Life's Illusions

But now it’s just another show, you leave them laughing when you go and if you care, don’t let them know. Don’t give yourself away… 

 Sometimes I wonder how I will die. 

It isn’t a fantasy so much as a prophecy I’m driven to fulfill. Drifting away with old age has never felt right. The universe has tagged me to be the last one standing as I’ve watched so many others fall. Hard as it is on me, I see my dad, the oldest of 11, methodically losing his siblings, and his son just months ago, his wife some weeks later, and friends upon friends upon friends. He appears to take I in stride but he’s a quiet type mostly, not one to carry on about losing any fight. Keep on keepin’ on is his philosophy. It wasn’t until this past year that his cracks have shown. 

It’s been said that our birthdays aren’t measured by the years, but by the events that fall between them. My life is a different one than a year ago. Sure, we change all the time before we realize it, and we wonder how that extra candle got there on the cake in just one day, but it wasn’t a day; it was an entire trip around a giant blazing ball. 

 

Time is a conundrum, isn’t it? 

It was only last December that I had to tell him that his son, the best of his friends, was gone. It was as if I’d punched him right in the pit of his belly. Just eight months but so long ago. I took that responsibility from the officers because they didn’t know him, or any of us. My brother was dead, a bullet from his own gun on that drizzled morning. I couldn’t let strangers have that moment, it belonged to us.

Sonny took control of his end. I don’t have it in me, though there’ve been days I’ve pleaded with the universe to take me out of the game, but those stars have other plans and no amount of begging brings a bargain. They like to toss me over a cliff but with some sort of cosmic bungee cord that pulls me back with a heavy snap. 

I once asked the question, “What is it like to live inside of a birthday cake? Does glitter tumble to the floor like a million little rainbows? Would horns blare at me each time I walked in?” Now I am compelled to ask what happens when the party’s over? Is there a heaven, and is it billows and clouds, or glitter and confetti? Are there ice cream castles and feather canyons everywhere? Does gravity not exist in such places? Because in my world, confetti falls to the ground just like our memories and hopes and expectations do. Glitter is nothing in the darkness. When we go, it’s ashes or it’s a box, and if we are fortunate, we leave behind some sort of proof that we lived. 

By all indications of my life, I’m inclined to believe I’ll meet my end in a fiery fashion, perhaps rumbling down the road, faster than I should be, and Death will blindside me. These are the themes of my story; lots of drama to make headlines. Mostly, I wonder what song will be my last. Sometimes I set aside songs in my head, like I’m creating a playlist. The ultimate and final mix tape. 

Such thoughts are lonely ones. I don’t know what was in my brother’s head when he pulled that trigger. I’d give anything to know because one last thought could give so many answers, It’s why I’m always writing mine down, so nobody will ever have to wonder. He is an event that happened between my birthdays, one I can’t let go of despite our differences and distances. He lingers like a lone candle in all of our lives. Dad turned 82 last week, my turn to age arrives in just 9 minutes. I’ll be a year older by the time I’ve written the last word of this and a day older than that when I read it to you. Like a festive cake with one slice missing, there is a palpable dissonance in the air. 

I could say that Sonny’s death was the most important thing, but it isn’t. Despite all of the madness with the obliteration of my family, I’ve at last found freedom, and I’ve learned that being free always comes at the cost of others. I’ve wished fervently to die before my husband, and even befpre my dad. Selfish, yes, but the thought of such loss haunts me. My brother took my wish to his grave, because now I have to hold on. I will not reach for that freedom at the cost of my father’s heart. 

Lessons never cut deep enough until we’ve seen both sides of them. 

The thing about confetti and clouds is that in the drifting time, they carry the best of us; our memories and our hopes. It’s the expectations that fall, and that’s okay because without expectation, it’s harder to fail. We need to cling to the mist and move forward until our moment comes to rest. 

My life is a different one than just a year ago.

The Traveling Soldier

He’s a little shy so she gave him a smile.  He said “Would you mind sittin’ down for a while and talking to me, I’m feeling a little low…”

All of the songs in the world are jumbled in my head right now.  In trying to reign just one out of the clouds, it only makes me feel more lost among them. 

