16*)Coming Home to Khaos…

The true source of chaos…

I had to release my dreams.

Every last one of them.

The dream of being the perfect daughter.

The dream of being the perfect bartender.

The dream of being the perfect love.

The dream of FINDING the perfect love.

The dream of being a perfect sister, friend, employee, STRANGER…human.

Letting go of everything I loved meant giving up on myself.

It was everything I had ever dreamed could be my future.

They say you can’t go home again.

When you make your home outside yourself that’s true.

Everything changes.

That’s the only thing that DOESN’T change when it comes down to it.

Wether it changes for the better or worse is always to be seen.

But without a doubt THINGS WILL ALWAYS CHANGE.

Fearing it is just setting yourself up for a life sentence full of little but doubt, fear, and disagreements with your surroundings.

Let go of the reigns just a little bit.

SEE WHAT HAPPENS when you stop holding on so damn tight.

I still want all the same things for myself after letting them go.

I’m just not clinging on so desperately that my hands are bleeding anymore.

It’s more like they are sitting in my lap, ready for me to grab on if something changes.

If something in my path tugs me towards it.

I won’t take control when that time comes…

I’ll just pick them back up so I’m ready…

So I can slow em down if needed…

Or decide to change the course if they path becomes something I no longer WANT.

The only thing I’ll ever NEED again is myself…and sustenance.

But the act of releasing my dreams almost destroyed me.

Just because it maybe seemed like a fun adventure through my imagination doesn’t mean it was.

I have A LOT of love in me. I’ve loved things, then been made to feel ashamed for loving those things my whole life.

I never stopped loving them though.

Not the Jonas Brothers when everyone called me childish.

Not Black Veil Brides when they were basically the “Justin Bieber of the rock scene” as I called them when I felt the need to minimize my own love externally.

Not to shit on Justin Bieber or anything.

The kid can sing, just lost MY attention quickly.

Not Asking Alexandria when Ben left… though that was one of my hardest releases in this journey. If you ever see this… thank you for helping to save me. Danny, Cameron, Sam, James…but mostly Ben. I’m sorry it took me a year to get back to listening to you and being inspired by you.

I’m sure you’ve noticed by now I have a tendency to associate things.

I match colors with moods…

and bands…

and friends…

and employees…

and every piece of myself.

I got that autistic sorting habit, I just do it internally. Externally… I tend to get tooo focused on the sorting and forget there’s more to cleaning unless my BRAIN IS CLEAN.

I don’t have time for all the little bullshit when things don’t make sense.

Executive Dysfunction… My OG devil.

So I literally couldn’t make myself function outside of this mental processing.

I had to get to the start of the loops so I could BREAK THEM ALL.

I was tired of breaking cycles one at a time.

It was going to take the rest of my life.

AND THAT JUST SEEMED LIKE A WASTE OF TIME…

When I could be just LIVING.

So I worked through things.

Grouped things by how I related to them.

How I FELT about them.

This is where things got confusing.

I’ve always “hated” the color pink…

yellow and orange were close seconds…

Black’s always been my first choice…

”But it’s not a color”

It’s the absence of color…

If you ask me my favorite color I’ll usually say purple cause it’s easier than explaining.

And it’s TRUE.

I love damn near every shade of purple.

But my ACTUAL favorite color is ALMOST cobalt blue.

Cobalt Blue…but with a lil shimmer.

But that’s too much to explain to the “average” person.

You usually gotta be around me for a WHILE for me to feel like that’s worth explaining.

Because it always felt like I had lied and now I had to reveal that fact.

But I didn’t lie…

I just didn’t finish explaining who I was.

Which I also realized was exactly what I had done my whole life.

Every perceived rejection I hid a little bit of myself.

The mask was a defense mechanism. YES.

But it wasn’t a REPLACEMENT personality.

It’s as much WHO I AM as every piece of me I felt I needed to hide.

My love for music started early.

And my hyperfocus has always been “obsessive” by societies standards.

But societies standards doesn’t have my detachement skills.

It teaches you that while you may NEED to do everything on your own… YOU CAN’T.

My life showed me, even with people there to help.

Even with love and support.

