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.

A Hundred Tears Away

Go ahead and cry now, just give in to the madness.  The only way to feel your joy is first to feel the sadness…

It’s that time of year again.  The first page on the calendar that prompts us to climb our unresolved mountains before we come sliding back down at our self-imposed December deadline.  I’ve never been into resolutions, yet never work well without a finite date to loom over me.

Having stumbled past the ultimate deadline that I thought Destiny had placed on me, I’m in a bit of a free fall at the moment.  We’ve all been posed the philosophical question “How would you spend your time if you knew when you were going to die?”  Been there, spent the time as wisely as I thought best.  I lived every emotion; joy, sadness, laughter and melancholy.  I’ve cried a hundred tears, a hundred thousand times.  It turned out to be some sort of twisted cosmic joke when I didn’t die as prophesized.  Either I had misread the roadmap or Destiny moved the finish line on me.

Am I to find the answer at the top of my mountain?  Because here at ground level, the question remained – where do I go from here?

I felt that death would be a gift; an ending to a life that had gone on too long.  I was tired.  I still feel twinges of it some days.  People ask me how I’m doing and when I respond with “okay,” they almost always return with “just okay?”  They don’t understand – “okay” means I’m not having that twinge.  It’s funny how we can see negatives and positives so differently from one another.

There are things in our lives that we have different names for but they all amount to the same; gifts, blessings, good luck or fortunes.  What many consider to be a blessing would be a sunny day.  For me, that would be a curse because of severe and rare health risks. To everyone else, Kryptonite is just a pretty green glowing crystal. 

It’s all about perception. 

I’ve always known I was different from most.  I have been the outsider to my own life, feeling the need to justify or defend my existence and its variables.  It was a linear way to the top of my mountain.  What I have learned to be my footholds are things intangible.  Love as it means to me, the meaning of life and my purpose in its evolution.  I say that I’m in a freefall, but it only feels that way because my deadline is no longer as obvious as the summit above me.  Where challenges and chaos have defined my path, I now feel there is reason.  It no longer has to be justified to anyone.  It only needs to make sense to me. 

Living each day as a lifetime is often a fleeting thing that falls away with the drudgery of an obligated existence.  Not for me; it is in me all of the time.  It’s a lot to carry, but and because the weight is not mine alone.  There have always been lessons, but over time the consequences weigh more.  While my life has always felt like I was climbing to nowhere, suddenly I understood that I’ll never get anywhere if I continue to carry so much dead weight.  The hard part has been figuring what or who am I going to need later and what is best to cut loose now? 

My friends have always been the most significant treasures.  They made up for the family I wanted little part of.  They’ve all had their place and time, though it’s taken me a long time to realize that.  Not everything is meant to last, and that includes relationships.  We think loyalty is defined by forever and feel betrayed when everlasting comes to an end, but we aren’t replacing the people in our journey, we are replenishing our souls. 

In the past calendar run, I have been called many things from bitter and spiteful to kindhearted and a superhero.  I’ve been advised way more than I am comfortable with.  I’m quite surprised I still have a tongue left after having bitten it so often.  In conversation with someone last month, I alluded to a 25-year friendship that I’d severed last summer and he asked quietly, “do you have any friends you haven’t had a falling out with?”  I was hurt by that because it proved he wasn’t understanding things I’d been saying, which had become the common theme with most of my friends, hence the falling outs.  It has become important to me to stop giving more to everyone than I was getting in return.  And it isn’t a quid pro quo thing.  It’s a harsh learning that I am not a superhero, and that I am vulnerable. 

It’s still a long way to the top, and Kryptonite hides in the darkest of places.

Someone asked me today “why is every story so negative?”  Stuart was laughing as he asked, but there was a nugget of truth.  I was starting to tell him a story and finished with “See?  It’s not negative, it’s interesting. And if I were on a stage telling it, it would be comedy gold.”  In the same conversation, he commiserated about my physical disabilities and conveyed a brief sadness when he asked “Have you ever looked death in the face?” and I said that I had.  “You’ve had a lot of challenge in your life.”  That’s okay, I said.  It’s given me a different point of view.

Life is all about perception. 

It’s not so much about having survived my life.  It’s the view that it’s given me.  Have you ever stood at the top of the world and looked up at a clear night sky?  Not all peaks are found at the top of a mountain.  Sometimes they are on a sandy beach, an isolated field of dry grass, in a clearing or at the top of a city hill. 

I may be falling free, but that landing is just a hundred tears away.

Sometimes we want to give up but fools like us, we keep trying.  You’re a long way from someplace you feel safe but peace of mind, it comes from just one place…

Nuggets Of A Princess

Lisa and I met when I was in the fourth grade, she in the third.  Seems I was both resisting and hoping at the same time that she would become my friend.  We were both shy, awkward girls, but where we truly bonded was the common thread of our abuse.  She, at the hands of her mother, myself under my stepmother’s heavy hand.  Not to mention any other kind of horror that can be inflicted upon a child – we could open up a t-shirt shop from all the been-there-done-that’s. 

Flash forward thirty-two years later, and we still have common threads, but vastly different lives.  I’ve always had a need for independence – maybe I’ve been financially reliant on others, but my spirit, my mind, has always stood on its own.  I’ve been mistreated by many, but never for very long.  In my few relationships, they may have been maddening at times, but never abusive.  If there was ever any dysfunction in my relationships, platonic or romantic or familial, I’ve given as good as I’ve gotten.

I don’t like confrontation, but will speak my mind when the need arises.  I’ve spoken said mind for and against those around me, and my honesty has landed me in hot water more times than not. 

