Sometimes the Extensive Array of Thoughts in My Brain is Too Draining Even for Me
While I am loving this journey of finding myself and my truths, this constant work within my brain may be causing a bit too much introspection into myself and the world around me. I am you. Right?
P is for Patterns
Once upon a time, I told a best friend of mine that I was really struggling with communication. I was 19, she was 20. We were separated, both in college and I was doing a bad job keeping in contact with her because of the physical distance. During a discussion, that she had begun by sharing her feelings that she is the one putting in more effort to our relationship, I shared my feelings that “I am struggling because I don’t see you everyday so my brain doesn’t always keep track”. That best friend perceived my words as: Kelsey does not care enough about me to think about me. What I said was I AM STRUGGLING.
When I was younger, I held another dear friend’s hand in the ER as her mother and her were told that her father’s minor accident was only minor for the vehicle that he was driving. He, in fact, had died suddenly, pretty major. The best guess was that it was a heart attack. I spent the following 12ish hours…frozen and terrified. I slept in the dog bed on my parents floor because I was so afraid something would happen to them. I needed to check that they were breathing. So I laid there all night, confirming every respiration. The following day I did not want to get off of my parent’s floor. I didn’t go to school. I did not eat. My mind was in a state of constant disaster preparation that I had never experienced. I was overwhelmed and taken over by fear. All of these feelings I am only able to now verbalize, at the time it was just the loudest screaming I could imagine in my head and no volume control. My best friend at that time came to my parents room to bring me over to sit with our friend who had lost their father. I told her “I don’t think I can, I am too scared to leave my parents, I worry if I do they will die”. This best friend perceived that as: Kelsey is selfish and wants to lie around, she will not support her friend. What I said was: I AM TERRIFIED.
Even younger and I was watching a documentary about OCD, learning what that stood for, obsessive compulsive disorder. I was enthralled as I watched this special because people were speaking to things that, did not define me, but that I could understand. I hadn’t heard other people speak my language like that. When my mother walked in I said to her “Mom, do you know what OCD is? It’s like how I have to keep myself even!”. My mother perceived this as: Kelsey thinks she is mentally ill for attention because she just learned this on the TV. What I had said was: I AM DIFFERENT
.Way, way later in life, I began allowing my soul to speak over my human. If that sentence doesn’t make sense to you, add whimsy until it does. I allowed my truth to soar; it was messy, but it was the first time I felt free. I felt like the artist I am. I felt like myself. In doing this I released the reigns on my “human” and had some…reactions. I was very offended by a judgement from someone I considered a friend and I lashed out publicly, it wasn’t the classiest I admit. I was human. I apologized. I was using sarcasm inappropriately and I see that in retrospect. I digress. I realized that I think this reaction might have been due to something deeper within me, a serious fucking problem with questioning self. A clinical disorder of struggling to be myself and feeling extremely targeted when who I am is…twisted into something it is not. Because I am human too. I also seriously struggle to communicate this. I reached out to my best friend at this time and said “I think I need to step back and figure somethings out because I am realizing that something is very different in me and I want to embrace it, instead of run from it”. My best friend perceived this as: Kelsey is having a breakdown, her mental health is fucked, she is a narcissistic bitch, I cannot be seen with this train wreck; I am out. What I had said was: I NEED SUPPORT AND PATIENCE.
Not one of the best friends mentioned above and I are still in contact. Some of us grew apart slowly, some ended abruptly. Obviously, my mother is my mother. Imperfect, yes, but she did her best, if I inspire Phoebe to create art like this with the mistakes I make then I will be very proud of her. I am not perfect. I am trying so hard though. And I am finally accepting the parts of me that I have taught myself to question. My differences. My struggles. My worth. I am…finally learning to communicate what it is that I can now see I have been trying to articulate my whole life; and I am taking the time to translate myself until others understand.
I am processing these moments mentioned above in a new way. They were traumatic because they caused me to question the one piece of me that I know is the truest and strongest, that is my self. My humanity and need to be human. I questioned the way I was feeling, in addition to my very right to feel. Until this perception shift within me I could not say the statement with confidence: I am deeply sensitive.
I am wildly and remarkably sensitive. With it comes amazing gifts: It allows me to be a healer by working with Reiki, it gives me an intuition that keeps me safe and aligned, it connects me to the world and beings around me in deeply profound ways. Ways that allow me to feel their pain if I am not careful enough. I cannot question this anymore. It is who I am. My niece would tell me “this is my magic” and she is so right.
