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.

Every once in a while I have these moments of calm. I am submerged in this deep blue tranquility I feel I can only achieve in sleep. For the last 6 years or so it hasn't come in slumber. It hasn't come often. It comes like the calm after a storm. This utter loss of control. This weight that cannot be lifted. It is most often a calm of resignation to my circumstances. But tonight, it is different.

I feel a smile playing at my lips. Even, here on this porch, where I have spent so many nights with dry salt streams on my cheeks, it feels like...well I can't say that I've ever felt this before. I can't describe it. There are simply no words, which scares me. The usual worries about the validity of this calm are still pushing their way through the Prozac. Screaming their high pitched warnings:
"Don't trust it."
"Don't hope"
"Don't be fooled"

But these days, these voices, these demons (if we're going to be Catholic about it) are held at bay. Because, the calm I feel today started to creep in when I let my gaze wander to those deep blue tranquil eyes. When, after putting up a fight, I stared my dreams square in the face and kissed them in the cold, on this porch, in this chair, where I've cried so many tears for so many who weren't worth them. In these blue eyes I feel safe, I feel calm, I feel a future again. These eyes are not glassy, glossed over like so many influenced by substance or that lacked it. These are not the eyes I've spent year writing about. These are not the eyes I thought I deserved to stare into, but with the new year, came this opportunity, this encapsulation of the dark corners of my heart. The secrets I started to keep even from myself, because they were too precious for even me to ruin.

This might not make sense. Or be the best thing I've written. My fingers are frozen. My lips are chapped. I cannot wrap my mind around all the things that make so much sense, and the things that are only making sense now that they've destroyed me.

I cannot wrap my mind around him. But I've accepted the fact that I must stop trying. I must stop trying and simply give in...

but we all knew I'd do that the first time he held my hand, didn't we?