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.