The Quiet Peace

I haven't written in quite a while.  For once,  busyness isn't the only reason.  I am also more at peace than I have been in my whole entire life; it's the kind of peace that drowns me and swallows me up whole.  I'm glad to have such a wonderful husband, and I'm happy with my job.  I'm happy with life, generally.  Every once in a while, I have a bout of depression, but it's been good lately.

I don't really know how to deal with the feeling of peace.  It's strange, yet pleasant.  I sit at home on the couch next to my husband, with my head on his shoulder.  I think in anger and stress I was missing out on life and so many other great things.  Breck's childish humor, cooking food without freaking out about how it looks or tastes, taking care of our crazy dogs... no matter what is going on, lately I can feel God's grace.  I don't have to plan everything.  I don't have to have the strength to make it through everyday.  That would be just me trying to do it all myself.  In the fight to be independent and handle my own problems, I forfeited marvelous grace.  I crumbled under the weight of all my problems and life itself.  I became so weak.  But there's something wonderful about knowing how weak I am, and that has taken the burden off of my shoulders.  It's such a wondrous feeling.

I love my life.  I love that I can trust Someone to handle my life for me.  I'm nothing but a conduit, and I need to stop letting myself get in the way of God's grace.  His grace heals everything I can't.  It carries me through things that I can't change, and yet in His power, it all changes.  I think mountains are moving now.

I'm Still Hung Up

I haven't written in a week.  Probably because I've been busy.  And once again, I'm damming up my emotions.  I'm going to tip-toe around them, because how else can I live?  Some days it's better to live in denial after trying to soak up everything for so long.

When the dust settles, I see that my life is changing so quickly.  Change is a monster that I dread so.  I need stability.  I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow to see if medicine will give that stability.  I hate how overly medicated we've become as a society, and here I am considering leveling out my emotions.  Though these emotions run me at times, and I know I shouldn't let them, they also make me so much more creative and grateful for the moments of happiness.  I'm like the desert when a drizzling rain comes.  I swallow that happiness and gulp it down.  I experience it so much fuller.  I'm certain that on my happiest days, I'm happier and more content than anyone else on this earth.  I can't accurately portray that, though.  I'm convinced that my life is a cycling wheel that spins and spins.  It's dizzying and intoxicating.  When it all stops, when all the spinning is over, what will I do then? 

Fighting the Dog Days

I'm tired today.  Well, I'm tired every day, actually.  I started some new medication that's supposed to even out my newly diagnosed bipolar, but I don't think I'm bipolar.  Besides, the guy diagnosed me after only 30 minutes.  How could he know that after only 30 minutes?

I went to bed at 11 p.m. last night, woke up at 9 a.m.  I'm still dragging.  Ugh.  I hate this cloudy feeling.  I'm sooooo tired.

The heat here is thick.  It makes me not sleep very well.  I went and saw my grandparents this past weekend.  My grandfather has chest pains.  My grandmother's memory is slipping.  It's so strange watching them grow older, frailer.  Time keeps running on, and as I sat in their living room with them, I was trying so hard to hold on.  You might as well try grasping the air or holding the wind...it just flows right on through your fingers with little regard to anyone.  Time isn't biased, and it doesn't have an agenda.

Time is the only absolute thing in this world.  It's the only thing that doesn't change.   The seconds, the minutes, the hours, they all rush along in a perfectly straight line.  They move, never jolting out of place, flowing linearly outward toward the great beyond.  Only memories remain in our finite minds.  I keep grasping for the invisible.  I'm not ready for this part yet, can we please wait?  Time, please wait for me, just a few minutes.  Let me catch my breath.  Quit taking people from me.  I see your claws in them, and yes, it's only a matter of time...how ironic.  We never know when our day will come.  For some people, the end is more expected, but I don't think that makes death any easier.  And it isn't just a matter of death, it's a matter of losing innocence, losing health, losing friends to miles and spaces in between.  That's what time does; it takes away.  It doesn't give anything back, it just keeps on taking.

