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.

Little Moments That Are Bigger In Retrospect

Sometimes
you fee like
you've lost yourself
or, everyone else has lost you
and then you run into
your ex-boyfriend
and he notices your pony tail
and doesn't have to be told 
how excited you are to have it,
he congratulates you. 
You remember
that at least you were loved once
and some people remember
who
and what
you are. 

Mermaids/Faking it/Exaggeration

Blogging is like swimming lessons...follow me, I swear it'll make sense. 

When I was seven or eight years old the biggest fear in my life, aside from natural disasters, Christ, and my next door neighbor, were the weekly swim lessons my mom mandated me with. Every week I'd pretend to fall asleep in the passenger seat while Mom drove to the east side of town singing along to Amy Grant completely unconvinced of my unconsciousness. It never worked. She never looked at my peaceful darting eyeballs under their lids and drove past the pool. We'd walk through the back gate, past the poorly painted mural of The Little Mermaid (which makes my current fear of mermaids so much more involved) and toward the pool where some girl, probably not as old as I am now waited in a blue one piece swim suit with a highlighter yellow whistle around her neck. The chlorine fumes made my eyes burn, but I was usually crying about something else long before I was waist deep in water. 

"Kick, kick, kick, breathe..." or something like that. That's how you learn to swim. That was the whole lesson. For weeks that felt like months. For an hour that felt like a lifetime. I cried, panicked, faked sleep, and faked illness to get out of it. Why? Because I didn't like to do things alone. I didn't like not knowing anyone. I didn't like putting my trust in a teenager with a whistle and sharp fingernails. I didn't like being told to jump off that fucking diving bored that cannot have been as high as it seems in my memory, looming over what was most likely eight feet of water. I don't like doing a lot of things, but the fact remains, I have to and I learned how to swim. 

So, I start this today because it's Wednesday and it seems as good of a time as any. I have reservations and insecurities and a mess of other emotions that will soon become all too apparent as I fill the page (does that make sense when we're talking about the internet?) with words. I have been reluctant to create a space for all of the nonsense in my head to be shared, beyond my control, but it's now or...well... it's happening isn't it? 

Lately, I have been floating quite well on my own, but it should go without saying that I wouldn't have learned without being thrown into it all by other people, situations, etc. I will hopefully be as consistent sharing as I am at rationalizing why I should keep it all to myself.

So this is for anyone past or present who has reminded me to kick, kick, kick, breathe...