true in life." - Adam Weber

I'm a total sucker for metaphors, and this one rings so true for me. Realistically, I know I still have people cheering me on. That's the whole reason my mom texted me, to remind me of exactly that. But right now I feel like I'm running a part of the race most people can't see. Most people don't see how hard I'm still working or how tired I'm getting or how often I still feel like giving up. But somehow, my feet are still moving beneath me and I'm still breathing. I know that my people are still cheering me on, even if that looks different now than it did when I started.

And so here, again, is where I have no choice but to dig deep and find my stride. Where I wait and where I keep waiting. Where I remind myself that I am strong and brave and I can do hard things.

Because I can do this and I will do this. Because I've been doing it. Because I am doing it.

The Wild

I may never forgive you
For releasing me back into the Wild.
For leaving me stranded,
Alone.
It was a long walk back from nowhere,
And I'm still evolving.
Some days I thrive,
But most days
I only survive to spite you.


- kb

A Letter to the Loved Ones

I need you to know that this is a thing that happens. I can’t predict when, as much as I wish I could; the timing is often just as much of a surprise to me as it is to you. It might be prompted by something someone did or said, whether it was directed at me or not. It might be the stress of an event or deadline that is rapidly (or sometimes, not so rapidly) approaching. It might be, and often is, triggered by a simple thought; a “what if?” that came from no where in particular.

I need you to know that it gets away from me. It’s something I’m familiar with, but that I’ll never get used to. A minute ago nothing was wrong, but now my mind is racing and my chest feels tight and it’s getting harder to breathe. I’m having to focus hard on this to try not to make it obvious, the breathing. But that almost always makes it worse.

There’s something else I need you to know: it’s just as much physical as it is mental. It’s my fight or flight response completely out of context. I get that it catches you off guard. I’m so sorry for that. But I need you to know that a lot of the time it catches me off guard, too. Once it starts, I can't stop it. I can't redirect and I can't focus on anything else. It swallows me whole. 

It's completely terrifying.

I need you to know that I can't always explain it. It's not that I don't want to, it's just that not all feelings have words.

I need you to know that I’m working on it. I hate it even more than you do. Even when I feel okay, part of me is wondering when it will rear its ugly head again. I feel like a ticking time bomb. I’m afraid of how it makes me feel and act, and I worry it will make us fight. I know how confusing and frustrating it can be for you.

I need you to know that this is a thing that happens, and that it’s not your fault. I understand that you’re not sure what to do with it. Neither am I. But I need you to know that it’s not your fault, and that it’s not your responsibility to fix. All I need is for you to hold my hand and tell me something true and understand that this is a thing that happens. 

I need you to know that sometimes I have panic attacks, and I need you to know that I'm doing the best I can.

(2015)

Tightrope

I think I've effectively established that I have a lot of feelings. Lately, I've noticed that they tend to fall into one of two categories, creating two opposing mindsets:

On one hand, I'm tempted to let the chaos that the past year of my life has created continue to crush me. Sometimes I still feel completely suffocated by it all. My mind easily and routinely dissolves into a swarm of lies and fears and doubts about who I am and what I'm worth and how my life will turn out. In this headspace, it's easier to be bitter and cynical. Love and marriage are cheap and fleeting. Being divorced equals being damaged and undesirable. The word recycled comes up for me a lot; it's the story of my love life: reduce, reuse, recycle. Depressing, right? I've been conditioned to believe a lot of depressing things; and those depressing things have become accustomed to running the show. All of this makes me want to shrink and give up and hide forever.

On the other hand, though, there are moments when I feel strangely but completely inspired and capable of rising to this challenge. In these moments, my head feels clear and it's easy to believe what's true. I know who I am and that I deserve big love and beautiful things. In this headspace, I can be big and bold and brave and hope that someone will love me well someday. Sometimes, I can even one-up hope and dare to actually believe for it. I can stand up under the pain and silence the lies. I can believe that love will win and that it's worth fighting for.

Right now, it feels as though I'm constantly walking a very thin tightrope above and between these two extremes with grief in one hand and hope in the other. All of this exists inside me, and I never know which voice will be louder. Sometimes I get to choose, but not consistently yet. I also tend to trick myself into thinking that choosing between the two is a one-time thing, but it's absolutely not. I have to choose every day which side to fall to if I can't manage to keep my balance. Sometimes as often as every minute.

Historically, the tension and the contradiction have been primarily frustrating and discouraging; but I'm learning to replace my hardwired either/or mindset with a both/and mindset instead. As difficult as it is, I'm learning to be okay with walking the tightrope, because grief still needs space. I'm still figuring out how to let grief and hope coexist. Allowing them to share space feels dangerous and risky, but also necessary to the healing process. So maybe the challenge isn't getting to the end of the tightrope, and maybe success and failure aren't measured by how many times I fall. Maybe my challenge right now is to focus on finding balance by giving grief and hope the space they each need and deserve. Maybe it's learning to embrace the tension and the necessary trial and error and acquiring grace, strength, and poise in the process.

Maybe the tightrope is less of an obstacle and more of an opportunity to become an acrobat.

They Told Me

They told me
That over time,
I would feel less
Poisoned by you.
I didn't believe them.

They told me
That time
Would help me heal.
But they couldn't
Tell me
How much.

They told me
To stay.
To wait.
Hang on.
Just breathe.

They told me
I wasn't ruined.
They told me
It wasn't
My fault.

They told me
I deserved
The moon
And at least
Ten thousand stars.

They told me
That the sun
Would shine again.
I didn't believe them.

But they were right.

- kb