It's like an equation.  People all have their sums of days, more like their sums of life.  Certain sums are larger than others.  For some reason, I always feel like mine will be short.  No, I'm not talking about suicide.  I'm talking about my health, physically and mentally.  I feel like my days will be cut short,  but it's not a frightening thing.  All these pluses and minuses--there just seems to be more deductions than I think there should be.  When will I arrive at zero when there's nothing left?

Today

Today, four years ago, I lost my best friend.  I lost her on the night of her wedding day.  Just half a day earlier, I had stood by her side as she said "I do."  Four days later, they held her funeral in the same church where she was married.  It was so surreal.  I remember, I sat next to my husband.  We weren't even dating then, but I remember.  Yes, he was the one who was there for me through it all.  He sat next to me, and I remember putting my arm through his to steady myself.

I was living a nightmare.  Numbness and disbelief overcame me, so that even when I went to view her body, I didn't cry.  My mother cried, but I didn't.  I couldn't.  How can you cry about something that you don't believe is real?

How could my best friend die the night she was married?  How could she slip underneath the water in her tub?  Why didn't the police know CPR?  Why did they make her husband, who did know CPR, leave the room?  Why did they let her just lay there? 

By the time she arrived at the hospital, she hadn't breathed in 10 minutes.  Because of some weight-loss drug, her heart was too weak to be revived. 

They tried to revive her all night.  I was there...sitting 10 feet away from her.  I could hear them shuffling in and out, using all the shots of adrenaline that they could.  The machines beeping, the doctor's conversations hurried and passionate at first, then exhausted mumbling as hours ticked by.  But they never got her stable enough to life-flight her to Amarillo.  Why?  

I got to see her after that.  Looking at her hair that was curly...she hadn't had the chance to straighten it.  She would have flipped out if she saw herself in that casket.  Her makeup and hair were always immaculate, but not then, and nevermore.     

When they wheeled her casket out of the church, that's when it hit me.  I started wailing.  "Wait!  Wait!"  My mom caught me.  "I'LL NEVER GET TO SEE HER AGAIN!"

Four years ago.  I thought I was over this.  But I'm not.  This year is the hardest yet.  Maybe it's because I know she wouldn't call me crazy or psycho.  She would see what I've become, the mess of me.  She would understand.  She would sit me down and criticize me, lovingly, for never straightening my hair.  She would then do it for me, and somehow make me look like a model.  Then she would say, "I hate what that asshole did to you.  You don't deserve that.  Screw him.  We'll kick his ass."

It angered her to know that I had been raped.  I don't remember her being so mad as she was then.  "Kaylea, I'm so sorry.  I can't believe this happened to you.  NOT YOU.  You were always the innocent one."  She cried.  I sat in the dorm hallway, and I talked to her for hours.  Life changed for both of us.  It brought us back together again, just to tear us apart.  That's how it goes.  Sometimes there's just no answer.  There's no meaning.  How can I understand?  I just can't.  I have to keep going, because time doesn't stop.  It won't ever stop.

When Life Kicks Your Butt

Lately, I've been crazy busy with the book thing.  Not only that, but life itself has been quite overwhelming.  I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder a month or so ago.  I'm reading a book over it now called "I Hate You, Don't Leave Me."  It's very helpful in helping me understand my disorder, but it also tells stories of people who struggled with this disorder and ended up committing suicide.  Sometimes, I feel like that.  I'm fearful of the future.  I can barely handle what is currently going on in my life.  How can I handle being a wife and mother?  How can I raise a kid without screwing them up like I'm screwed up?

