THIS IS NUMBER SEVEN

well i guess i am back at it again…this time it’s been a year and about a month! ha this must be some kind of oh..i don’t know..pattern?! hey, hi, hello to you. when i come back to this place, this time that i give myself to write it out.. even when it doesn’t exactly make the most sense, i just feel so proud to arrive back here. each time i come back to myself in this way, things just change change change. so much change has happened, is happening, will be happening soon and i’m just really starting to know this in my body that this is what it will always be. all of this bizarreness, all of this lack of something or ability to keep! up! it is two thousand and twenty one and i am still physically in the same place that i’ve been since i started this new journey of finally opening up and sharing myself, my words, my art. this place where you can read it. whoever you are does and doesn’t matter at the same time, because you are here, with me. and we are one in my thoughts that we now share. this also matters for me in the sense that regardless of our relationship or even if you are a perfect stranger, you are listening to and feeling my inner most thoughts and you might care enough to do so. you are here with me and i feel something inexplicable that my words can be and feel identical or related to.

if you are reading this, that probably means you have access to the internet or some ridiculous form of technology that allows me to share this with you. i’m not ungrateful, but i am fearful of what power we all have at the tip of of fingers. for those of us who are fortunate and privileged enough to pay attention to our physical, emotional + mental health outside of financial turmoil and global catastrophe, we are trying to make our way through and out of this pandemic. we are trying to make it while experiencing the bitter unfairness of injustices that keep happening and won’t stop happening. we are confused. we are trying to survive. i think that is really what this past year has felt like— just waking up and trying every single day to not lose my shit because i have more blessings to count than possibly all of the words in the english dictionary. every thing, moment, experience is a blessing because i am alive and aware enough to realize it and feel it as fully as i possibly can no matter how ugly. this pandemic though… this time in the world, this sickness that is spreading as i type this. it reached all of us, but then it really reached me. i was infected and received positive test results on the morning of my 24th birthday, naturally. at the time that i contracted the virus, it was the middle of the summer in savannah. the world was going to shit like a burning paper bag on every front porch of every home or something, it was just unbelievable. people that look like me and i look like them were targeted, betrayed, some of them murdered—by their own country + government for being born a different shade of the same color. as this is sadly nothing new, i think now more than ever it has shaken us to our core. it’s finally setting into people’s minds that the way we’ve been doing things and the awareness that we currently have just don’t vibe anymore. we have to change, we have to make things better than they are no matter how comfortable and normalized these ways have become. i have always experienced different forms, faces and versions of racism in my own biracial experience, but not on such a global scale as this. it was so hard to look at, it was so hard to not look at. i was going through some major lifestyle changes with loved ones and good friends that were all simultaneously relocating or moving back home to wait out the uncertainties of the year. out of absolutely nowhere, i fell. really, really. i fell hard and madly in love with my now partner who is so massively himself—incredibly intelligent, hilarious and gifted. someone who inspires me every single day to be more of myself unapologetically, someone who makes me laugh so much and smile so hard that i cry because i feel it all with him and don’t wanna run or hide for feeling this, i want him to hold my hand. 

i did kinda wobble into the first several months of the pandemic. i’ve been working—full time— since this thing started. i was entering new and exciting friendships because all of the other people i was usually spending time with had to leave for all of these reasons, every thing was happening so fast. i was breaking contact with people that i just didn’t need to interact with in my life anymore, and i was saying goodbye to my best friend, my mother, after she finally relocated to build her well deserved dream house. all of it was happening, i was still working, it all felt like i was a hot meal in a microwave, melting under the pressure and heat of the too fast motions of life, of the clock ticking down. here i am now, it’s been a year since all of this has really taken a toll on the cities, states, country… world. could you imagine if this shit could affect another planet? PLANETARY INSTEAD OF GLOBALLY? GEEZ. i’ve had so many thoughts and feelings and surreal moments that just haven’t felt real since all of this became the new way of living and existing on planet earth. to the point where documenting has felt even more overwhelming than ever before because processing hasn’t felt as beneficial as it usually had in the past… it felt like i just couldn’t get away from all of the bad, scary feelings that have drained its way into every aspect of my human experience. it has affected everyone, all of my friends, all of my family and all of the strangers i’ll never know. all of the plants and the animals and the food we consume. it has affected the way i think about existing and the way i feel when i wake up and go to work and serve and serve and listen and listen. and go back home, go to sleep, wake up and do it all over again. listen listen listen and take it all on is what i do. i can’t help but ask even if i don’t have the space, i can’t help but care and absorb and try and understand how others around me are feeling even if i’m not feeling so great. but it really has been a lot. to the point where i had to close myself into my shell for a long while and feel all the icky things before reemerging to all of these things again. all of the things. all of the people.

