Trying to Find Clarity

(This was originally written March 2015.) 

My blog has always, and will always be a place for me to work through problems. A place to try and find clarity. I have found that the more I write about my life and things I feel, the more perspective I am able to have because I have to dig deep to be able to say these things out loud. None of it has been easy. I’ve decided in this post that I’m going to try and use my voice to discuss an issue that has plagued me for so many years. I want to desperately understand. I NEED some clarity.

I do not understand family dynamics. I don’t understand my place in a family. Where do I fit? I am unpredictable. Volatile. And I can create chaos.

Seth and I tried to discuss this issue last night and he said that it is going to take a lot of time for people to get over how bad I have offended them ………hey! Wait, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Right now, people I know are dying around me. There is so much suffering. In the grand scheme of things this life is just a matter of days and moments. SO why do we have to do it alone because someone has been offended? Well, hello family and friends. Let me introduce you to my blog. Yup, I get that you don’t want to talk to me to try and gain understanding. Start reading and get caught up. I discuss my life and the challenges I have faced having severe brain trauma and a personality disorder. I discuss my marriage in depth. I have strangers in seven countries that read what I write. They are grateful that I am bringing these issues to the surface because no one else is talking about it and most of the time they tell me their story as well. This is a record for my daughters and their children to read. Speaking my truth is empowering.

But I struggle with feeling that I am worthy of love. Always have. Right now the only people that I know without a doubt love and accept me are my parents. When I told that to Seth, he said that maybe they are the only ones that can love me right now.

That stung.

I am 33 years old going on 34. If my parents are the only people on the face of this earth that can love me … after all the people I have met and interacted with and cared for over the years, what a sad reality. It is lonely and isolating. We are not meant to be alone. We are not meant to feel alone. Yet how many of us do?

Random fact about me: I am a person that loves to talk on the phone. I don’t like to text unless I have to. I crave human interaction. Yet no one calls me unless I call them first. No one called me or checked in when I was dying. I guess Seth decided to withhold it from most of his family. My parents kept it pretty private as well. I figure that if you withhold that kind of stuff from people that care about you, then you must be ashamed. Doesn’t matter whether that is true or not. I wasn’t ashamed of it and I didn’t care who knew. After I gave birth to my daughter and over the course of 18 months I was hospitalized 5 times. I did not want to live. I was experiencing an extreme case of postpartum psychosis that mixed with BPD created a deadly combination. Shameful? I guess. Why I couldn’t have just died one of those 10-15 times that I have tried I do not know.

Yes, I realize that I have a greater purpose. But a big part of me still wishes that I would have died anyway. No one should be able to take hundreds of pills, cut themselves open, breathe in deadly fumes over and over again and live to talk about it. I do not feel ashamed for what I have done. Sad? Yes. Pained that I caused those around me to feel fear and pain? Yes. Shame? No.

Question: If I did die, who would notice or care? Don’t say my kids because yes I know they would care. I’m asking in a broader sense. Who would care? I have a close relationship with my parents. They would care. But would anyone else notice? Would they think about me sometimes? Probably. They would initially post about it on Facebook and question why it happened. But then it fades. People move on because they have to.

So family: If I have offended you and you are pushing yourself away from knowing me and my daughters because of it, then stop. I’m really trying to understand. What is the purpose of family?

God gave Adam Eve because he said it was not good for man to be alone. It is not good for anyone to be alone. I’m guessing a good portion of my family feels alone as well, and we probably don’t know how to fix it. Our society is screwed up like that.

I read an interesting article a few weeks ago about the power of kindness. That researchers could predict whether people were happy in their marriage based on the amount of kindness in the relationship. I’m going to say that extends to other family members as well. The more you are kind to others, the more you forget yourself and the better relationships you create.

I feel that I have earned the right to be happy. And I can choose happiness. Right now I am lost. When people you know die and you start to inspect your life and what it means, it can be a very sad journey to take.

As far as I know, there has only been one person to walk this earth in perfection. He chose to take on our imperfections, our pain. He suffered for MY imperfections, for MY pain. Yours too. So I understand why I lived in a way that if I didn’t think I could do something perfectly, I wouldn’t try at all. I became ashamed as my many failures started to pile up.