No one really made me question myself at the end of the day, I did the questioning. I think the perceptions of others instead were inspiration for interjections of doubt within my psyche. The interjections kept me from being able to fully embracing myself, my gifts, my magic. In turn, wasn’t embracing my human.
Another thing I wasn’t doing was zooming out, and allowing myself to grow my perspective beyond, well, my perspective. The underlying dysfunctional patterned behavior that I needed to focus on was not that I was being misunderstood; the problem was that I did not see myself as worthy of being explained or fought for. I am ashamed to admit the limit number of times I have stood up and truly fought for myself in an honest and healthy way. Instead of in one of those instances just saying, “Hold on please” or “I need help”, I have no explanation other than something within me did not know how to unblend my needs from the needs of others.
I am so afraid of offending or being misperceived that I have mastered the art of emotional ignorance. Until I began finding meaning in my life and looking back through this scope of introspection I was unable to see that ignoring of emotion my entire life made me a stranger to them. So now I am a 29 year old mother in therapy, just now learning to identify the parts of her that are emotion and the parts that are self. This change in perspective has allowed me to see a following pattern: at some point or another I started put myself below others in all of my interpersonal relationships. This is unsustainable, especially in friendship—The book “The Courage to be Disliked” refers to a key to a happier life being changing your view of relationships from vertical, to horizontal, as I am typing this that is clicking for me. I highly recommend this book—Eventually the emotions and fears I ignore release and it creates a fracture within my relationship. Until here we are, they are a distant memory. I am grateful for the memories, the lessons the laughs. Perhaps this sounds harsh, but it feels like “dead to me” however I don’t mean it cruely; it’s just, the only way it can make sense to me to be in a world without them must mean they have died.
I think the biggest…conclusion that all of this introspection into these events is that: A part of me knows what I am saying, what I need, what I mean. If I give myself the time I deserve then I can understand what it is that part is saying. I am, however, neurodivergent. I need time and patience. A lot of time and patience on occasion. I accept that not everyone will be able to handle this element of my personality. I do have an incredible support system, my green zone, who are able to provide me the space I need. For them I feel an unconditional and profound love so incredibly deep and intense that it scares even me. Remarkably sensitive and magic remember?
I have also concluded that if I am feeling misunderstood by someone who puts themself in the “Best Friend” category of my life as I define it, and they do not allow me the grace of time to explain myself: I have not been misunderstood; I have been judged. Which…was a really huge fucking realization for me, to be able to admit to having been judged. Because I think I am even too insecure to say that on a level…Maybe I am truly rambling on and on about nonsense and I’m not really hitting the point…
All of this to say: I ACCEPT ME AS I AM IN ALL FORMS
And I am also grateful for whatever piece of my brain allows me to see all parts of my life with enough whimsy that I can recognize these patterns and grow.
Less Extra, More…Whimsy
My favorite thing about myself is my whimsy. My magic. It is a privilege to be able to sit on my little farm and type on this computer pretending to be the rural equivalent to Carrie Bradshaw. In this world, my slow and intentional life is a luxury. The gift of time to heal and create art in the capitalistic hell hole we live in is something I feel a constant gratitude for. I honor it for all of my friends busting their asses to make in through in this world. All I wish if for this level of peace for all of humanity.
I am so fucking lucky for my partner, my child, my home, my soul family. And with my superpowers of alchemy through whimsy I get to live every life I have ever imagined. The secret is accepting the ordinary as extraordinary.
I have begun taking up photography these last few months. I has been one of the most cathartic experiences of my life, I have taken breathtaking photos that, I feel, deserve to be hung in the Louvre, I don’t care if the Louvre doesn’t display photography, this is whimsy magic remember! I have become a professional photographer and celebrated artist. I take photos with my camera of what other people see as the weeds growing in my yard; to me, though, I am exploring the jungles in Peru and photographing massive arachnids, not a little orb weaver in some hay.
That little orb weaver though, I spent five minutes with him today. Just being with him. He doesn’t compare himself to the guy on the web next to him, I don’t think he considers the other weavers. He definitely doesn’t dream of his web being in some other place, catching better bugs, or getting more attention.
