Growing

Haha I think I should just admit that blogging isn't my thing. My posts are sporadic at best. This is such a change from middle and high school! Granted, then I wasn't typing out my posts, they were neatly secured in comp books that I could carry to every class. They were my primary focus at the time, and maybe that is why I did so poorly in math... Blogging, or journaling, or whatever you want to call it, was something I desperately needed at the time. As years have gone by I need it less and less. Strangely, the last couple weeks I have felt I need it more and more. My current dilemma is whether I want my journaling to be private or public. It isn't like there are hoards of people reading it now, but I'm sure it's understandable.

So, I've been looking at how my life has changed over the years. Not just as in I've gotten older and married, but how I have changed as a person. My outlook has changed dramatically in the last few years. I've learned that the world isn't as bleak as it may seem, that it is okay to ask for help, that the world isn't out to hurt me. I still have trouble trusting people, and I still take people's opinions more seriously than I should. I've grown spiritually, and I feel truly at peace with some decisions I have made.

Some beliefs I held as a teenager and young adult are beliefs I wish I still could hold. However, I feel that I liked the idea of believing them more than I actually believed them. I still do. I just... I think now I feel that it is naive of me to still hold those beliefs. I think they were things I needed at the time. Those beliefs made me feel more in control of my life, more like I meant something. Those beliefs truly helped me at that time. I didn't really question things, but now I am. I couldn't find answers, so I moved towards beliefs that held answers. I've gone back and forth so much over the years. I would research and research, and anytime I would find things that didn't make sense, I would move on. I think I have finally found belief in something that makes sense thus far. I have never felt this in tune with God and this at peace with my life. It's a nice feeling.

It's just interesting to see how we change...

I have returned

Well, I have decided to crawl out from where I've been hiding. For a time I cheated on blogger with tumblr... I'm not proud of it, and I'll try not to let it happen again.

A lot has happened, and at the same time not much. Alexander is rated now, we've been married almost two years now, I've had two surgeries, and found I may have a bone disorder.

Lately I've had a crisis of faith. Currently I'm wavering between two drastically different religions. What do you when you agree and disagree with aspects of each? My heart is torn between the two right now, and I've been able to think of little else. Religion and life after death is such a terrifying thing to be torn about.

I liked it...

To Write Love On Her Arms

Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won't see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she'd say if her story had an audience. She smiles. "Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars."

I would rather write her a song, because songs don't wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her.

Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn't slept in 36 hours and she won't for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn't ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her.

She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of "friends" offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write "FUCK UP" large across her left forearm.

The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms.

She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I've known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she's beautiful. I think it's God reminding her.

I've never walked this road, but I decide that if we're going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes
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Thursday night she is in the balcony for Band Marino, Orlando's finest. They are indie-folk-fabulous, a movement disguised as a circus. She loves them and she smiles when I point out the A&R man from Atlantic Europe, in town from London just to catch this show.

She is in good seats when the Magic beat the Sonics the next night, screaming like a lifelong fan with every Dwight Howard dunk. On the way home, we stop for more coffee and books, Blue Like Jazz and (Anne Lamott's) Travelling Mercies.

On Saturday, the Taste of Chaos tour is in town and I'm not even sure we can get in, but doors do open and minutes after parking, we are on stage for Thrice, one of her favorite bands. She stands ten feet from the drummer, smiling constantly. It is a bright moment there in the music, as light and rain collide above the stage. It feels like healing. It is certainly hope.

Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Renee, this her last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We're talking to God but I think as much, we're talking to her, telling her she's loved, saying she does not go alone. One among us knows her best. Ryan sits in the corner strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs she's inspired.

After church our house fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for her, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. She pulls me aside and tells me she would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded living room, to the garage and her stuff.

She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She's had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn't have it. I hold it carefully, thank her and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life.

As we arrive at the treatment center, she finishes: "The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope."

I have watched life come back to her, and it has been a privilege. When our time with her began, someone suggested shifts but that is the language of business. Love is something better. I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. Don Miller says we're called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I agree so greatly.