I read a beautiful essay today titled Even Hitler Had a Wife by James DeKoven.  I’d never known of this writer before today but as everything does, his words came along at just a pivotal time. 

I’ve always been drawn to complex women. Intelligent, opinionated, philosophical, not-so-perfect childhoods, maybe a little crazy. They say it’s foolish, even dangerous to date that kind of a woman, but when is it not risky to expose your heart?

These opening lines haunted me, as they strongly resembled my former self.  Age has tamed me in this last third of my life, but at my core I still feel driven to be wanted as that girl.  The wild, complex, free-reign one who reveled in being so misunderstood. 

Today I’m chatting with three lovely bartenders about their day as I try to examine my life over a mountain of shellfish and butter drenched biscuits.  Times have changed.

My priorities have shifted.  I need to feel desired by men for my soul rather than crazy sex fantasies in the minds of wayward boys.  I want women to relate to me as a companion and not be seen as competition.  The meaning of life comes to me in the smallest and most gigantic of ways.  I am a fool to walk blindly through the songs and not listen to the words. 

This past week has been tremendously emotional.  On Thursday, I was breaking down, unable to sleep for days in a row and quite worried about my state of mind.  My husband listened with a measured ear to my tearful confessions that I was teetering on an edge.  Then Friday brought me a day long conversation with a handsome man that went long into the evening.  It was the most meaningful dialogue I’d had in some time and filled a cavern in me that had been growing wider in the lonely nights.  Saturday, I had to put on my in-charge mask as I encouraged leadership in others by playing strong and relating my own experiences.  As I tried to come down from that, I allowed myself a short time away from the world in hopes of short-term repair.  By the time Sunday came to deliver some heavy news, I was done.  My head was preoccupied with just everything. 

This wonderful new friend I had the hope of knowing and spending time with had received news that he was being transferred way to the other side of the country.  He is a military man, and our talks had been engaging on so many levels.  We both shared a love of comedy, of theatre, and long, frank conversations.  Roger is my best companion, but we all need to have our independence and outer influences.  Having lost so many of my closest friends, I’d been craving someone to come along with whom I could just be.  It is rare to find someone who demands nothing, wants everything, and will never ask for anything I’m not ready to give. 

In telling me that he had to leave, and understanding its impact on someone like myself, he’s shown patience and kept me smiling through the sadness.  He spoke of his self-obligation to do what he needed to do, but the effect it’s kept on his personal life and the love he’s had to leave behind.  “This is the life I lead.  It is what it is.”  I heard in his voice the same notes of loneliness that I often read in my own words.  It’s given me much to think about and has opened up a lot that’s been suppressed for some time.  This connection has taken me to a place I need to return to, but it is a painful place.  It is a stark reminder, however, that it’s okay to be afraid of life sometimes, but we must march forward and feel anything that we need to feel in every moment that we have. 

Pete kept telling me that if he’d known he would be receiving these orders, he would not have initiated this friendship, based upon what of me he knows.  In that, I would have missed out on this profoundly lyrical life moment, and the rarity of being understood.  I don’t know how adept I’ve become at any kind of loss, because I freewheel between detachment and stabbings of hurt, but I’m going to feel this one.  I'm slowly learning, though, the difference between death and distance. 

Songs are meant to be sung; sometimes in our heads when we can’t find the voice to sing out loud.  They surround us like clouds in a sky.  Every once in a blue moon, I have the fortune of reigning one in. 

He said “I bet you got a boyfriend but I don’t care, I got no one to send a letter to.  Would you mind if I sent one back here to you…?”

Sincerity

I’m a walking cliché even when I’m soaked in sincerity… the truth about the truth is it isn’t going anywhere

I always mark the greatness of a road trip by the degree of voice I have left by the time I arrive home. 

It used to be I never hit the streets without risk of losing my voice.  Car concerts have been a staple of mine beginning with my mom, continuing with my girlfriends and then it became a private show between me my pretty Firebird.  Mom’s been gone for thirty years now, my girlfriends are distant and the buzz of my little red sportster isn’t quite the same as the low rumble that once covered up my way off-key performances.  Change has never been easy for me because it’s a cover song for letting go. 

