Some days, amidst all the chaos, I find myself standing all alone with the suns rays gleaming down on my auburn hair and the warm, crisp wind blowing ever so lightly against my brown skin. Blowing just enough to catch the sharpness of a chill but not enough to grab a jacket. I stand there. I take deep breaths and try to understand the “whys” of life, try to understand the crippling heartbreak and the lack of integrity in people. I don’t ever remember a time in my life that I actually felt like I existed among society. Being invisible clearly has its perks but most days, it’s a type of lonely only those in my position could ever begin to comprehend.

Recently I’ve noticed myself becoming more distant from this materialistic world. I’m becoming more unattached. The sense of  longing that I know I was made for another world increases minute by minute, day by day. I don’t want to say God makes mistakes but I think he got me mixed up which led to me being in a world that will never feel like home. Maybe that’s what God intended all along. Isn’t Heaven suppose to be our home in the end anyways? Sure, but in the meantime I’m still stuck here trying to decipher between the good people and bad people. Stuck here feeling alone and invisible among a crowd of cowards.

I can count on one hand all the boyfriends I’ve ever had. I can count on one finger how many of them that I loved endlessly. I can also count on one broken heart how many of them shattered every part of me. I remember the day so clearly. It was a beautiful, slightly overcast, sunny day. The colors of the world were so vibrant and exciting.  I’m sitting on my porch filled with anxiety because he hasn’t contacted me in a week. We had been on a much-needed “break” with the expectation that we would be okay in the end. We always ended up working out our problems so why should this one be any different? But this time, something was off. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what was giving me the crippling feeling that I was about to lose a piece of my already broken heart. With my legs crossed and my head held high, I texted him asking if we were still okay. Thirty minutes later, the color drained from my exciting and vibrant world. The green grass wasn’t so green anymore. The blue sky had turned grey and dreary. I’m not exaggerating. I remember literally looking across the street and the color fading right before my very eyes. I was confused, lost, numb, overwhelmed, broken. I didn’t know how to say goodbye to someone I was still madly in love with. How do you say goodbye to your first true love? That moment was extremely defining for me. It was the moment that my world turned upside down but also the moment that started my journey towards finding myself. Every morning, I cried on my way to work. Not just an “aww, I miss you” cry. It was the kind of cry that can only be released by screaming. The kind of cry where no tears flow because the ache is coming from a place so deep, not even your tears can express it. I did the same thing every evening on my way back home. Every single day for months I did this. I couldn’t even think about him at work or home because it would start the spiral of me falling apart again. I hated spiraling unexpectedly because I would then have to pick up my pieces of broken glass and somehow put myself back together so I could finish the day. Loving him was exhausting. Hating him was even more exhausting. I started drinking so much that I was consistently going through a bottle of Fireball every 2 nights. I started smoking pot heavy again. I tried everything I could to numb this pain that seemed to have no end in sight.

Several months later, around the holidays, things started to get darker for me. It had been 4 months since I had seen or spoken to him. 4 months since that dreadful day that drained the color from my world.  I started looking at the glass half empty and feeling sorry for myself. It was a time that still brings tears to my eyes to think about. One day I was driving home from work, screaming from my soul with indescribable pain and a broken heart, when I looked ahead at this hill staring back at me. It had green grass with a brown, barbed wire fencing separating it from the main highway. Suddenly, I had an overwhelming urge to drive straight into it at full speed. I’m still not sure what made me hesitate that day, but I did. Despite the hesitation I had still made up my mind that I was ready to finally go “home”.  Ava was going to be better off without being influenced by a bipolar, hot mess mother. It was a certainty that I hope I never feel again. I wasn’t scared at the time, though now looking back it terrifies me. Later that week I was in the middle of writing my goodbye letter to Ava when I tried to reach out to an organization online for help. All I wanted was for someone to see my pain. All I needed was to finally not feel so alone. I waited and waited. Twenty minutes later, I got a response back. Luckily, I didn’t have a gun or they would have been twenty minutes too late. I guess I hold some sort of grudge against that organization, because I had never reached out for help prior to that and the one time I do they ignore me. In the darkest time of my life I was still alone, and I was still invisible.

Somehow I made it through the holidays, alive. My pastor’s wife had clearly been sending some anointed prayers my way during that time. I look back on all of those hard memories and try to understand how I let man have that much control over my life. It comes from a place of extreme insecurities from my childhood, surely. I make excuses as to why I continuously choose to settle in certain areas of my life, excuses that don’t make sense to the “average” person. They make sense to me though. I just view life with an entirely different perception than most. That’s what makes me an outsider. I can see the exposed layers to everyone, yet no one has ever been able to see mine. Imagine how lonely it feels to know you are the one person who has never been fully understood. It’s unfathomable.

I do this thing where I either love too hard or not at all. There is no in-between for me. I’m what you would call an “emotional extremist”. Yes, I just made that term up but it seems pretty fitting. I’m either all in or all out. There is no half way point with me. Maybe it has something to do with mediocrity. That’s scary in and of itself. Living a mediocre life when there are ample opportunities to make it extraordinary is probably why I love so deep and so hard.

After overcoming that traumatic experience of losing my love while losing myself, I still often find myself frozen, unable to move in the middle of a busy office or in my car at a red light with horns honking behind me. I still miss that man of mine. That man still takes my breath away. I still suffocate on the sometimes, but that’s okay.

XOXO

Kayla