When you look at the nights sky, do you see the moon and the stars, or the just the darkness that surrounds them? How would you feel if I chose to dismiss your light because there was darkness surrounding you? I shine because of the darkness.

Watch the video I posted. Does it make you realize how insignificant you are? Or do view the opposite like me and you realize your great significance? I see the beauty. If there are as many people as stars in the sky then how GREAT must God be to personally show His love for me. I feel His great love surround me daily. I know He cares about me. I am but a grain of sand and yet God loves me anyway. How great is our worth?! IF God can love as many stars number the sky then why can’t we love each other? How come we find fault and diminish the light in others?

Stop

Going Home

The last few days have been really rough. Just regular life stuff, but really hard nonetheless. Birthdays have never been my thing. I keep thinking that it is not the right time to write this part of the story, but maybe it is the BEST time. Because it will help give me some perspective. To not let the regular life stuff trip me up and question my purpose here.

 

Okay, so now we all know about July 22nd. Where do I begin with the aftermath? I guess for starters you should know that I never should have survived (which seems to be a running theme in all these stories and my life). In my mind the phone ringing and the text messages finally stopped and peace enveloped and embraced me. I absolutely know some things I experienced are never meant to be shared, even with my closest family. Want to know why? Because even though I can see them, there are no words on this planet to describe what I saw. I do however remember the feelings. The first and foremost was a complete sense of calm and peace, of just feeling right with the world. I felt the warmth and welcoming. Complete acceptance, no judgments. Just that feeling that you are finally where you are supposed to be. Home. I felt my Heavenly Father’s embrace. His love. His complete understanding. It fills my heart right now just thinking about it. I wanted those feelings to last forever, anyone who experienced them would. But of course they were fleeting, because the very next thing I knew I felt a very strong hand push me back. Of everything I experienced during that time, it is the clearest of all because it was so jarring. It was definitely a hand that pushed me back, propelling me forward.

I woke up in a cold shower. My roommate had found me and was trying to get me to come back. It has to be like what a baby feels like when it is born. All warm and safe, then suddenly ripped from the quiet and peaceful enclosure to be thrust in to a world of bright lights, loud noises, and unfamiliar surroundings. Things progressed quickly from there.

That day changed me. Wouldn’t you be changed? Since that experience time has changed as well. Days feel like weeks. Weeks feel like months. It has been very confusing at times. Here is an example. I ordered a package that said would take a week to arrive. I wake up in the morning, and I get upset when I check my mailbox. Why hasn’t the package gotten here yet? It is taking forever. Then I look back through my emails. I had just ordered it the day before, actually just the night before. Of course it isn’t here yet. But things like that happen almost every single day. It’s weird to say the least. But I know there is a reason for it. Can you imagine experiencing all the things I have in my life? And you as a reader know only a tiny fraction of them. How long would it take for you to recover from those awful, painful, traumatic events? Months, Years? It took me a week. Because those 7 days felt like 7 months. And every month that has passed since that time has felt like a year. Think I’m crazy? Ask the people I live with. They know.

It was an immediate transformation. I talked to my Dad a lot after that day. My Grandfather had died earlier that year and he was still grieving the loss. We all were. My dad and I needed each other. We would talk every single day after The Event. It was interesting because he would start to say the same things as I felt. “Wow Kristin, you have come so far in just the last few weeks, I can’t even believe how much you have changed!” “But Dad, it has only been two days. It’s the 24th.” “You have got to be kidding me. It feels like a lifetime ago.” And in my mind it was. But that wasn’t the case for everyone in my life.

I have never, ever in my life seen my husband lose himself the way he did on That Day. In fact, I think I have only seen him cry twice in 11 years. He never loses his composure. But he did that day. And in the months following, when I had nothing else to hold on to, when he was a thousand miles away even though we were sitting in the same room. I would remember his words on my voicemail. Him pleading and crying for me to stay. “Please Kristin, do NOT do this, we NEED you!”

But he has no idea how much he truly needs me. He probably still doesn’t. But I do. I’ve seen it.