I’ve been carrying a lot for an awful long time, and the road was always a good place to let it all drop when I needed to.  I could release just enough to keep holding on.  It all began to pile on until the hills became mountains, and I was speeding downward so fast it was like my brake line had been cut. 

Then I slammed into a wall.  Sometimes we walk away from that, and sometimes we wish we didn’t. 

Tomorrow I’ll be saying goodbye to yet another friend.  The older I become, the lonelier life gets.  The last three years have been blurred by tragedy, abandonment, solitude and more reflection than a wishing pond.  When the darkness became real, I had to drag myself through every single day.  It was of no help that many of those days included moving on and refusing to let go.  I resented the endless “celebrations of life” because their lives are over but mine isn’t.  Everyone now wants to pretty up a funeral but it doesn’t take the sadness away, does it? 

Everyone has heard “if you love someone, set them free…” but setting them free was giving up and I haven’t ever been very good at that.  Funny for a girl who lacks follow through.  However, if there’s one thing I have needed to take away from the misery, it is that letting go is how we free ourselves to move forward. 

The real fear comes in others giving up on me.  Sometimes they don’t die; sometimes they just walk away.  “When you see yourself thinking of me, of us, years from now … say you see me on the street somewhere, or remember the moments we’ve shared, will you think of us and smile?” I was asked this one blazing summer day.  There were no clouds to protect me, no rain to mask my tears, and nobody to save my broken heart.  I couldn’t answer because people who can’t remember the past lose their ability to see the future. 

I’ve been trying these past few weeks to regain my compassion, my familiar place because, you see, I’d been letting go.  It’s the be careful what you ask for syndrome; when we ask for peace, it can come in ways we may not want.  I needed to heal, so I tried to shut out all of the noise.  In essence, I needed to lose the person I had become.  In that, I have lost time, and thoughts or stories that should have been written only now I can’t remember them.  They’ve disappeared to that place that doesn’t have a name but lives inside of us all.

I recently asked that love if sad smiles counted in my memory of us.  “Well, no.” came his more-logical-than-me reply.  “Sad smiles are still sad.” 

In the search for my not so distant self, I felt like I was driving fast but not getting too far.  I’ve replaced the sadness with a numbing static.  Buckle up, get down to business, and rely only on myself.  Limits, labels and roadmaps have never really been my thing so trying to put myself on an advised course hasn’t taken me as far as anyone thought it should. 

I found that when I stopped talking about the things that nobody wanted to hear, I didn’t like myself so much.  I suddenly had become boring, ordinary, as though I’ve given in to the demands of others to be who I am never going to be. 

We can wish for peace, but we need to risk sacrifice in return.  We can’t ever have anything without losing something. 

Last week, I went for a drive.  For the first time since I can’t remember when, I gave every song everything I had in me.  When I arrived home late that night, my voice was exhausted.  A song will always have the power to soothe or stab me, just as any friend does. 

Hope is what feeds the peace inside.  It doesn’t need to be grandiose, over the top or floating on a rainbow.  In letting go, sometimes the road brings us back together but to a new place.  Sometimes we can revisit the places we left behind but see it in a new way, begin a new journey from the same starting point. 

In every goodbye, there comes a hello; sometimes in a familiar voice. 

Yesterday, I watched this movie play out on a big screen, and at the end the redheaded woman stood at the ocean in the setting sun, embracing the rugged older man and as they gazed upon each other, I felt the tug of a memory, and I smiled. 

Sometimes you get what you steal.  Sometimes you see things for real and sometimes sincerity feels like you’re lying…

© May 21, 2016

Lyrics:  Sincerity / Miggs

Lost Stars

 

… but are we all lost stars trying to light up the dark?

It’s like I’m in denial that I’m never going to see him again.  Then it’s a thunderous boom; I’m never going to see him again.  Anthony was a candle in the window to much of my life.  What others avoided seeing, he never ran from.  In fact, he came with his hand reaching outward. 

Always. 
 