We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she's known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.

We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home.

I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember.

Chimerical. C-h-i-m-e-r-i-c-a-l. Highly unrealistic, wildly fanciful... I love you...

I figure it's about time for my monthly update.

I am so incredibly frustrated with medical professionals. As a warning, this may be considered TMI, and if you choose not to continue reading, that's fine. For the last two months they have had me on a rollercoaster of emotions! I initially went to the doctor to refill my birth control. At that point I had been four days late. The doctor talked to me about the length of my cycles, which are abnormally long, especially for being on bc. With bc you should have a 28 day cycle, having a period every time you hit the white pills. My cycles are 41 days long, bc or no. So I would have some months where my period landed during white pills, some months where my period came during blue pills, and some months where it doesn't come at all. After talking to the doctor she said she needed to look at something, and left. When she returned she very bluntly said that I could not have children because I am not ovulating. Talk about being hit in the stomach with a bag of bricks! She continued to explain that cycles longer than 35 days don't experience ovulation. She said she normally would have given my a pregnancy test, but there was no point in it. She then sent me to a lab to do a blood test to check hormone levels, and referred me to a gynecologist. Four vials of blood and three hours later I'm sitting in my car sobbing like a baby. Fast forward a couple weeks, still no period. I went to the gyno, who they gave me no option as to the gender of, and had an exam. He said everything seemed normal, but didn't understand why I wasn't given a pregnancy test. He said that there is always a chance that I did get pregnant, and sent me for a test. Afterwards he said the more likely explanation was that I had polycystic ovarian syndrome. He also said that the way it looked, the longer Alex and I wait to have a baby the harder it's going to be to get pregnant. He said that if it was PCOS there were things we could do, and there was a good chance we would get pregnant. He had me schedule an ultrasound and prescribed me provera to start my period. Alex and I talked about everything and decided we were going to start ttc in June after he gets rated in air traffic control. Fast forward a few more weeks, still no period. I still haven't started the provera because the lab won't give me the results of my pregnancy test, and I can't start the pills until we know I'm not pregnant. I go for my ultrasound, at the end of that I asked what she saw. She refuses to tell me anything. IT'S MY EFFING BODY! WHY THE HELL WILL NO ONE TELL ME ANYTHING?? So I then storm to the women's clinic to demand my results where I am then told to call a million different numbers. I finally get a call saying I am not pregnant and to start my pills. Fast forward two and a half weeks to a few days ago, I just started my period. I went to the gyno to review my ultrasound results. He says I do not have PCOS, and they don't see any reason for my body to be doing what it is. He says he thinks I ovulate, but it's just very sporadic. He says the only thing they really found was a nabothian cyst on my left ovary, but those aren't much of anything. The only thing odd about that was that it was on my ovary, normally they show up on the uterus. Other than that, he said he didn't know what to tell me. He said something is obviously going on, they just can't figure out what. The only way they'll really be able to figure anything out is if I stop taking bc and we start trying for a baby. I asked if he still thinks we need to try for a baby sooner rather than later, and he says he won't know until Alex and I start ttc. Then he prescribed me a stronger dose of bc and said he wants to meet in December to see what that does. So basically, I'm kinda broken and they don't really know exactly how to fix me. After talking to Alex, he's not so sure he wants to try for a baby as soon unless the doctor recommends we do. When I go see the doctor again I'm going to ask him what he thinks, and what exactly we need to do to find out where things are going. I should have started my new birth control yesterday, but I can't get myself to do it. I've done some reading online, and there are a lot of women who have trouble getting pregnant after getting off bc... If there's the chance I'm going to have more issues in the long run even without bc, do I really wanna make it more difficult? I'm just a little scared of the possibility... I haven't told Alex about that yet... I don't think he'd be too happy. I just really don't know what to do about that situation...

