Reaching for Eudaimonia

These last four years have been just awful for my personal life. I have felt loss after loss, picking myself up slowly just to be hit again. I've felt each sharp stab and ache from the tearing and healing of my heart. With every new betrayal or loss I've felt like I've been auctioning off my parts.  "You want my heart?"  Take it, it's a wreck anyway.  "Do I hear an offer for my lungs?" That's fine, you can have them. I already feel like I'm drowning by making you comfortable with your ideas about love.  "Any bidders for my arms and legs?"  Take them if you must. I've grown used to comforting myself in silence and remaining in one place.  *** The year after Howard died we saw who our true friends were. Some people felt very uncomfortable around us. We could feel it even though they never said a word. It's almost incredible how dull you feel after loss but how sometimes you have this hei...

It has been a while since I wanted to talk to you. I have been having a lot going on recently and have felt overwhelmed by all these changes. I suppose I've gotten used to changes again. But I admit that I have been one to hold on a little too tightly to things, especially when there isn't much to be done. To be honest I don't really know how I am feeling as of late. It comes in waves. I am happy then sad, then stressed, then elated, then somber, then exhausted. The cycle of this has been on repeat the last couple of weeks. I haven't been writing to you lately. This makes me sad. It isn't that there isn't anything I wish to say or anything. I've just been consumed. Consumed has always been an interesting word, especially as an excuse. But I suppose that is what this hesitant hello is... an excuse to tell you everything you've missed. I accomplished a goal, Howard. I've met a goal that I didn't know I could accomplish. But now I'm le...

Many people who I have shared this blog page with are aware that I am in a class for blogging. They usually ask me why I decided to take on such a personal topic for a class. My answer to this ranges from "Yeah, I guess it is kind of crazy" or "My advisors made me do it." The latter is obviously meant as a joke, but they really did have an influence in my decision.  In reality I didn't know at the beginning what I would learn from writing about all of this. I didn't know what it would feel like to share such personal details of my life with friends and strangers.  The overall feeling I have about posting is relief.  I went back to the start of this whole blog decision and I looked at some of my earliest posts. It is there that I see the hesitation in my writing, which I eventually ended up writing about (Thanks, Mom).  I think everyone could tell that I was very unsure at the beginning. I think they knew that I had become accustomed to keeping this p...

My father was the most rational person that I knew. He could help anyone pull themselves out of an emotional breakdown. He knew I was an over-thinker... a really destructive over-thinker. He would always pull me out when I would bury myself with the world.  He would ask me how I could take something so small and insignificant and somehow warp it into something that didn't resemble the original.  I didn't have an answer to this. I joked with him that my over-thinking could be helpful when planning a plot twist in one of my novels, but we both knew that it was a problem.   I wish he was here to give me advice. I am going through an emotional earthquake as of late. Yet, I know what he would tell me to do.  "Don't let anyone have that much control over your emotions, Kateleigh." I still hear his words in my head, although his face has started to fade. I haven't managed to figure out how to implement this life lesson. Sometimes I wonder if...

In the spring of 2015, Mom began to pack some of Howard's things away. She had kept all of his clothes and shoes in the same place for around a year and a half. "What if he needs them?" She would mumble this sometimes when I asked her if she needed help, even though we both knew he wasn't going to need them.  I remember the day she found a heavy grey metal box in the back of their closet.  Mom yelled my name, she sounded like she was panicked. I ran to her as fast as I could. It had reminded me of the way she screamed my name the day she found Howard in the woods.  When I found her she was sitting on the floor with a screw driver trying to open the box. It had a lock on it. She was trying different angles on it, sometimes hitting it hard on the hinges.  "What are you doing?" I asked her.  She stopped trying to pry it open and looked up at me with misty eyes.  "Have you seen this before?" She asked me.  I shook my h...

I have been reaching out to my old high school friends and some of my past relationships in hopes that they might shed some light on what I was like the first couple of years. Some bring up things that I didn’t even know happened. After the first week, one of my best friends since childhood took an entire week of school off because she didn’t want me to be alone. Our neighbors, who are more like family, told me that I couldn’t fall asleep without a lot of people around me.  Sleeping is probably the only thing I can recall.  I am still in the process of understanding who I was then because I genuinely believe it will heal some of the issues I deal with today.  I have become a worrier.  It is also sometimes quite difficult for me to open up to people I do not know. This used to be very different for me.  But the best one (in my opinion) is that I have anxiety about what I will do if something happens to the other people I care about and love de...

When I ask people what I was like 3 years ago when Howard’s death was still fresh, the most common description I am told is that I was ‘alive', but I was 'not living.’ I remember looming from place to place, having conversations that I don't remember, holding everything close to prevent more uncertainty.  I suppose I was trying to keep everything else in my life the same.  I didn't want anything else to change.  I was mad at change.  I know now that change is something that is inevitable, but I remember thinking that. I remember feeling like I was dropped into some parallel universe that fed on chaos and sorrow.  Was Howard’s death some form of punishment?  I was constantly asking myself rhetorical questions like “What did you do to make this happen?” or “Did you do everything that you possibly could have that day?” These were questions that ate me alive for years. When I dared myself to think of the day he died, I would ask myself impossi...

I took a class at UCO called "Psychology of Grief" during my junior year, Spring 2016. When I signed up for it I wasn't sure what to expect. I thought, 'maybe we will talk about how to grieve properly, maybe this could help me.' At that point in time I had become aware that it was my time to start looking inwardly on what I needed to do to confront all of these things that I still couldn't bear to think of. Mom was doing better. She had a new job and was involved with groups that helped her talk to other widows.  I, on the other hand, realized I was still using phrases like, 'My dad is gone' or 'He isn't here anymore' instead of calling it face value of what it was. He was dead. I remember in class when we talked about the euphemisms that are used to say the word 'dead' or 'death' or 'dying.' Here are a few just to jog some memories: Gone In heaven now Isn't here Pushing up daises At peace ...

There were a couple of moments before my dad died that he would talk about what he wanted to happen after he died. He told me he wanted to be cremated and that he was adamant about not being displayed in an open casket in front of friends and family. He would say he wanted people to remember him alive, not dead. Three weeks before he died, he started talking about his death again. I didn't particularly enjoy talking about what would happen after he died, but this time I humored his discussion. Howard said that after he was cremated he wanted some of us in the family to scatter his ashes across the world. He said he would rather be in many places than just in the ground in the middle of Oklahoma. I remember thinking how unique this concept was. It got me thinking about what I wanted to happen to me after I died and why I felt so odd talking about it. I joked with him that I promised I would scatter his ashes anywhere I went, but I was only going to as an excuse to see ...