what this pandemic has taught me about myself, more than any experience i’ve ever had thus far, is that i am an absolute pro at hiding myself in broad daylight, in public, in private. i can hide and i can protect myself, i can feel safe in the strangest environments, i can convince myself that i am needed or not needed and i will believe it to be true. i can handle more than i realize or remember. i can also hurt myself more than i can hurt anyone or anything else, ever. this is the scariest thing i have ever written, the scariest thing i have ever read. i don’t want to be my own enemy anymore or ever again. i no longer want to hide, i no longer want to apologize for feeling the ways that i do. i no longer want to be silent about the things that i feel, the things i have experienced and the traumatic ways that they have affected my life because all of this is so relevant and necessary to feel. all of this is who i am and what i am meant to feel, all of this is slow moving and will come to when it does. i never used to feel so comfortable saying out loud that i wanna fly and float away some times… i haven’t ever really been as vocal about it in the sense that i even actually say the words out loud or through writing. they’ve always just been thoughts. that i just want to go away sometimes because this planet is so heavy and some times i recognize myself as someone that contributes to weighing it down. i hate where i live sometimes, i hate that i exist in this kind of place where power and control is at the forefront of the human consciousness and experience, that we are at spiritual warfare at all times, every moment and second that is and will be. i hate that i live in a world where people are tortured and murdered and set up to fail by a corrupt system. i hate that i am a part of it, that i live in a world where this exists and that most days i don’t have enough energy to want to get up and change it. so i stay here and i do what i can to change myself and my own experience and i love people fearlessly, even if they don’t like it or allow it. and that’s all i’m here for, to love you and to learn how to love myself more authentically and honestly. i want to speak out more about how i am feeling it and why. i want to give myself the time and credit i deserve to speak and use my own voice. i want to stop saying out loud that i am tired and i wanna stop talking about the weather so much and about the internet. i really wanna say how i am doing and when it’s not good i want you to know. and when it’s great i want the whole fucking universe to feel the energy that rolls off of me like sweat, a feeling so sweet you can smell it as it fills the air like perfume. 

alas, i am continuing to ride the waves of all the endless desire and suffering that life spoon feeds me. i am trying to be and feel better and i am trying to accept the movement of life as it continues to breathe and drive at me full-force, oppositely down a one way. in the moments where i think most authentically about what life really is (as i seem to know it), the life that we try to keep unspoken, i think of all the ways that life could be made simpler if we just said what was on our mind. if we didn’t turn those thoughts and feelings into other things that we create to distract ourself from really solving our own puzzles. so i am trying to practice this in the coming months while steering myself back on the track of following through with some personal projects i have set out to do and worry more about where my artistic journey picks back up professionally. here’s to focusing on what i DO want, not what i don’t. here’s to me, to us, to the world that is full of so many spectacular human beings that need to do the work. that need some healing, that need to move forward and through all of this disaster. no place, no person, no feeling is too much to the point that we cannot try and save them, steer them back, forgive, rescue, hold + accept. nothing can ever be bad enough to the point that we cannot better the future, right? i really hope not, i really hope we can all love and just keep trying to do it no matter how hard. here’s to hoping for that and here’s to updating this more, to remembering how to commit to myself before committing to something or someone else, to commit to my work and my feelings and experiences because they are worth something, they do matter and they should be shared. even if it’s just to get it out some place else that isn’t my brain.

please, friends: stay tuned and stay with me. i know i disappear and reappear out of the blue all too often, it’s etched into the code of my identity that i crawl in and out of my very cozy shell. i am still here even when you don’t see or hear me. i am still here. i will be sharing more of my thoughts and projects here and on my online diary called instagram where i spew out all of my abstract thoughts for all the people to connect with or not connect with. it will be here regardless, i will be here regardless. attached below are some thoughts i feel that express the intimacy only felt for a close friend and lover.

peace, luv + light forver,

kaylah <3