Chappell Roan existing in the same universe as me fulfills my dream to be a singer. I will still sing, but I will never play Lollapalooza. I have so much admiration and respect for Kayleigh Amstuz. This project of Chappell Roan that she has created and shared with all of us allows us the ability to be Chappell, to channel our Chappell. I think it is one of the most selfless acts an artist can do, to create an entire identity and share that with the world. That’s why we are drawn to so many characters in these great works. Chappell Roan is a real life character living all of our empowered, strong, LOUD, extravagant self. What I respect about Kayleigh is her self awareness to put this separation between her and this art. Though much of the world is not respecting that.
I always struggled with how separate art from the artist. I think I am finally getting it. It’s like: My child is not me. She is a piece of me, but she is not me. I created her. Some may try to argue this, but all artists are the parents. They are the creators of their art. They are constantly loving, hating, soothing, nourishing their art. The thing that separates the good artists from the great artists is the courage to remove themselves from their art and allow it to speak for itself. To be an artist is to be a creator, a parent; and to allow your art to exist beyond you.
A mistake I think a lot of us artists make is allowing ourselves to merge with our art, or moreover, takeover who we are. That’s how we loose what makes us…special. That’s how we end up with “artists” who are idolized simply for their creations and yet people turn a completely blind eye to the human actions they are doing beyond the art.
It is like how all squares are rectangles, but a rectangle is not a square.
An artist cannot be separated from the art, but the art can be separated from the artist. I can view art and admire it, while also being critical of its creator.
We can love Chappell Roan and using whimsy she is our best friend! Kayleigh Rose, though, is a human living their entire own life.
**I am not being critical of Kayleigh, I am on a level in love with her. Thank god my husband has an understanding of the foggy mess that is my sexuality, but in some way, on some plane, Kayleigh Rose is a poetic soulmate of mine and existing in the same universe as her is an honor.
Something people don’t take serious about me is just how easy going I actually am. Which in turn also means how serious I am when I say what I say. While opinionated to myself and my safe people, yes, I am a very moderately existing human a majority of the time. I have human reactions and emotions, obviously, but when it’s not that deep, I am chilling. Coke or Pepsi? Ranch or Bleu Cheese? Mexican or Thai? No preference from me, just so happy to be included. I would eat literally shit to just share space with my people. Even if they are complete strangers. It’s an energy thing.
You need to postpone or cancel plans? Never once fired me up.
In 2020 I bought my first car. I am so fucking fortunate that my parents were able and willing to provide a car for me up until that point. It is something I hate to say out loud because I feel like it makes me seem like a privileged brat who was handed everything. And that’s my own problem and I need to get over it. My parents provided my car for me while I went to school, I am incredibly grateful for that support I received from them.
So anyway, in 2020, when I bought my first car, it felt like a really huge deal in my experience of life. I was really proud that I had put myself through nursing school, finally. I had a great job lined up. I was moving in with the man I loved, in a new state. I am just trying to emphasize that I was on cloud 9 when I bought this car. The morning after the biggest purchase of my life, my dear friend, Brigid, came running up to me apologizing profusely because she had backed into said new (to me) car. It was a silly, reckless mistake. I say that not to shame Brigid, but to say it was truly a mistake kind of a moment. My reaction to this incident was laughter. Who cares? It was a tiny dent in the side of my car. It was nothing, she is my friend. Forgive and forget and move on
!A couple of months later I had moved to that new state, New Hampshire. I was settling into that job, as an LPN in a nursing home/rehabilitation facility. And I was driving around in my shiny grey Sonata Hybrid loving life, feeling great, and being eco friendly. I took a quick spin to the dispensary in Maine to pick up some edibles for my upcoming weekend away with friends. I had also lost a patient the day prior. Not a particularly important anecdote other than I am realizing how much of an impact my patients made on me, especially those I lost. And I was carrying that grief during this time and it feels like that should be mentioned. So I am driving out of the dispensary parking lot and out of my left side peripherals I noticed a car moving. Mind you I was going maybe 3 mph. I see the movement. I stop moving, I honk my horn repeatedly and this girl backs right into my drivers side door. I don’t know how to make it any clearer that this was the worlds slowest collision. It was complete and blatant ignorance and her fault. She was probably texting. How could this have possibly even happened? How distracted do you have to be!? I was fuming, I was going to unleash the rage and put this little girl in her place!