So, what I have never understood is how Lisa and I could come through all of the same kinds of terrible things, but be such different women.  I won’t lie, I get so frustrated because I can’t seem to light a fire under her ass to stand up for herself – to me, to her mother, brother, her son.  She seems to think that I beat on her emotionally as her wretched blood ties have, but when I ask for examples of my bad behavior, none can ever be provided with accuracy.

Lisa is like the animals in the rescue commercials - full of love for the right person, kind as can be, willing to play if you'll just throw the ball, but has those big eyes that whimper "Why do you want to hurt me?"  Used to be she was also the most honest person I ever knew.  Used to be...

But I digress.

I’ve been reading the memoir of author/actress/self-professed-loon Carrie Fisher.  You may recognize her from her little part in the Star Wars saga.  The book is entitled Wishful Drinking, something I’m quite familiar with.  In it, there is nothing she doesn’t lay bare for a laugh or a self-inflicted jab.  It’s been comforting to see her approach to many of the issues that we share, but one thing stood out to me in a shining epiphany.  Something that, for the moment, is allowing me to feel a sense of “I’ve done all I can and it wasn’t good enough, but it’s okay anyway” and not feel the failure that has needled me these past few weeks. 

Fisher was talking about herself and her brother, Todd, and drawing on the same parallels that I see between Lisa and I, and this is what she’s finally figured out:  “It’s not what you’re given, it’s how you take it.” 

Smack.  There it is.  It’s like someone finally threw a can of V-8 at my head. 

This is what I’ve been trying to figure out all along, but for some reason it was like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree. 

Is it just in the genes?  My mom was a survivor, so was my grandmother, and with that comes a defense stronger than any army.  Lisa’s mother and grandmother are a rotten pair, but she broke the cycle, if only by throwing herself on the cross to stop harm to anyone else.  That’s her nature, as shouting out against injustice is mine. 

Neither of us are wrong or right, it’s just how we took what we were given. 

© Kymberlie Ingalls

Fool's Gold

It’s common knowledge that I wear the Fool’s clothing – I don’t know to say ‘proudly,’ but it is without shame.  It is also commonly known that, despite my brash demeanor, I’m really too sensitive for my own being. 

Deflection - verb - to bend or turn aside; turn from a true course or a straight line.  To swerve.

There was a conversation recently between myself and someone I’ve gotten to know moderately well in this past year.  When I doubted something Mark said to me, he replied with “But… you know me, Kymberlie.”

“I’ll tell you what I know:  Just when I think I know someone, I find out just how wrong I was.”

Almost two years ago, when I began working on my memoirs and digging into my past, my foray led me to one of my exes.  I had many relations before being married, but few relationships.  Keith was one of the ships.  We’d sort of stayed friends, then lost touch when I moved and married, but now we were becoming friends again.  This made me happy. 

Then, a year ago, he met a girl.  I met said Girl, and she was a lovely person.  Keith was happy, and again, this made me happy.  Then, suddenly, he disappeared.  I called, texted, emailed.  Even sent a Christmas card, and a gift too.  Apparently I was as clueless as an elf who thinks she can fly like a reindeer. 

Coincidentally, a month after having met Girl, I happened to post about women who don’t let their men socialize with other women. 

Do you see where this is going?  ‘Cause I sure as hell didn’t.

Finally, the other day, I texted him and said “So, it’s been a year since we hung out, do you want to get together and catch up on stuff?”  The reply I get back: “I’ll get back to u in the morning.”  To which I think, “wtf kind of answer is that?”  And of course, no reply came in the morning.  Two days later, I sent an email asking what was up, and why did this feel like a shunning of some sort? 

“I was pretty upset with your blog that you posted a month or so after the four of us had lunch. I can't remember the details, but it was pretty melodramatic and implied that my girlfriend wasn't happy with or wouldn't let me hang out with you. It all just made me realize how much unnecessary drama I had in my life. I frankly don't want to hang out with you because of all the drama and negativity. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but I feel that I'm backed into a corner at this point.”

We all have our hot buttons – something that really fuels our anger and makes us lash out.  Being misunderstood is mine.  I put a lot of effort, on paper, onscreen, and face to face in being as clear and as honest as I can.  I may not always speak out directly about something rumbling around in my brain, but if asked, a forthright answer will be given.  A pattern has emerged lately that I seem to be in a trough of some sort that everyone wants to shovel their own perceptions of things they think I’ve said like piles of manure on my head. 

In other words, they want to dump their crap on me.

For someone who is so anti-drama, Keith sure built some up in his head for a year.  But what hurts the most is that he never even asked.  He tried and convicted me without any consideration whatsoever.  It’s a searing hurt that leaves me feeling the failure.

My friends are the gold in my life.  Each one, no matter how big or small their role, is valuable in some way or another.  When one doesn’t show me the respect I try so hard to give, it’s a sucker-punch to the gut.  And I’ve been socked a good one an awful lot lately, it seems. 

Lisa still isn’t talking to me, because she thinks I called her an idiot.  I guess that’s worth tossing 32 years of friendship to the wayside – not worth a return call, note, any kind of response at all.  If her intent was to belittle me in supposed return, she gets the blue ribbon prize.  I’m tired of apologizing to her for things I didn’t say.  But it’s all perception, and you just can’t fuck with perception. 

‘Round and ‘round, the way things go.  It’s very hard to tell the real thing from it’s pyrite counterpart, but sooner or later the shine will show the truth.  In the meantime I’ll wake up tomorrow, place my jester’s hat upon my red hair, and play the fool for another day.

It won’t be until day’s end that I will wonder… who’s playing?