Tonight I’m letting myself feel. For the first time in a while I’m trying looking at my life; staring into the sun, looking down the barrel, and letting myself hurt. Not because anything bad has happened suddenly, but because I’m being wedged, and have been so for a long time. What I wanted my life to be is becoming more and more impossible, and things I never wanted are overwhelmingly persistent to the point of being unavoidable. As I split I’m being pushed towards the unwanted future I saw from far away and promised myself I’d never have to accept.
Life has become a melting, dissolving, and evaporating of my dream that I would be someone special. I think what it takes to be “someone special” varies from person to person, but what is universal is our tendency to only allow ourselves to feel special through something that brings us happiness.
So when I think about what makes me happy I come up with things like helping my Grandma bring her groceries in so she doesn’t have to lift heavy bags, or doing the dishes in the sink even though it’s the last thing I want to do, knowing someone will see a clean kitchen and think “Thank God.” I just want to make moments for the people I love where life does the opposite of disappointing.
What is happening is my dreams are dying, or at least the energy I have to believe them is being removed with nothing to replace what was once there. And I feel more and more shocked at how wrong I was or how grossly cruel it was every time the world said to dream big.
I told my brother in the car tonight, “It seems like I should be having these thoughts when I turned 50.” Like my mid-life crisis came early, and I wish I had 26 more years to whole-heartedly or foolishly believe my future was some grand mystery. But I don’t feel that awe anymore about what comes next. Because too many days have been the same, so I already know.
What I’m not ready to do is give up, and that sounds like a good thing because it keeps me going, but that stubbornness is what is defeating me at the same time. Because I don’t believe I’m holding out for a better future, but holding out and clinging to a lie, and even though I believe it is a lie I’m not ready to let go of it yet.
And I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I wait until I feel so negatively until I have to write, and I’m sorry this is the kind of writing I’m putting out for people to read, but it’s what I have right now.
I escaped to the movies tonight because movies are 2 hours where a screen does it’s best to take you away to a better place. I watched “X-men: Days of Future Past,” and one moment in the movie held me in my chair in a single thought as the movie left me and moved forward. Future Magneto pleads with his former self, “Hope. Please Charles, we need you to hope again.”
And it felt like it was a message for me. A plea that I needed to hope again. And I’m not going to end this nicely because I owe myself better than that, because I don’t know what to hope for. That is the ending that you get. 
reallifestatusupdate 
I don’t really know what to say to you except that you are not in unchartered waters here. For you this is new, but in the scheme of life, it is not. When I had my first baby… your brother, it was a frightening experience. I knew millions had already gone through the same experience but it did little to calm my anxiety or cut down on the insessant question that I had towards the experience I was about to have. No one could have that baby but me and no one could share the burden of my pain. When I was going into labor , for the last time, with you and Jared, I was hooked up to a fetal heart monitor with to booming heartbeats blaring loudly through the monitor’s speakers. There was another young mother hooked up to a monitor next to me. She was seven months pregnant and her monitor was silent. Her baby had died and she was going to have to deliver it, knowing it would be stillborn. I could hear her saying, ” I don’t know if I can do this.” I knew she would know that she could by the end of that day. The nurses turned down the speakers on my monitors where not one, but two babies were rearing to go and make their entrances into the world. I couldn’t help wondering what must be going through her head and heart as she listened to my twin’s strong ,healthy heart beats. I’m sure that someday in her future, she did have a healthy baby but the thought of that was no consolation that day. In the moment of pain and disappoint, the hope of a brighter future hardly has any power to shake the ache and exhaustion you feel when you don’t even want try anymore. The reality is, hope will come again and the cruelty of the mirages you chased, will fade and there will be other “births” that will make you believe again. Keep walking. You Will get to the other side and you Will find that place you never even considered to be a place of beauty and joy for you!
I wish there was something encouraging I could say that wouldn’t sound terribly cliched or pathetic, but I don’t really know if I could say anything that would help the situation at all. I’d like to think that I could help in some way, but that’s most likely just wishful thinking. I hate that you’re feeling like your dreams are dead because if it was up to me I’d give all my friends whatever they wanted. Sadly it’s not up to me, and even though I would gladly give you, Jared, Collin, and everybody else exactly what y’all want, I can’t do it. That’s the most annoying thing in the world to me. All I can say is that I want you to continue to hope for great things for yourself (even if they’ve changed and are actively changing) because I believe that something great is coming for you.
Kalee thank you for responding always and really you don’t have to do anything to make me feel better because you just already do that anyways. But I’m already feeling so much better and I meant to respond to this the day you wrote this, but just now I am officially doing this. Sorry!