Check your compass.

A few weeks ago I made the decision to be more perceptive of synchronicity and understanding true meanings of repeated symbols/numbers in waking life. 

I have a dream dictionary, (written by Rose Inserra) which I've kept by my bedside for years. 

For the first time, I put it in my backpack and headed out into the world. The messages I got from it (the universe or whatever energy I put into it) were amazing, Everything pointed to my journey of discovery. For my desire to learn, create, inspire, and connect.

Ironically enough, doing this created a disconnect from me and my current reality. Things I'd once found entertaining now seemed like bothersome distractions from a true conquest.

The  conversations I'd been having seemed so light. I needed something heavier to keep me grounded, otherwise it felt like I might just float away.

My belief systems underwent extreme makeovers. My concept of reality and time? Obliterated. 

Essentially I'm transforming my whole life and that can be terrifying for anyone. The moment I started honoring my true self I began feeling like I'd pulled at an inseam holding my world together. The second I questioned my life purpose, I could hear my heart ripping from the inside out.

So where do I go from here? 

Look for repetition Kayla.

Just got a Jeep Compass from our Bff.

I met a man on my bus one day, who gifted me a  healing compass. 

My mom drops by with coffee wearing compass earrings.

Okay universe I get it. 

Time to check the compass, does it serve a purpose to remain in a frozen state? 

Stagnant waters generate nothing but a reflection of the environment surrounding it. 

Rivers create canyons and supply life to creatures everywhere. 

Yesterday I was a great lake and today I'm a wild river.

I'm a wild river and honestly, it kinda blows.

Why couldn't my soul be happy surrounded by beauty, stationary? 

Raising a family seems easier without the chaos of a meandering river, always shifting, overstepping boundaries and offending the bedrock. Carving a new pathway through the life it sustains. A painful transition, roots are washed away, a community once gathered now disperse for fear of being washed away with it.

Like my soul.

Ebbing and flowing through a path I once had...shifting through the rubble.

So what's next?

Yesterday my friend told a fib about bees swarming a playground to keep her sick child away from the play equipment.

Two days ago I swatted a bee off the shirt of a young boy I'd never met. 

Today? I get in my car to take the kids to football practice, a bee is trapped in the front seat. I capture it in the paper bag under my seat and fling it out. 

I turn down Vicks road and reach down to check the time on my phone, only to find a completely different bee on the seat next to me.

The signs are there. 

The universe will guide me. 

I just hope my heart can keep up.

Pearls of wisdom

A thousand deleted sentences. A million edited words. Number of successful times I've illustrated my true self? Zero.

Okay there's more.

She renamed herself Shona(one who dreams) at thirty two years old, leaving Cathy Jean behind in Oregon. She set out for Alaska in search of her true self, and a nursing degree. This has every bit to do with who I am, because this is the woman who raised me.

She'd always been an artist, in earlier years her paintbrush the pen, her journals the canvass. She revisited childhood memories on the beaches of Hawaii and California, broken hearts in Eugene, and femininity in Anchorage. These books were never intended for fame, they were honest, raw pages of self reflection, preservation, and discovery.

Pearls of wisdom, journals found in an old box.

Before you judge me, I want to note that I'd never intended to violate this woman's privacy, I sat staring at a tan flower printed cover for what seemed an eternity. I contemplated boxing these books back up and forgetting their wareabouts. The name Lester rang through my mind, this man had been a complete mystery my whole life, however brief. I couldn't overcome the curiosity of discovering this man. Half of me was missing, if I could find it by flipping through a few stolen pages...I was sure she wouldn't mind.

Three hours later.

I have a sister.

Tears welled up inside the pit of my stomach, the realization of a childhood friend lost through time. Countless wishes wasted on stars, for someone who'd always been.

Two pages later I had a brother.

One book later I had another sister.

I remember feeling so out of place growing up, just different. We moved a lot, always surrounded by beauty. Sandy beaches in La Joia, a picturesque view in Arizona, Oregon Rain, Alaskan snow. These places built me. She was a wild woman seeking out all that this world had to offer, and I was along for the ride.

It was my third school in two years, I ran home crying. They didn't get me. Why were we so different? I was angry. I felt alone. In essence the pity partying started young. She held my face, ran her fingers through my long brown hair, looked me straight in the eyes and said, "Sugar as long as I'm alive, you'll never be alone. Hang in there, mama never steers you wrong."

So why would she lie?

She was protecting me, in the only way she knew how. Running. I don't think she'd see it that way, but it fits.

In fairness she's not the type to victimize herself, she doesn't want anyone's pity, and she values self respect in a way most could only dream. With that in mind I reasoned that she kept me apart from my siblings out of respect for their mothers, and fear from my father. He wasn't a bad man, but he had his demons. Some things you can't hide from forever, and unfortunately his caught up with him.