These are questions I constantly ask myself.  I'm so afraid.  I have a real job now.  I have a husband.  I thought graduating from college and living the life I now lead would make me feel like some kind of responsible adult, but it didn't.  I feel like a child more than ever.  I feel so weak and pathetic.  I'm so blessed, and yet I feel so empty at times.  My husband is wonderful and  so kind to me, I know I don't deserve that.  Maybe if you saw me at home, you would agree.  I'm crazy.  Yes, impulsive, fiery, angry, psycho crazy.  The kind of crazy that I wouldn't think twice about beating the crap out of people who cross me or those who hurt the people I love.  The kind of crazy that hates people because of what's happened to me.  I'm such a cynic.

The bright side to all of this?  I have started writing a book about it.  It's called Pieces of Me.  Here is an excerpt from one of my darker days:


Oblivion

I'm disintegrating, baby, into oblivion.  A billion little pieces.  I don't know if you can catch me, or even hold me now.  I'm like an atomic bomb that goes off...I destroy everything in my path.  I'm splattered all across the universe, scattered  like dust in the wind.  I slip through your fingers every time....cascading over an edge you can't follow.  How could you ever understand if you've never been there?  But I go there all the time, and the next day try to piece myself together again.  But I can't...I'm losing all the pieces.  Each day, more of me is missing.


Some days are brighter.  They're so bright that I can barely breathe because I'm bursting with happiness.  That's how my life is.  Up and down, never anything in between.  Black and white, no grey.  High and low, but it's a bittersweet kind of thing.  I see this world through such different eyes, and I'm grateful for my family and a God that chose to love me.  Why He did, I'll never know, but I don't have to try and justify that.  I don't have to live up to anyone's expectations.  I just need to love Him, and from that overflows and spills into all the other areas I'm so torn up about.  That's the beauty of grace.  It's a day by day thing.

Books in the Books Biz

I haven't written in quite sometime...I should introduce myself to those of you who don't know me.  I'm a semi-psychotic girl with borderline personality disorder.  I'm impulsive at times...my new kick is antique typewriters.  I think I bought five within 48 hours.  My husband nearly crapped his pants and hit the roof.  You're probably wondering, "Why typewriters?"  Well, I'm into antique typewriters because of my new job.

I help people self-publish their projects (anything from cookbooks to genealogies).  The first few weeks have been quite slow, so I would read old LIFE magazines on Google Books.  In a 1955 magazine, I fell hopelessly and helplessly in love with an ad about the Royal Deluxe Quiet typewriter.  Peptobismol pink.  My good gosh, I was pathetically obsessed.

A couple days later, it was Frye moccasins...I couldn't stop.  

Needless to say, I expelled the evil spirit of impulsiveness that comes around every three or four months.  My poor husband.  

I love doing the book thing.  I love designing the covers, formatting the book block.  I even like scanning the massive genealogy documents that have found their way to my desk.  As long as I keep myself busy, I excel.  That's how this being crazy stuff works...you have to find a routine to throw yourself into, work furiously on it and smile.  When you smile a pretty smile, people think you're wonderful.  People think you could be their next best friend.  That's how you survive the day.  Read as much as you can to stuff your brain full of useless knowledge you obsess over while you can't sleep later on.  That's how you survive the night.     

I've traced the British Royal line from Charlemagne to Elizabeth II.  I have read about most of the high profile serial killers and rapists.  I found out that Ted Bundy (infamous serial rapist and murder) died the day I was born.  I find that ironic...since I was raped in college.  Maybe his death was a curse?  Maybe he still found me, only in the body of a spoiled man-child who preyed on, and probably still preys on, innocent freshmen.  God, if I know.

I've read every page of the Bible.  I believe it.  I'm constantly striving to be like Jesus, I just fail about 99% of the time.  He's gracious...He's been good to me, despite my rough past.

Anyways, I'm Kaylea.  I'm slightly crazy...but I can be very charming, funny, maybe a little sarcastic and crude sometimes.  I am foul mouthed most times, short-tempered as well.  I constantly feel guilty, but at the same time I'm not ashamed of who I am.  It's a weird balance.