Stella

My hero lives in a brown shuttered house

and smiles every time I arrive

She chases me with wooden spoons

Pretends she invented potato soup

Crushes on men with mustaches

Her candy dish is always full

She keeps my secrets

She worries

She forgives

She lets me be myself

Unapologetically be myself

She likes me

She gives me pennies for the wishing well

She sacrifices

She prays

She gives

She stands at the door of her brown shuttered house

to wave to me as I leave

Mother Theresa has nothing on my hero

Warriors

A leader of Warriors

You rise at dawn
Dress for battle

Helmet
Breastplate
Loin guards
Boots
Shield
Sword

You address your armies
Young and old

Equip them for the attacks that will surely come

The mission clear
The weapons of our warfare mighty

Salvation
Righteousness
Truth
Peace
Faith
God's Word

These materials make up the indestructible armor of strength
no enemy can overtake
no weapon can penatrate

Under your teachings we have gained
All we need to fight
All we need to overcome
All we need to win

An army of spiritual warriors blanket the earth
because of your love

The Answer

All the pieces of this broken heart

gathered one by one

by Holy nail-scarred hands

stained with the blood of mercy and redemption

Flesh torn

You hung

hammered by betrayal to a tree

that grew from the very ground You created

You traveled the earth

Wore the skin of a simple man

A walking vessel of Love

finding worth and purpose in the lowest of us

A slaughtered innocent

A willing sacrifice

Spit on and ridiculed

Mocked and humiliated

You took my pain

You took the pain of the entire human race

Of course, You understand my sorrow

Forgive me for forgetting

Jesus

Healer

Savior

From the ashes

I rise

No longer limping through life

crippled by the agony of the past

You made all things new

No longer incomplete or broken

viewing myself unworthy

You made me complete and whole

You were always the answer

Highschool Boyfriend

Temper tantrumed toddler

In a creatine pumped man suit

Racist

Womanizer

Jock

"Can we be friends?", you ask?!

No actually, we can't.

Oh... You want reasons?!...

Let's start with the fact that 16 years is not long enough to erase the destruction of

My innocence

My self esteem

My identity

Or maybe it's the 10 years of therapy I needed to attempt to heal from

Every disgusting thing you did to me

Every disgusting word you spoke to me

Perhaps it is because of your ability, back then, to convince me I was unworthy

Unworthy of kindness

Unworthy of acceptance

Unworthy of your faithfulness

Maybe it's because I can still remember the feeling of your spit running down my face...

Or the impact of your fists...

Your constant threats...

Your constant follow throughs...

Maybe it's my PTSD diagnosis I can accredit to you for all of the abuse...

Maybe it's because I still can't fully bend the last 3 fingers on my left hand

I bet your mustang door still has my DNA in the door seam

Maybe it's the broken blood vessels in the center of my nose that remind me of you already...

See...we don't need to be friends,

I see you in the mirror everyday.

But you don't understand why I can't look you in the eye when we run into each other?

You think we had good times?

When?

When you were busy telling me my friends were not good enough...

My style not preppy enough...

My personality not interesting enough...

That *I* simply wasn't enough,

And that NO ONE would ever love me except you?

I was a child, and you taught me that love was meant to be painful

Sociopath

Narcissist

Bully

 You "Daddy-Issued" Throw Away

You showed me everyday that I was worthless

And I believed you.

And I treated myself accordingly, for a very long time

The only memory I have of you that I relish

Was the sight of you punching yourself in the face repeatedly when I told you we were over

When I was old enough to not care any longer what you could or would do to me

The day I escaped

Thanks for that.

Friend request denied.

I'll Get by with a Little Help from My Friends (part 1)

(Super Seniors)

“Marc…”, I whispered. “...watch the stairs!”

“Hurry up!”, he whispered with laughter.

Rachel, Jen, and myself got in a line. The mission? To run down our school hallway as fast as humanly possible, one after the other, with only a 5 seconds between each of our take offs. Each of us having to launch ourselves like superman on to the couch at the end of the hall and roll off onto the floor before the other person did the same merely seconds later. This may or may not have resulted in injury on occasion, but worth every bruise!

(And we have no clue how the holes behind the couch got there....)

“Oh, my god, you guys are gonna get us into SO much trouble!”, Marc would say nervously EVERY time we did this. (And we did this a lot). Don’t let him fool you though; eventually he abandoned his watch post position and joined in the fun as well! 

The game was Drop and Roll. A very mature and not at all ridiculous activity, us four SENIORS in highschool would play when the teachers would be away with the other students at lunch time in our small private Christian school.

Aside from that, we did very few silly things. We were very respectable, apart from that.
Okay, okay...maybe we would sneak into the teacher's lounge and drink coffee and watch tv, or drive to the taco bell 30 minutes away the the middle of our school day, or….or maybe I shouldn’t put everything we did in a blog (can they revoke your diploma over a decade later??? lol)  What? Come on, there were worse things we could have been doing!