When it comes down to it… 

Everyone has their own life to worry about…

Who’s going to worry about yours if you don’t?

If you keep putting the things that GIVE you life…

Expand your heart…

Shift your perspective positively…

On the backburner…

Who’s to blame when your house burns down?

”I always helped when they needed it, but no one was there for me when I was screaming.”

They were I was just blinded by my pain.

They weren’t helping in the way I thought I needed.

The way society would probably say “they should have”.

But THEY WERE HELPING.

Every step of the way.

When you look to the stars to escape your life at a young age it’s hard to stop when times get tough.

When you find comfort in the things you dislike, the things that hurt you, you might just find there’s more to the story.

Now I could unspiral everything I’ve ever loves or related for you but I already “wear my heart on my sleeve.”

If you want to know the things I love all you have to do is pay attention.

Not every second please.

Not even to every word.

I’m repetitive because I’ve felt unheard my whole life.

But at the same time… there’s always I point I stop repeating myself.

Why would I keep trying to tell the same person the same thing 100 ways?

At some point, they need to take some responsibility for the lack of understanding.

Or nottt… but I will stop opening my mouth at all…

to them… I’ll find someone who WANTS to hear what I’M SAYING…not what THEY’RE trying to hear.

To find this strength this I went looking for it in the things I “hated.”

It started and ended with pink.

First I found it externalized it in a form I could align with.

Then I worked through all the bullshit I associated with it until I got down to what I felt was my “associating reason.”

Pink Quartz - self love, unconditional love, heart chakra…Pink Dragons - unconditional love, spiritual awakening, and emotional healing…Pink Hearts- all love…Pink Roses - joy, appreciation, everyday gratitude.

My problem with pink boiled down to the fact that I didn’t love myself.

I was too busy being ashamed of who everyone else has made me feel I was.

How could I be ready for WHO I WAS if I still held on to all this resentment.

I re-embraced everything I felt I couldn’t achieve.

I found power in yellow and orange too.

Learning about the chakra’s really helped with that.

Colors are about so much more than what our eyes perceive.

Everything is interconnected if you LET IT BE.

When you let it be… things get easier to “handle”.

Just sit with me in this theoretical for a minute…

If you were all that existed…literally…

Life would be INCREDIBLY boring.

No positive stimulation.

No negative stimulation.

No input.

No output.

JUST EXISTENCE.

You’d HAVE to get creative to stay entertained.

You’d have to come up with bigger and BADDER villains to “triumph”.

And as the entertainment industry has shown us…

SHIT GETS READICULOUS after a few movies…

Why are we fast and furious in space now?

It was perfect how it was right?

Why does it need to keep getting “more impressive.”

Because everyone’s so busy ESCAPING their lives…

As our lives get more ridiculous, so does the thing needed to be able to pull us out of it.

It’s a never ending loop of “What’s wrong with this world? Lemme just distract myself instead of trying to fix it…”

At least it was for me.

Now imagine what that would look like if you were “the universe.”

Maybe you’d start some holy wars.

Maybe you’d start destroying your own creations.

Maybe you’d start destroying yourself… just because you could.

You see… healing yourself IS healing the world.

Because YOU ARE YOUR WORLD.

Now stop trying to escape the boredom of the life society built with you…

And start taking apart the pieces and putting them back together

HOW YOU SEE FIT.

But don’t impose your world on anyone else.

They can all exist simultaneously…

harmoniously…

IF WE CHOOSE TO LET THEM.

Please never forget that.

Music wasn’t my only solace in life.

Batman was my first superhero love.

But really it was Heath that won me over.

Batman just kept me around.

Christian Bale didn’t hurt the situation.

As I got older I found their counterparts within myself.

Harley will always be my favorite for the girls.

But I started to relate more to Deadpool than Batman.

And Ryan Reynolds more than Christian Bale.

American Psycho is a masterpiece though. <3

Both would always have my heart, you can’t make me choose between DC and Marvel sorry…

I want to love them all…I decided I didn’t always HAVE to choose.

I could have both… just not in the same form.

I’ll release them both before I choose…

You see… that was the conclusion I came down too for most thing.

Just because there may have BEEN pain tied into the relationship doesn’t mean there always had to be.

