Because...

The thing they don't tell you about death is that when it's not happening to you it's not your whole life that flashes before your eyes; it's your whole life, plus your whole future without that person that flashes before you in a moment of crippling worry and regret. It's a terrifying realization of what everyone's life looks like the day after.

It's the piece of birthday cake that will be left over every year. It's the inside jokes your boyfriend didn't get to hear. It's the things your grandma can't reach in the cabinets, and your mother's bated breath when she checks the mail every day. It's the cereal you never want to eat again. It's the pictures we didn't know would be the last. It's the words you can't remember if you said, or if you said them how you meant to. It's the weddings, and the graduations, and the visits home that were too late. It's all the things you never thought you should remember flooding your brain in the last torturous moments before sleep every night. It's the distance. It's the immeasurable distance you can never bridge. It's that there can never be a real good-bye, and you didn't want to say it anyway.

I said a lot of words last week. I said a lot of things that might have helped, that made people stop crying. I said things that I knew I was supposed to say. I forced out some optimism and spirituality buried deep down somewhere, but the truth is I said a lot of things I can't stand by. I feel like a big fake, a liar. Because for all the things I said convincingly I'm not convinced.

I'm heartbroken, and angry, and scared.

I feel like there's a torn seam in whatever fabric that I consist of. I feel a surge of pressure to hold everyone in the arc of my small hands; hold them all close before the flood of mortality washes us all away. I feel like I need to say, do, be more. I feel like I can never be enough. I can't keep them all safe.

Every night I go to sleep replaying the way my mother sounded, and I wake up wondering when the next call will be.

I know it'll all get easier, or vaguer, or buried under the inconsequential things we all revert back to. But the reality is this is not the first, or the last time. This will happen again and again until mercifully I might go before I have to endure another one of these things. That's the hardest thing I guess, knowing that no matter how much I convince myself there's peace, and "it was meant to be" and all the bullshit we hear in the movies, it'll come again. Another phone call, another last minute trip, another week of staring off into darkness hoping ghosts are real and being haunted by their absence.


http://obits.dignitymemorial.com/dignity-memorial/obituary.aspx?n=Cletus-Harris&lc=2241&pid=171465535&mid=6020307

Spiders and Cervical Cancer: Fears of the past hour

The night before last a spider apparently repelled from the ceiling, landed on my face, and then bit me on and around my eyes. So, in addition to looking like I had an allergic reaction to Botox I am terrified that there is perhaps a spider living in my eye, or that laid eggs in my eye.

I keep thinking of that Un Chien Anadalou movie where there are bugs coming out of that guy's hand. I think they're ants. Look it up.

So, I'm probably fine, but every article I looked up told me to call the Poison Control Center. I probably won't because I just want to take a nap after work.

Speaking of poison, apparently that Gardasil vaccine that's supposed to make you not get HPV and/or cancer is killing people and/or paralyzing them, which is super great to know because my sister was going to get her second shot soon.
So basically, I saved her life.

More unsettling is that I already had all of those shots and I'm still alive, but now all unexplained weirdness I feel will be attributed to Gardasil. Or I'll blame it on that time I stole something from "some unnamed store" just for fun. I've been waiting on the universe to get me back for that one.  I don't know what to believe ever on the internet because everyone is so dramatic all the time. So maybe I saved her life. Or maybe it's fine and I'm just perpetuating propaganda. I don't know.
Make your own decisions.

Have a good day,
Love,
 the sleepiest, swollenest girl in the world.

I put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it

Ok y'all!(because I live in Tennessee now)

BLOG MAKEOVER!

We've got jellyfish instead of birds, and hopefully no more sad shit. Maybe a little bit of sad shit now and then just to remind you you're still reading Kailee James' blog, but really, let's move on shall we?

Hopefully with this makeover will come some better words, right? Let's be honest, the last 2 years of sad sack prose have been fun (no, it hasn't) but it felt very right, very writerly. I just wanted to be like my cool college professor. He was so damaged, and drank bourbon, and was fabulous. His voice shook when he read his own work aloud and I never could figure out if it was nerves or like, this intense raw emotion just pouring out of him. I'm going to be dramatic and believe in the latter. I like to remember him that way.

Alas, all my abundance of emotion has been quelled by the pills, which is TOTALLY fine guys, I promise. No one can exist as the big weepy blob of existential madness and longing that I was. And now my hair is pink and I am living happily ever day by day working at my boring, but tolerable job, and being in love, and having really good relationships with my friends and family.
Gross, right? I'm so SANE currently.

So that's really it. I am lacking in a story today. There's probably one frozen inside me somewhere, but I have yet to warm up from this 20 degree day.

Just wanted to say hello.
Let's be honest I just wanted anyone who reads this to remember I exist.

And that I still have things to say.