That was one of my favorite years...my senior year. So many memories...so many moments that have carved themselves into my heart and soul for eternity. Things that no one can ever erase or take away from me...from us. Things that will always belong to the four of us, that no one else will ever know or understand. No one.

Myself, Rachel Levick, Jen Braddock, and Marc Bermudez. We were the self proclaimed Super Seniors...and man, did we have the time of our lives that year! Aside from our at school shenanigans, we had out of school ‘Senior Wednesdays’....filling our nights with laughter, and developing bonds that have lasted a lifetime.

We drove our teachers crazy, and I’m sure they were ready for us to graduate and stop torturing them! But I’m so grateful for that little private school/church ‘in the middle of nowhere’, N.J. It brought me these 3 mischievous, hilarious, 1000% genuine people into my life and heart, and I am forever changed because of it.

Rachel’s goodness, silliness, and unconditionally unwavering support and loyalty to me, has created a standard by which I demand to hold myself to when offering my friendship to other people. I don’t have any chapter in the book of my life that hasn’t included her, quite literally from birth. And I don’t intend to write any without her.

Jen came into my life unexpectedly in high school. But we gravitated to each other like a magnet. I think the moment she opened her sassy mouth and I heard the sarcasm spill out I knew….I knew I liked that crazy girl. I knew we were meant to be “us”....I knew she was going to be essential to my story somehow. And I was right. So right.

Marc came into my story broken. Broken, but stronger than almost anyone I know. He had suffered personal losses at such a young age, but showed extreme courage and kindness through his character, that is never to be discredited him. He was, and still is, one of the best men I know. He needed us three girls...and we needed him.

And so, our group was created. We just fell together, the four of us, like a perfectly beautiful mess that made sense to only us...but we were the only ones that ever needed to understand.

Dreams of My Soul Sister

(Rory)                       

    I found myself visiting Rory’s parents one day, as I had several times since Rory passed away. Visiting them proved to be both comforting and hard...comforting, because there is a peace that comes when you surround yourself with people who relate to your sorrow... hard because..well, there is pain when you love someone as strongly as we loved/love Rory...and pain resurfaces in the company of others that remind you of who you lost.  It's a catch 22. 

I knocked on the door, but this time no one answered. I took the liberty to let myself in, making my way passed the living room, and then stopping dead in my tracks in the dining room. Rory  was standing in the kitchen 10 feet from where I was standing! “Wha...how?....How is this happening?”, I whimpered, shaking in terror, “You...you’re gone. Am I dreaming?”.  She didn’t answer, only smiled her sweet, unique underbite of a smile.

To this point in my life, I had been holding it together pretty well, considering one of my best friend's lives had been snuffed out with no explanation at such a young age. I was, since her passing, trying terribly hard to be a source of strength to those around me that were also suffering this huge, unexplained open wound of a loss. I felt emotions everyday...some days extreme sadness...some days anger...some both. But I had yet to have my moment...you know, the one where you allow yourself to melt into the earth like lava with your pain? That moment. It had not yet arrived.

We sat on the couch, her and I...me mostly just staring in disbelief. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back the last time you called me.”, I whispered, “I should have called you back.” 

See...three days before Rory died, she called me out of the blue. This wasn’t a normal occurrence. Although we met and developed our friendship here in NJ, Rory had started a life in Colorado. So, we had monthly phone dates, that were always planned. On the Sunday before she died, she called me. I was just getting home from work, had two hyper kids both speaking to me at the same time, and arms full of groceries when she called. In my flustered state, I wasn’t thinking about how weird it was that she called me randomly.... I was just overwhelmed, and asked her if I could call her back.

I forgot to.

She died two days later.

This has haunted me with guilt ever since.

She didn’t say anything back. She  laid my head into her lap and I cried and wailed and let out everything I had been holding in for so long. She ran her fingers through my hair, kindly and calmingly until I stopped. She leaned over and whisper in my ear, “I’m okay, Kate. And you will be too.”

Then...I woke up. Shaken...but peaceful at the same time. 

Thank you, Rory...for forgiving me. 

Moon Man

(Teddy)

    The tragedy of life, it often seems, is when a person of extreme talent and worth, has a brief life. After losing my friend Rory in October of 2011, my heart was still bleeding. I had never lost a close personal friend like that before, and I knew that I didn’t want to suffer another loss like that again. But life….well, part of life is death. I just didn’t realize it was going to strike me so hard a second time in less than a year.

    Ted walked into the sanctuary doors of the church I grew up in with his family for the first time in 1999. I was drawn to him and his step brother Dan immediately. They had a similar style, and shared the same teenage angst as me. We became fast friends.