When I broke up with my ex I expected an EXPLOSION based on our relationship to that point.

I saw the fire in his eyes.

I saw him “start”

But before a single word came out something flipped off the switch.

He must have seen in my eyes that now HE had a choice.

It wasn’t a fight or flight situation like I thought.

It didn’t NEED to be anyway.

He chose the route of peace.

I had been willing to lose him completely.

Now some may say, “He just didn’t want to loose the avenue of manipulation he had over you.”

And you COULD be right.

But you don’t know him like I do.

Well I don’t anymore, not really, but like I did.

We had lived intersecting lives for 6 years.

We had taken on the parts of each other that empowered us.

But in that moment…

I clung to the pain “he’d caused”.

And he clung to the love he knew was still under the pain.

Not the romantic love.

Not the hope for a future together.

Not the life we had planned.

He clung to the love I had for his existence in this world.

Too many times he’d tried to take himself out of it.

I spent 6 years trying to show him the light inside himself.

Everyone around us slowly pushed him away.

They didn’t push me away though, and he FELT that.

It cause him so much pain that he tried to put into words.

He didn’t understand what he was doing wrong.

He was just in so much emotional pain all the time.

He didn’t see how it bled onto those around him.

He shined the whole time.

Lit up the rooms.

Put on a show everywhere he went.

Everyone thought his ego was massive.

He needed to come down a peg or two.

But I didn’t see it that way.

Yes… his ego WAS massive.

But he wasn’t TRYING to drown anyone else’s light out.

He was TRYING to bring them all up.

Make them feel better than he felt, but the result was the opposite.

I defended him every way I could.

But if someone said something that rang true I couldn’t disagree.

I’d add padding and tiptoe around the statement as best I could to reassure him.

But I could NOT LIE to him.

Only if I was also lying to myself.

You see the reason I “validated” his ego was because it matched my own… almost.

His life had been so full of pain and struggle but…

His ego had grown up in it’s in power, “popular”, “star”, “special”, “early success”… but it also mirrored my own in a more “typical meaning of the word” sense…

Athletics…missed dreams…WAR…shattered dreams…love…no that hurts… Retreat into darkness…looking for safety in a painful world.

He achieved so much so quickly, and every time the rug got ripped out from under him.

When I found him everyone told me not to do it.

Everyone except a friend who I’m no longer in direct contact with, but who has gone through her own struggles that are comparable with the worst of us.

I hope she’s doing better now. She wasn’t last I heard, but with my current view of self… I don’t want to force anyone into this by interacting with me who might not be ready. She’s found god, and lost him… I know she’ll find her way.

Seeing the Grand Canyon with her was a MASSIVE perspective shift.

There was SO MUCH more to life and than my world.

When I came home from that trip the friend I’d ask to watch my animals had done his job.

But my ex… who was still a new friend had hung out with him and helped while I was gone.

Only he didn’t just help.

He spent 18 HOURS cleaning my house for me.

He saw how much I had on my plate and just wanted to help BECAUSE HE COULD.

Sure he “liked” me.

But I “liked” the other friend and didn’t hide that from him.

What he didn’t know was while he was cleaning my house (which I didn’t know)…

I was telling my friend about this guy I loved talking to but everyone kept telling me not to.

They said it would be a bad idea.

He had new girls all the time.

He was well into scenes I was just starting to dabble in.

Even his “friends” tried to convince me not too.

Honestly that was how I knew to doubt it.

They were shitty friends, he probably wasn’t the whole problem.

I wanted to find out what his “problem” was myself.

Boy did I… lmao

But I helped him through it, and in turn he helped me through my problems.

It resulted in him seeing a side of me I NEVER want to have to resort to again.

If you scream in my face…

I will step towards you… and send the energy RIGHT BACK.

But I will never BRING that energy to the table again.

I am done seeing the world through it’s filter of darkness.

He showed me that just when you think the whole world is about to end…

YOU HAVE THE POWER

TO CHOOSE

what happens next.

It wasn’t easy to remain close while recovering from the heartbreak of eachother…

But we also had someone who UNDERSTOOD EXACTLY what we had been through to talk about it with.

We dropped the animosity and fell back into friendship.

