What Goes Up...

The sky is blue. My feet are on the ground. For the first time in a long time, I am okay.

I haven’t been able to write. Things have been good. When things are good, I can’t write about them. When things are bad, all I can do is scribble out every thought and feeling until the ink in the pen runs out.

It’s much too hard to think during the good times. Even harder to write about them. The more you write, the more your good mood just feels silly and stupid. Like a delusional scenario of the life you wish you had, the one you made up to allow yourself to fall asleep.

I like to stay delusional for as long as possible.

If you’ve been reading my writings so far, you can imagine how rare it is for me to experience a long-winded bout of ignorant happiness. Despite how much of a realist I am, sometimes, it just feels so good to live within what is not really there.

When I put a pen to paper it forces me to think about the reality of what’s happening, the longevity, how it will eventually affect me. Then everything’s gone. It’s so much easier to be delusional.

I could never live here, but, as long as my brain lets me, I’m happy to be a guest.

But, in true Kendall fashion, I can’t help but be both terrified of when it’s going to end, and curious about my place in it all. I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I hate when people say, “drink water, work out, eat clean, prioritize sleep, and you’ll feel so much better,” because it gives the same energy as someone telling you to calm down and breathe while you’re having a panic attack.

The thing I hate most about it is that it’s true.

I’ve been taking care of myself - for the first time in a long time - and I feel better.

But why do I kind of despise it all?

When things are good, when I'm "good", I don't feel like myself. Or, I’ve become so comfortable within my sphere of self-destruction that I don’t recognize the person I am outside of it.

When I can be her, the put-together version of myself, it’s a high. To not be exhausted of myself feels like exhaling for the first time in years. But to inhale again is terrifying - what if I can't get the breath out, why is this time any different from the last?

Delusion is like a vacation home. It’s blissful for a week, but then you get restless for a more fast-paced kind of life. That’s why when we vacation for too long we say we “need a vacation from our vacation”.

Everything that goes up must come down.

Who wants to be thrown into the air and just keep going up, and up, and up? At some point all you can think about is how it would feel to have dirt in-between your toes again.

I always thought I was fucked in the head for being on-guard when happiness came into my life, expecting - no, knowing - that it’s only a matter of time before the crash. But I’m not special, it’s human to be dynamic - to crave that.

Is that why the best paintings depict loneliness, why the best songs are about heartbreak, why the best books make you cry for days after you’ve finished reading them? Or do broken things run through us more powerfully than the whole? Living there, in the pain, means something. It’s purposeful, and it’s heavy.

No one wants to watch a movie about a happy family where everything ends up working out for them and there’s no controversy whatsoever. Even in today’s times, things suck but what else would we bitch about at Thanksgiving dinner?

If everything was great all the time there would be no reason for words to be exchanged. Conversation would read like a LinkedIn comment section. How dull - to feel so whole that you feel nothing at all.

There’s a church steeple that stands on the other side of the highway where I take an exit on my way home from work. Two summers ago I had a different job, one I hated, but I took the same exit on the way home. The steeple stood there, and the metal letters on its side formed diagonally to spell a word: “HOPE”. I’m not religious, I don’t even think reading it meant anything to me - but it was there, and I was there, so I noticed it.

This summer, I have a job that I love. The first few trips home I didn’t bother to read the steeple, I had seen it so many times. A week ago I turned my head to read it, and the metal letters were no longer there. All that's left is a dark shadow, the outline of dirt still spelling out “HOPE”. I think I like it better that way.

How much more interesting is it to observe broken things? It felt more human, less superficial, more “hopeful”. It’s no longer a projection of hope, it’s proof.

Shit, I’m proof. We all are - still here, nevertheless.

The dark parts, the broken parts, they make you think - make you create art - make you feel something, become someone.

This sounds super toxic and unhealthy so let me explain:

I know it should all exist together - the bad, the good, the broken, the whole. There's a space in between.

I know it, but I don't know how to reach it.

I don't dream of being "happy", I dream of being able to live in the space between. To no longer be all-or-nothing, but to be everything - but we'll unpack that on a different week.

So, for now, the victory is that I'm not scared of crashing anymore. I look forward to it. There are so many versions of myself that I haven't met yet, that I haven't grieved yet. But each version will leave their dust outline on me, and I'll look in the mirror and think, "I like it better that way".