Lester Donald Anniskett. He died on September 23rd,1987. He was twenty-nine years old. Car accident. Not before he made our little sister Grace, her mother Susan was still pregnant. Lanie was nine, I was a year and a half, our brother Troy was almost three. These ages are relevant. All of us would forever feel the emptiness of a father. We'd stumble through this life trying to figure out how relationships worked and identify with the roles society has chosen for us. Needless to say we're probably the best looking bunch of crazy hot messes you'll ever meet. We are connected in the most beautiful way, raised apart always yearning to belong, to relate, to obtain the special bond denied to us by kids on the playground. Likeness. Similar traits. Anger problems. Food weaknesses. Depth.

There's more but I'm not certain I can write that yet. She's out there. Jenny, we're connected in a different way. I will find her.

Who I am and where I come from relies heavily on the pearls of wisdom my parents left behind, whether they meant to or not.

The rest is up to me.

For my unexpected muse...

She's probably one of the most beautiful women I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.

Soft features contrast her true nature.

She represents many stories, an unplanned blog, unexpected healing...

Simple words grouped together, describing the most complex form of art my mind has ever developed.


Creative therapy.


No woman ever plans to marry an abusive man, a life only for the broken spirit.

Strong women don't have that problem.

Strong women wouldn't allow someone to waltz in and take over their life.
Strong women laugh at the thought.

Until they fall for a fucking psychopath.

Of course the tell tale signs aren't always evident at first. For the most part anybody can pass for a genuinely compassionate individual, as long as there's an audience, and when the audience is a strong woman, the show could go on for months. Until one day the audience isn't as much of a challenge, until the audience is a real life person with thoughts and feelings of their own.

Until that audience requires more from the performer than just a show.

Suddenly the performer becomes the director, the narrator, and the crew. Before she realizes the show has taken a drastic turn, she's alone, a captive audience?

For the most part I count myself lucky. I got away quickly, with the help of some angels...a few audience members themselves. No longer captives. Wiser women, who saw what was happening and offered up advice, guided me through the guise of a fucking mastermind.

My freedom angels.

As I'm not inherently religious, I still thank whomever for their presence, for the AppleBees off of Western Boulevard in Jacksonville, North Carolina.

The months following my escape aren't ones I'm proud of, normally I wouldn't admit to anything until that woman possessing such contrasting beauty wrote me a very compelling message. She opened up her life to me. I scrolled down the page on my phone at 5:00 AM reading only what I could describe as my potential story had those aforementioned angels not intervened.

I was the lucky one.

She described those following months as self medication. Only aiding in further self hatred, breaking a spirit once whole.

My heart ached. The lump inside my throat grew larger and I cried out, "You're not! Those things he told you..."

She never shared.

I knew so well the words he spilled on her like acid, because I too had felt the sting of a hateful love.

She spoke of her first love since she left.

She described him as just what she needed, "However it works out."

I could feel the hope she has inside of her, to see her child bond with the heart of a good man, perhaps not the right man, but a really good man.


I didn't want to tell her how it may turn out, how much she'd put on him, how no man could ever carry that burden and how ultimately the only peace she'd find after all of this is within herself.


I couldn't tell her because I'm still searching for that peace. I don't know if I'll ever find it. Perhaps I'm not meant to.


Perhaps I've still got some more writing to do.

Ptsd isn't just for soldiers of war

Last night I was triggered.
"Maybe you should check your meds."
A simple text, sent from my ex husband who decided it was time to pick a fight over the lack of a relationship he has with our son due to him living out of state, that and strained phone calls by two people with nothing in common other than one's intense desire to bond and feel love, and another's to exploit for notoriety.

This was his favorite thing to say to people, that I was crazy, to discredit me, or any statements I may potentially make about the abuse I suffered while with him. This was the most offensive part, that I couldn't verbalize how he'd hurt me without stooping to his level. The amount of mind fucking that went on is unbelievable. I actually believed the shit he came up with. That I was crazy. That nobody else would be willing to deal with me. That he was the one for me, at eighteen, pregnant before I graduated high school, thrown out of my home for being a "slut" and shoved into his father's house while he went off to serve our country, my fault of course, I was the pregnant wife he had to take care of and this was his only choice, the abuse he endured was all for me, I was ungrateful, I was selfish, I was the crazy one to ever question his motive.

I never realized he used sex as a way to demean me. As a way to control me and make me feel unworthy. A way to cheapen me. To devalue me.