Today I have lost one of the greater loves of my life.  Anthony was a light that guided me through the darkness I’ve become so familiar with.  He knows things that no other soul ever has.  In all of that knowledge, there wasn’t an ounce of judgment. 

We met over two decades ago, when I was dating a rabid football fan.  I despise football, but had a bet going just to poke fun at this guy’s amped up rant.  I called in repeatedly to the local radio station asking for the score.  Finally came “I have to know… why don’t you just check the tv?”  I didn’t have one at the time.  When the end came, and the DJ asked why I was so interested for someone who hated the sport, I explained that a dinner was at stake.  His reply; “Girl, if this were a couple of points difference, I’d say you win a Big Mac.  If it were even a ten point spread, he should buy you a dinner at Denny’s.  But with this score, brother oughta be flying you to Milan for dinner with breakfast in Paris!” 

It was a year later that we actually met.  I won a contest to be a DJ for a day.  Anthony was the hosting jock, and I carried my nerves on my sleeve when I walked into the studio.  I didn’t realize it was the same guy until months later.  He gave me a quick tutorial of the mechanics, and then switched on the microphone.  I knew it was my voice, but I never figured out how I managed to speak.  But I did.  A couple of hours in, me still shaking in my heels, someone called in requesting a song from a daughter to her father.  I began to rattle off all the fitting titles I knew and he stared at me, eyes wide.  Twenty years after that night, he said it only confirmed what he saw when I spoke my first words; “You were a natural.  I watched it, and everybody heard it.” 

Anthony encouraged me to follow that dream, and I did.  Like a butterfly who at last believed she had wings, I fell in love with the power of reaching people through music.  Of stirring the same feelings I found in the notes of a song.  It was a quietly turbulent time in my life.  I was the wallpaper that nobody noticed in a full room.  Many midnights I walked from the pizza place I worked at to the station, spent hours at his side or in a production room somewhere writing bad poetry about the lovesickness I was beginning to feel toward this tall, vivacious man as he bounced off of the walls, sometimes literally, making up silly words to songs he played – and he just happened to be married.  He would give me rides home across town in his beat up van but never let on if he knew of my schoolgirl feelings.  He instead gave me wings, and as I flew he migrated away when the station was sold. 

It was sixteen years later that we reconnected.  Anthony was no longer married, but I was.  He had gone into ministry, and I saw the natural fit.  We met, and we reminisced about the industry and then I asked a question that had burning inside of me for half of my life.  “Christians claim there is a peace at the end, that you go into God’s kingdom rejoicing in this Heaven that was promised.  Where was that peace when my mother died?”  Anthony didn’t try to sell me the Bible, he simply looked at me with his kind brown eyes, and took my pale hand in his dark ones, and said “There is no proof.  That’s why it’s called faith.”

He was the only person I’ve ever allowed to talk to me about God.  He accepted that we didn’t share beliefs.  Over egg rolls or pancakes or as he snuck a shrimp from my plate, I often said “You know the Bible is just a work of fiction created by man, right?” just to see the fire in his eyes as he launched into a sermon.  He wasn’t correcting me, he was simply being Anthony. 

I was a believer in Anthony. 

And he was a believer in me.  I was just beginning to find myself as a writer, and again he reached out his hand as I took each step.  He didn’t pull me along, rather he gave me balance.  I trusted him when he said my courage was contagious. 

Then one day Anthony had cancer. 

Everything changed, and I was afraid.  As he began his descent, I began to slip away.  Self defense; by now I should be a martial arts master.  Even in the distance between our visits, I sent random texts of “I love you.  Be strong, but you don’t need to be with me.”  “I will play that card one day.  I love you too.”

It was one night at 3am, when I often sought him out to calm my fears as Roger and the whole rest of the world was asleep, thoughts gone unspoken for so many years fell out between us.  “Now’s a good time for confession.   A girl shouldn’t be left to wonder all of her life.”  “We were good not to kiss and tell.  If you remember correctly, my wife was already thinking I was having an affair with you.”  “You never wanted me…” I remembered the girlish verses I’d scribbled on heart-decorated notepads. 

“That you noticed.”   One month later, he is gone.