Then I opened my car door and assessed the situation before saying anything. There was no damage. I checked that she was okay. She was. So I laughed and told her I hoped she already grabbed her bud so she can chill after this cause I know I was. The girl apologized profusely, started crying and telling me about her mother who was sick, she offered to take pictures, pay for damage. She did all the right stuff. No one was hurt. What good would getting mad do? Why would I report a non-issue accident when I could move on? I have an automotive machine that allows me to move at superhuman speeds and transport myself in ways my ancestors could never imagine. So it has a dent?
Please don’t read this as braggadocios.
I am just chill.
I don’t believe in being mean. So much so that I often have to be told when someone has said something mean to me because I truly won’t get it. Insults roll off me—when I am aligned and most, ya know, stable. I am human. I remember having an argument with a friend in high school and her starting to use harsh words in replace of…constructive ones and I pulled her aside and reminded her, were friends. We’re the same team. I upset you, you upset me. It is not that deep, let’s figure it out.
I haven’t been aligned like that for a lot of my life. It is like the tides, it comes in and out. I have been a very mean, I have been a bad friend. I am human. When I am human I try really hard to remember that within me is that person who’s true center and happiness is kindness. Who is okay with driving around in an absolute trash car if it means I get to drive around.
Something about honoring that truth has allowed me the ability to control my tides, or at the very least plan for them.
I am whimsy and magic and I love it.
People may perceive it as ignorance, privilege, rose colored glasses, entitlement, self absorption, or maybe I just worry way too fucking much that they will.
Either way, I am whimsy and magic.
How I am honoring my Whimsy Magic:
I am going to make it my life’s project to honor and create art inspired by my greatest muse: Mother Earth. Specifically honing in on the land I am fortunate enough to be able to call my home. I am finding stunning beauty in the ordinary-ness of everything from the weeds that overgrow in my yard, to the quirky differences of my neighbors. I am creating a safe and open home for beings and energies of all different shapes, sizes, dialects, frequencies that are in search of love and acceptance. I want to make my home a retreat for the people in my life who need to escape the intensity of the world in a place that allows them to feel the intensity of themself for a change.
I am intuitive parenting. I am going by the seat (seed?) of my pants and just doing. I am a mother, a damn good one who is making every choice on my intuition and connection to all the mothers that came before me. And the explicit advice of my pediatrician I have on speed dial. I am parenting myself with this. I am reminding myself of the building blocks of being a person. Right now we are at the very beginning stages and patience is key. What a beautiful lesson that is to be able to learn with my baby.
I am sharing myself authentically. I am being brave and being here. I am just saying what feels like needs to be said. I am not doing it for any reason other that when I sit here and put my fingers to this keyboard and write these words I feel a wound somewhere in me healing. It may be a tiny bit each time, but I will just keep doing this forever if that’s what it takes to put myself together.
I am speaking in my magic. I create dreams with my words and others may not understand but I am through editing myself. I know that I am worthy of expression as well as understanding
Wildflowers are the magic .
The fun thing about this magic is that it can spread. It isn’t why I am here writing these words necessarily, but it is a fun bonus. I can inspire, and not to sound full of myself, but I am starting to think maybe in a way I am. And, if it’s only one singular person I am inspiring to simply take a deep breath because they deserve it: that is enough.
And look at that I just inspired myself to do so.
I am enough already.
The Duality of Life—The Pain in A Distant World
I have…struggled how to share this, if to share it. I am going to because it was heavy for me and important and sparked a lot of philosophical thought within me about humanity and who we will be moving forward.
I live in a small town in Ohio. A town which has one big event every year: The annual D-Day reenactment. A three day event where people from all over the country to gather to storm the beaches of Lake Erie, like their fathers and father’s fathers did not so long ago across the Atlantic. It is a very powerful and important piece of a lot of people’s identity as people in this world and especially as Americans. Like, WWII is a big deal. I feel like a lot of our hero complex comes from this belief that stopping Hitler corrected a metric shit ton of previous wrongs.It didn’t, however, I get that sentiment from that specific narrative.
I consider myself a historian of sorts, whimsy magic being used here. I find the past fascinating and would love to find ways to understand it deeper and deeper. I think it could be helpful to creating a better future. I worry, perhaps, we are spending to much time focused on it, however.