A road trip across country to our new home in Camp Lejeune, brand new baby in the back seat, he insisted we have a quickie over the front console sometime after our son fell asleep. I developed a bladder infection the next day because I couldn't use the bathroom immediately afterwards. We spent 3 hours driving around a piece of shit town looking for an emergency room/pharmacy because I had no way of knowing how to handle a bladder infection without a doctor's prescription and was in an extreme amount of pain. He screamed at me the whole time, called me a pussy, told me I was holding us up. Drove like a maniac going 50 in a 25 mile an hour street. I kept crying and blaming my bladder, but the truth is he made me feel like I didn't deserve medical treatment. He made me feel like I'd done this on purpose to gain some type of attention. Both are untrue. I realize now that was his own selfish nature, he wanted the quickie and couldn't be bothered to pull over so his wife could use a restroom to clean up afterwards, then was furious with her for getting an infection. Kind of like when an owner beats his dog for peeing on the carpet, after refusing to let it outside to go potty. When people would ask about our trip he made sure to tell them every time that I'd held us up for 2 days(6 hours) somewhere in Kansas because I was a whimp. This story was told countless times. I see now that regardless if he intended to or not, his story made me feel like a weak inconvenience.

I felt like that our whole marriage.

The stories I have like the one above are endless. I was with him for 2 years, lived with him for 7 months(off and on) and the entire time he succeeded in tearing me down.

Nearly 10 years later he still fucks with me.

My therapist Don told me once he felt like I had developed ptsd over time, through various emotional abuse/psychological war fare that Brad had waged. He felt it was important I handle it, or at least be aware that I've been put through the ringer, and that healing would take time.

So what did I do? I ran into the arms of someone who was bigger, and safe. I then unleashed my crazy on him, jealousy stemming from a weak self esteem, emotional outbursts, mood swings. It took me until now to realize that. We're married. We have a daughter, and even still I'm crying in the shower overcome with rage, at the man who'd hurt me past my ability to verbalize how. My kids are scared. There's nothing they can do but watch me deal with this. Which is why I keep the crying to the shower.

All because of a text.

Alone in my thoughts...

I drive in circles all day, with mindless greetings and careful observation of the road in front of me, there is one thing to consider. How will hours of contemplation change my life?

This is the kind of job that forces one to think, the subject matter is completely up to you.

I could space out, shove all those uncomfortable questions deep down into the depths of my soul, and think about dinner, but I've got bigger fish to fry. 

I'm interested in the things that make people tick, our triggers, and how we get from A to B. I wanna know how one transcends to C.

To understand others I need to understand myself, to do that I must look back.

The day after leap year, March 1st 2012. 

The air is sharp on my skin as I rush to the car juggling books and snacks, fresh snow gathers in-between our walkway and front yard. Surprised to see ice stuck to the windshield, I sigh and scrape off the bare minimum. Four minutes to get kiddo to school down the street. Good, we made it in time, kiss goodbye and off he goes. Time to focus, I'd been up all night studying physics and the final was in two hours. God dammit I have to pee, fairly common being 5 months pregnant but that doesn't change my frustration. Rushing back to our apartment, I start shuffling through my note cards. One last final survey of the land to ensure my prego brain hasn't forgotten anything... 

Note cards? Check. Pencils? Check. Calculator? Check.

Shit. I forgot my phone.

It's in between our bed sheets and I should have left the house 12 minutes ago.

Fuck it.

Scrolling through Facebook newsfeed. Nikki Sojden lost a friend this morning who had a small child. How awful. 

COMMENT:

"I'm so sorry for your loss Nikki, please know I'm sending you all my love during this difficult time. Thanks for reminding me tomorrow's never promised and to cherish the ones we love today."

I should call Addie on my way and see if we're still on for Saturday.

NEW MESSAGE FROM NIKKI SOJDEN: 

"Do you know what happened?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Call me right now...XXX-XXX-XXXX"

Wait who was she talking about? 

The only mutual friend of ours is Addie...

I call Addie knowing she's at work. No answer. Fine. I text her.

"HEY CALL ME ASAP PLEASE".

Nothing.

My heart is racing I call Andrew (her husband) pacing in my hallway. 

Nothing. 

Once more, voicemail. 

My breath quickens.

"Dude call me back right away I'm freaking out right now and I need you to tell me that Addie's okay."

Last resort. 

I text my husband (Andrew's best friend) knowing Andrew will answer for him.

"BABE HAVE ANDREW CALL ME I NEED TO KNOW ADDIE'S OKAY."

My phone rings, it's Brent.

"Hey sorry I'm just having a crazy paranoid moment right now, I need you to call Andrew and have him tell us Addie's okay."

Silence.

"Did you hear me? I need you to have Andrew call Addie and let me know she's okay."