Additionally, I was fired from Dairy Queen. Although, I feel I must add that had she not asked me to leave, I would have left that very day on my own. I had informed her days before that the milk we were using was expired by a couple days. It didn't smell bad at that point, but if it wasn't finished that day it needed to be tossed. three days later, we were still using milk with the same expiration date. I brought this to her attention again, and refused to sell anything made with that milk. So she went to the back, pulled out a new jug. She then quickly added the milk to the milkshake that had been ordered, and put it away. The whole thing struck me as odd, so I pulled the jug back out and looked at the date. It had expired on October 31, and the current date was November 7. It was two days older than the milk I had originally refused to sell. What topped it all off was the fact that the milkshake was made for a little girl! After the customers left I told Mrs. Kim that this was disgusting and wrong and I was tired of doing it. I was tired of selling rotten ice cream to customers. We bickered back and forth about for about ten minutes. She said I should have told her that the ice cream mix smelled bad in the mornings, that there was nothing she could do if I didn't tell her. That's when I snapped and said I did tell her, I made her smell it most mornings, and she never did anything about it, she sold it! I told her I was not going to be responsible for getting people sick. I told her it was disgusting, and Alex and I don't eat there for exactly that reason. That was when she told me maybe it was best if I just went home. I told her I agreed and I was sorry things didn't work out.

I was so fucking proud of myself for actually standing up to her. And then I went home and took a nap because I was emotionally drained.

I enrolled in spring classes, and I'm pretty excited! I'm taking Math, Music Appreciation, Basic Musicianship, World Religion, and Intro to Teaching. I think it'll be an intense semester, but worth it. By February I'll probably hate it :o)

Okay, I think that's enough typing for now.

Just wanted to give a quick update. Still hunting for a job and failing miserably. I applied at a vet clinic for a receptionist position a few weeks ago and he still hasn't looked at applications. I sent my resume to an RV dealership today and hoping I hear something. Mrs. Kim is driving my crazy! She cuts my hours back to nearly nothing and then when I ask for next weekend off she refuses to give it to me. This SUCKS! :o( Umm I got an A on both my sociology and Arabic quizzes, and have an Arabic test on Tuesday. Wish me luck.

Oh, before I forget, the lady who writes a blog I follow is having a giveaway. I've seen a couple of these lately, and I really like this one. It's Halloween themed and we know my addiction to Halloween. :o) Here's the link in case anyone else is interested! http://amazinamie.blogspot.com/2009/09/halloween-giveaway_10.html

Surprise!

I've gotta make this quick before I lose everything, but I felt I had to update this.

I'm writing a little bit for Punished! Granted, I'm not sure if it will fit, but worst case scenario I'll fix what I had to make this work. I am writing a lovely cliff hanger as well :o) The perfect way to end a chapter, as long as it's not in something I'm reading.

I'll do a better update as soon as I finish, I promise.

Pulling my hair out.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Mrs. Kim called me this morning and the conversation went exactly like this:

Me: Hello?

Mrs. Kim: Kaylei?

M: Yes, Mrs. Kim?

K: Kaylei?

M: Yes, Mrs. Kim?

K: Okay, Kaylei! You know yesterday how is slow? And day before, and all week?

M: Yes, Mrs. Kim?

K: Yes, I uhh I not have you come in today. You stay home. It just no business. It too slow.

M: Oh, ok.

K: You know, company got to survive. So you stay home.

M: Ok Mrs. Kim.

K: Thank you Kaylei!

M: No problem, bye.

K: Bye!


So, of course, I was less than happy about this. Fine, whatever. 7 hours this week, great! I'm looking for a new job anyways. I calmed myself down and Alex let me know we had a couple errands to run. So we get in the car and start driving to the pet store. As we pass DQ I happen to look over and see that fucking Jeanne is there! She told me to stay home today and called JEANNE in! Fucking Jeanne who was scheduled 5 days on top of having a second job! She doesn't need the fucking hours! I DO! It's so effing frustrating!

I just want someone to give me a call offering an interview, if nothing else.