As long as we remembered to hold onto the light while seeing our own shadows from the others perspective… we could heal together…but seperately.

That’s why this whole journey he has been my rock.

He wasn’t there at the start, but he saw the result for himself and acted in my best interest even when it caused “weird vibes” between him and my family.

Probably 80% of our “issues” could have been traced back to my “NEED” to make the bar my top priority.

Money was survival.

Money was FREEDOM.

Now I know that’s not true.

Money makes life easier in just about every way.

But it’s not freedom, if anything it’s just the walls of the prison.

YOU are survival.

Watch any survival show and let those brave men and women show you what you COULD be capable of.

If you WANTED it enough.

If you PUT IN THE WORK.

If you practice daily.

It doesn’t need to be the focus of everyday.

It doesn’t even need to be the highlight.

Just show up for YOURSELF, consistently…

and you’ll find the way to YOUR dreams.

But you won’t have to be asleep for these…

Just wait…

I’ll show you if you don’t want to believe me.

I’m not doing this for you.

I’m not doing this for anyone but myself.

Because I KNOW that doing it for myself is what’s best for this world.

I need to be an example of what I say for myself everyday.

Because what I SAY

IS WHO I AM

Just because I am internally doing these things doesn’t mean it’s true to anyone else until I “Show my work.”

Which unfortunately for those of us that prefer to just exist sometimes…

That means putting in the effort, and DOING THE WORK YOURSELF.

No one else can heal you for you.

They can just heal themselves… and then treat you accordingly.

There’s a part of my story I haven’t confronted on paper yet.

Because it doesn’t feel like my story to share.

It feels like hers.

Like his.

Like everyone who’s ever taken their own life.

Or wanted to.

But it is also my story to share.

When my aunt shot herself I went to work that night.

I put on a smile and went to make everyone else happy and to hide from myself as I crumbled. No one could know.

When I lost my horse from childhood I did the same.

But I got a tattoo for him.

When a friend who was always there…

Always trying to cheer everyone else up…

But was also just kinda always in the background…

When one night he wasn’t there…

No one could find him.

No one had heard from him.

Everyone gathered one at a time throughout the night as the news broke.

They’d found him in his closet.

The tears poured around me…

I wanted to join them, but I had to keep pouring myself.

So I swallowed the tears and held onto everyone else’s sanity.

Then I lost that bar too.

Less than a month we were moving.

Out of the basement.

Out of my cave of safety that wasn’t really safe anymore.

I didn’t know it would be so hard to go back in there after that.

I’ve only done it twice in 6 years.

I didn’t realize how much he’d meant to me even though he’d lived on the outskirts of my life.

He was everyone else’s friend… it took a few years to earn that title with me usually.

But I saw the effect he had on the people who mattered most to me then who had known him forever, or those who would come to mean the most to me, and THAT.

That light was worth EVERYTHING.

Thank you for helping me see that truth then Lottle.

And what happened when it blinked out.

I’m sorry I never got to know you better in this life.

But you saved the spark in my belly.

And helped me SEE more of 3 of my BEST FRIENDS.

I’m sorry for the pain you felt in your life to lead you to that point.

Every hit I took after that just helped that spark grow.

Till it was ready to burn it all down, and see what still stood when the smoke cleared.

So much of the pain I’ve felt in my life “has not been my own”.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t FEEL it.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t change me.

Thank you to every Zach who’s ever been in my life.

Romantically, Platonically, at work, on TV, and just in passing.

You’ve all helped me learn this lesson in one way or another, both positive and negative emotions.

But I’m grateful for EVERY SINGLE EXPERIENCE now.

It may not be a “sunny day” in Lincoln, Nebraska right now.

We got rain coming all week.

But it’s still a BEAUTIFUL one.

Let go of a bit of Khaos this week. <3

You don’t need to grip the pain so tightly.

It can be both good and bad.

You just need to decide which wolf you want to feed.

Go play in the rain instead of letting it ruin your day.

It’s freeing if you clear out some of the negative thoughts first.

Really helps to wash it all away.

I’m not going to re-read and edit this one.

I’m just going to copy and paste to my blog

so THIS IS ME

only editing as I go

No final draft.

No softening.