    Ted looked like a real life version of Trent Lane from the MTV cartoon series Daria (google it). That is the best way I can describe him! I mean, take out Trent’s earrings, and you have Ted! He was a musician, a beach bum, a singer, a jokester, a cigarette enthusiast, and royal pain!

We had a lot of fun, Ted and I. The kind that probably annoyed other people! Like, going to the board walk and getting free fudge samples from Steels, then walking around the corner, switching around our clothes, and going back for more (as if we were actually convincing anyone that we were different people)! We would do this repeatedly until they were so mad, that they cut us off made us leave! We wanted to see how long it would take for them to crack! But that was us...and I forever love every stupid, ridiculous, simple moment we shared.

My favorite memory of Ted, and the one I hold dearest to my heart, is when for a period of time in 2003, I was living alone in an apartment with my son. Things in my life were not good. In fact, I wasn’t really sure where my life was going at this point. I had not seen Ted for a long time. In fact, to this day, I have NO idea how he even got my address. But one day, I got a knock at the door. I opened it, and there he was...just standing there with a goofy look on his face. I was so surprised, I didn’t even know what to say! I mean, we were friends, but at that point in time we had not seen each other in quite a while, and only spoke on the phone every so often….certainly nothing that would have prepared me for him appearing this way.

“Hey…”, he said...in his quick/short way. “What are you doing here?”, I replied...tears already in my eyes.  He went on to say that he had heard from the grapevine at church, about the challenges I was facing...and he had to find me. I was scared to let him in. Scared because I couldn’t hide from Ted...you know? He could see right through me, and I didn’t want to be vulnerable. What was happening in my life at the time was SO hard, and so painful. I needed to keep it together. I had to be strong for my son. I didn’t want to fall apart or feel what was really happening. Numb was safe. Numb was what I wanted.

    We stepped out on my little terrace and sat on my bench. I wouldn’t make eye contact with him. He knew what I was doing...and he called me out on it. “Woman!”, he shouted, “Look at me, Kate. Look at me.”. He grabbed my chin, turned my head toward him, and forced his forehead on mine, holding it there, no matter how hard I tried to pull away. At that moment, it all came out. Not words, just tears. All the emotions and pain I had been holding in came flooding out, and they flowed until there were none left. He never let me go...the snot and make-up running down my face never mattered to him...he just held me there like that until I was done. It was exactly what I needed, and he knew that. This is what made him so special. Ted only said two things to me before he left that day (this was actually the last time I ever saw him in person). He came in for a quick second and looked at my son taking a nap, and said, “He is beautiful.” And before he got in his car to leave he said, “Beautiful people, don’t deserve tears. Find happiness, Kate.”

After that, Ted moved away for a while...and lived many years of a life away from NJ. But we stayed in touch. We were meant to always stay in each other’s lives in some form, and we always were, no matter where life took us. Our friendship was important to us. He did eventually move back home to NJ, and was very loved by family and friends that were in his life. He battled his own demons, as we all do, but he was a good person. He brought laughter everywhere he went.

In April of 2012, Ted and I spoke on the phone. This wasn’t really a normal thing….we usually  only called on birthdays. He called me out of the blue. I remember immediately thinking something was wrong. He was seemingly fine...but was talking with a different tone than usual. He started saying some things that concerned me….and not what would normally concern a regular person. See...Ted and I joked. All of the time. We were snarky and sarcastic in our banter. It’s who we were. I say, “What up, jerk?”, and he would  reply something like, “Nothing...still ugly. You?” That was the norm for us….but that day, that call….. he was overly serious. The sort of “kind” people are when they are saying goodbye to you forever or something, ya know? I listened...confused, and concerned. “What are you doing?”, I asked. “What do you mean?”, he replied. “This... all this crap you are saying? We don’t do this. Is...is something wrong?”, I stuttered. He was quiet. I was nauseous. “No, Kate...I just wanted to tell you that you I love you, and am grateful for everything you have been to me over the years. Can’t I just say that?”, he asked. Me, remembering the way I have carried regret from not talking to Rory when she had called that last time, decided to just shut up, and listen, and then, when he was done...I told him everything. Everything there was to possibly say. I didn’t want to lose this moment. Not again. I thanked him for his ridiculous jokes, his songs, his transparency. I reminded him how proud I was of him, and how I treasured his heart. I reminded him of how very special he was to God, and how I was grateful that God gifted us each other as friends. “Ted…”, I said. “Yeah…?”, he replied. “You have mattered. You do matter. You will matter.”, I sobbed with tears rolling down my face. “You too, Kate. Everything’s alright, woman. I just wanted you to know what I really felt about you, encase I never said it. Don’t worry. I’ll see you soon.”, he ended.  It was a long, emotionally draining conversation, that I will forever be grateful for. 

    Two months later, Ted passed away suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 29 years old.

He mattered.