Considering the current genocide taking place in the world— sorry to be frank but since it is just a fact of life now, I am trying to discuss it as such— it was incredibly alarming when I was walking on the beach with my child one morning and suddenly heard rapid gunfire followed by intense explosions. I had forgotten the reenactment started that day, for a fraction of a second before I remembered I felt an intense fear for our lives. When I realized, no, fake shootings and bombings it was hard not to see a parallel where here I am on the shore of Lake Erie experiencing a fun reenactment of violence, while on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea a mother is holding her child while the explosions of real terror are happening all around her and death seems imminent.
After that, I asked myself a question that I am still pondering:
Will we continue to reenact violent atrocities for the sake of continued justification of our actions?
Someday will there be a “Israel-Palestine War” reenactment where we mock up this disgusting display human behavior? How will we justify it? Or with this change in warfare also lead to a change in the way we teach and embrace this history?
I know…weird, heavy turn from the whimsy, alas, humor me, I am a very complex, weird, and heavy person. These thoughts have been in my brain a lot the days following the reenactment weekend, therefore they are a part of my life right now. I am here to share my life. This evening during a conversation my husband uttered the brilliant phrase:
The logging of human history is primitive.
It is my humanity that needs to share the ways these events of the world today are driving me to change myself to be better in all the ways I have been privileged enough to ignore. Existing through this “war” right now— which also includes a genocide much like WWII did making them incredibly comparable as far as to bringing me to an answer my life long question of “What would I do if I were in Nazi Germany in the 40s and a Jewish person came to me for refuge?”—has irreversibly changed who I am. Because this very existence and life that I have to live is such a remarkable gift in this world filled with unnecessary, unexplainable, nondiscriminatory pain and suffering; I see that now. I am ashamed it took this…level to open my eyes to my own truths but it did.
Seeing what I am seeing right now I cannot imagine in a hundred years, donning a uniform of any side of any of this conflict and acting out the carnage we are creating. I am also not able to see a possible way to water down or sugar coat the deeply evil actions that have been committed like so much of history was taught to me. In my Upstate NY school they taught us that slavery was horrible. I did not know how despicably, vile and inhumane it truly was. I was not taught the depths of depravity that man inflicted upon man with no logical justification. Yet it was so completely normal that it is something still existing in this world so evidently that I think if you waved a wand and said: “Make all the slaves of the world disappear” the capitalistic society we have built based on mass consumerism and at the expense of the lives of human beings, would without a doubt, crumble to the ground.
But, there has to be a reason for it. I have to find the hope. I have to keep going. So I will just keep being curious.
I think there is hope in honoring the pain of history, honoring the pain of today. I understand why hundreds of people want to come together and build this environment that allows them to accept the past. I think it has worked for our history; I am curious in what ways humans will evolve in observation of our past. In 100 years will dressing the part and acting out the violence still be a dignified way to honor the lives of those we have lost. Or will we ever be able to look at a painful and ugly history without having to recreate that pain?
Does a war with no mercy need to be reenacted? What questions are left unanswered? At that, at what point do we retire this aging idea of learning through re-creation. Can the cyclical pattern be broken or are we doomed to repeat our past failures?
Perhaps, I am thinking far too deeply for what you came here for, if that is the case I am sorry. I just…There are uncomfortable thoughts and comfortable thoughts in my head. I have always tried to edit out the uncomfortable because so many people are scared by the awkwardness and discomfy feeling, I think it is a lot more fun to lean into it. It doesn’t feel so scary when you enter with curiosity instead of fear.
I am no genius historian, I am not even educated by society’s standards. I am just a human, with a consciousness, observing a species and asking questions. I am a young philosopher in the beginning stages my lifelong studying of my absolute favorite topic: myself. My art, in all forms including this blog, are pieces of my dissertation of my existence, my soul, my experiences. I perceive every…event within this world as an experiment for my humanness. How does it make me feel and what is that feeling? I think this is what makes me an artist.
I am where the whimsy meets the wretched.
That is the duality of life. I can be living my dreams and creating magic; and also, in the same world a human I don’t know is experiencing a pain I cannot imagine. And I can love that person so much I can feel a fraction of that pain. The part in the piece of our humanity that we all share, that connects us.
So to survive I will honor that pain by allowing it space here. By allowing the voice of that pain to know: I hear you, I am so sorry, I live for you.
I love you.
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GoFundMe for Mohammed's Family
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