He's crying. "I'm sorry babe."

I fall to my knees.

"No! Addie's okay, just have her text me!"

Still crying. He takes a deep breath and follows with more apologies. 

"We wanted to wait until after your final to tell you. Addie's gone. She died last night."

"What do you mean she's GONE? She's at the hospital? She's not dead. She can't be dead."

A knot solidified in the back of my throat and I can no longer speak. My stomach is on fire and I can barely breath.

No...

I sit there on the floor of my apartment sobbing on the phone with my husband. 

"How? What happened?"

"I don't know babe, Andrew found her this morning and he couldn't revive her."

Gavin.

"Where's Gavin? Where's Andrew?"

"I don't know babe, last time I talked to him he was at home with his mom."

"I've gotta go."

In seconds I was hurling myself towards their house, as if this would all be over the second she opened the door.

Pulling up I see Kathy's car. I run up the steps nearly slipping. 

Knock knock. 

This has to be a sick joke, she's going to open that door.

It was Andrew. 

His face was red and his eyes were empty. We locked eyes and I grabbed him and pulled him close. We stood there crying for what seemed a lifetime.

When I finally let him go I looked over and saw Kathy. Another hug. More tears. I look around searching. No Gavin. He's with Ben and Katie.

This is a nightmare. 

Wake up. Please wake up.

The nightmare continued.

I can't stop crying, I can't stop wondering what happened.

I can't focus on anything and people keep telling me to calm down, "Stress is harmful for the baby."

My baby. Addison's God daughter. 

Braelyn. 

Addie called her sweet baby Rae everyday before patting my belly and swooning at the idea of baby girl. 

"Ours to spoil." She'd say.

The sting I felt when I realized she would never lay eyes on this child... 

I retreat to the shower, at least I can cry there and nobody will notice. Family is flying out. Funeral planning ensues.

Saturday arrives before I know it and I find myself alone in my thoughts staring at the sky.

I'm coming out

This will not make me popular. This will not go well. This is however the conclusion I've arrived to this morning while dropping my child off to Sunday school.

I'm an agnostic theist...or at least that's how I'd label myself if I had to have one.

The things you think of while driving a bus really can be life altering. I witness some of humanity in a way most people wont ever have the chance. I know who the forgotten people of society are. The undesirables. They do offer something I've yet to find anywhere else. They're real. They don't clean up on Sunday mornings or carry on with this picturesque way of living that has been advertised to us through mass media. Their emotions are strong and obvious, granted some of them suffer from mental illness I really can't say the people I've gone to church with in my life are exempt from that same struggle...perhaps they are just better at masking it. The stigma of coming out as an agnostic theist is fabulous, you've got the atheists that argue, "How can you believe in any God?" followed by the Christians who are angry you denied theirs. Awesome right? The black sheep doesn't have to answer to anyone. It's a grey spot but I've spent most of my life in that area of the spectrum, I just happened to arrive to this decision a little later than most. I will be eating my past words however with my family, they won't be happy with this garble, they wont support my decision to stay undefined, well there's a title but it leaves a lot of wiggle room and I'd prefer it that way. My husband's family live their lives for the lord, and his son Jesus Christ. I won't mock them nor would I disrespect their views because everyone is entitled to their opinion. I'm just afraid that this will break their hearts. My little niece Grace has the lord engrained in her heart, she draws little pictures of crosses and gives them to me as gifts, her bedroom wall says she is a child of God. I couldn't be the one to tell her I don't believe in her God, I wouldn't want to wreck everything she believes in. I was raised Christian, but as time went on I realized it seemed inherently WRONG that I(being Native American) was raised to follow a religion that killed so many of my people. My sister's mother was taken from her family and forced into a Christian boarding school just 50 years ago. They tried to kill off their language and disprove their Gods. My grandmother and aunts and uncles all follow Christianity but I simply cannot.

Today walking into church my son was so happy to see his cousin, I'll remind you we don't generally see our family unless it's at a family function which always includes prayer, for childcare(both my husband and I work), or something pertaining to church. It's exhausting and unfair. Why can't we just hang out? Everything is centered around God and their personal beliefs. I remember a time when I realized I was told lies about my husband to get us to go to church. Manipulation to conform to a specific belief? No thank you. I love our family but my biggest heartache is the fact that I can't be one of them without believing in their God. So here I am. Confessing in a blog nobody reads. Honestly it's a huge weight off of my shoulders. It's times like this that I miss my best friend Addison the most, I still can't really bring myself to write about her because I just end up crying and going to bed early. I wonder what she would say to me. I wonder what she would think. I really don't know if I will ever see her again, but I hope so.

Like a BUS