From Fall to Fall

Untitled Part 14

Today is May 28, and the year is 2022. I can't remember when I started writing this. It was back when I had a Macbook, I can remember that at least. After the alcohol rotted away the best parts of myself. This is when I come up for air. Out of the storm. Out of the pain. The panic. Out of the drug filled stupor. I graduated college. I survived myself so much longer than I ever thought I could. And now I'm stuck with dilemma.

Where do I go from here?

I don't know who I am anymore. I don't know what I want. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I've always had a plan. I've always been two steps ahead. Smart. Had potential. I am so terrified that I wasted that. That the weed and pills and liquor rotted away the parts of my brain that made me someone.

I thought I wouldn't survive my father, then I thought I wouldn't survive Mason, then the loss of the only true friends I ever had in this world, then Dominic, and Kyle, and then the most raw Ryan. What I've learned is that I can survive – if I want too. And I'm stuck. Teetering on the precipice between the light and the dark. I can see my life stretched out in front of me. Filled with ups and downs, joy and sadness, all the good things and the bad things that make life worth living.

I just haven't decided if the joy is worth the pain. I know people have had a bigger share of pain in their lives. And I know I am privileged just to live in the United States, but I am also sad. And I have been sad for so fucking long. Can that really be all there is?

I have always thought myself to be so privileged in that I have never had to lose anyone in my life – truly. No one has ever died. People have left but I was always left with the comfort that they stilled walked the same ground that I did. They were still alive. It's only now that I'm realizing in the process of living my life the only person I ever truly lost was myself.

I lost me. I'm sure you can tell my reading this. How as the years passed by the pages shortened as the drugs and alcohol took more pieces of me by the day. 

I lost the Kayla who unabashedly loved writing books, the girl who could sit in her room for hours creating characters and stories out of imagination and thin air. The girl who felt rewarded by helping others through the turmoil of their emotions. The girl who could take time to be there for her friends. The young girl who had a lust for this life and everything in it. Who felt a connection to the Earth. Who would lay in her backyard writing poems about the tranquility of the valley she was blessed to grown up in. Splashing in the mighty rivers whose waters represent the blood of the planet that gives us life. The girl who saw the beauty and hope in every human being.

I lost her.

I lost myself surviving.

Will I find myself by living?