We’d never once kissed.  It occurs to me today in his dementia that he’d imagined we had.  I find comfort in that, even if fleeting.  An unrequited love, not so unseen after all but instead a butterfly.  Our friendship had wings.

I don’t know now who I’m going to reach out to in the middle of the night.  That’s the biggest loss.  And the hugs.  The world seems lonelier after just one day without Anthony in it.  I went about my day as any other Wednesday, there’s just one less person to tell about it.  One very important person.

There is no moral to this fable, no lesson to teach.  No feeling thankful that he is out of pain because I’m selfish, and I want him back here on this Earth. 

This is just me.  Incredibly, irreparably sad. 

God, tell us the reason youth is wasted on the young.  It’s hunting season, and the lambs are on the run…

 

 

© Kymberlie Ingalls, July 16^th 2014  *  Lyrics:  Lost Stars / Adam Levine

For Just A Moment

Time goes on, people touch and they're gone....

There was a hole in the sky tonight, as though a portal into another time.  It was golden rimmed in the hazy grey, much as we see the past in the midst of what lies in front of us.  The fall tones seem to have faded already as the blues settle in. 

It was a winter day at the end of last year when a friend said to me "Let's see what the new year brings" after we'd shared a glorious morning that promised a horizon of good things.  There was a moment, a smile,  that flashed, as an icicle does in the rising sun. 

Icicles that fall and pierce the skin, leaving a thin, cold trail of blood.

What followed was a year of loss, confusion, and searching for answers that had no questions.  Friends have been lost, some buried.  I have crashed, and been burned.  The scales have tipped and I've now forgotten more than I remember, but I remember that day.  It was something to hold on to. 

What memories have survived now decorate a year gone by, like colorful ornaments; blue eyes here, brown there, green peering from around the corner.  Why is it the eyes I remember?  I work so hard to forget my own. 

The summer came and went, a season of soaring highs and devastating lows.  My year continued to be one of rediscovery, recovery, and introspect.  I find it terribly disconcerting that so many chase my hidden smiles, then like a child who soon loses interest in a coveted Christmas toy, they leave me behind and take that supposedly disarming smile with them. 

My husband tells me I always take on too much.  Too many tasks, too many people.  In doing so, I am bound for failure too often.  As people continually walk away, it is apparent that I am the common denominator.  I keep reaching out until it seems I find someone who will want to stay. 

I've been accused of being ungrateful, insecure, psychologically unsound.  I am held up in comparison to the lives of others by people who don't understand that I'm not living anyone else's life; I'm trying to survive my own until it's time for me to lay down and rest.  In doing so, I don't rely on holidays to be thankful for people who touch my life, even if briefly.  I could be angry at those who go.  Where is the good in that?   An icy memory may stab the heart on a lonely night, but when it melts, it becomes water that nourishes.

There is one who brings more smile than hurt, more safety than fear, and has not left me.  I don't want to believe it's because I've crippled him, thereby keeping him at my side by default.  Instead I will fall asleep choosing to think he wants to be lying next to me, his hand resting on my back because it comforts him as much as it does me.  Because of this love, I am able to give to others the same. 

I am also constantly needing to test its strength.

Let the holidays come and do their worst as I tremble in anxiety and wander the stores trying to look like I hadn't been crying for an hour at the thought of sitting at a cold family table wondering why I can't have the happy Thanksgiving so many wished for me.  What pulls me back to face another day is the realization that so many shared their warmth with me.  None tied by blood, but who hold me in higher regard. 

I am thankful for this; the kindness of doctors who keep me in medication that can't be afforded despite my disinterest in their  life-prolonging effects.  The efforts of those who seek my smiles even when they abscond with them soon after.  The company of those who wish to give it.  That my work is now being recognized by many.  The knowledge that what I put forth into the world is what will be returned to me.  That a goodbye doesn't mean forever.

And the ability to see the rainbow that glimmers inside of an icicle. 

Someday when we reminisce we'll say there wasn't too much we missed, and through the tears we'll smile when we recall we had it all, for just a moment....

 

 

 

(c) Kymberlie Ingalls, November 28th, 2013

Lyrics:  For Just A Moment /  David Foster