Sometimes I use this tiny corner of the internet to write about feelings:

Today started off just fine but by 11am it barrel-rolled into emotional chaos, again; like most days have for the past several months. I’ve been going through a bit of a grief-y stretch lately.

I can tell that friends miss upbeat Katie. The other day a friend said “You sound good today,” and I responded with an honest, “I am! Today has been good,” followed by the subtle relief heard in their voice knowing that for now they don’t have to awkwardly scramble around helping me pick up the pieces of my life. I want the always-cheerful version of me too, but some days are brutal, like today, when I shoved my face into a pillow to muffle the howl-cries so as not to alarm my neighbor in apartment #330. 

Because today a life changing email that I’ve been waiting for, for weeks, was there in my inbox. With a swish-click of my mouse I opened it, read it. Then read and dissected it seven times more the way one does when they are desperately reading between the lines, hoping to squeeze as much meaning as they can from every sentence, no matter how straightforward that sentence is:

…I hope this finds you well.
…I am taking over your case. 
…Once you let me know your thoughts I will proceed to the next step.  

Dissecting, decoding, and searching for answers that might be hidden in plain sight, anything that would help me decide; do I want to the proceed to the next step or not?

Side note: if we haven’t talked in awhile and/or if it sounds like I’m being vague and half-vulnerable it’s because I am. I came here because I needed to scream into the void, but also do not have the capacity for a full blown heart-to-heart free fall into the internet.

I knew what I was doing when I began scratching at the surface but I am unearthing so much, so quickly. I just feel like my life is not my own right now. Like I’m on a conveyor belt and all of this is just happening to me in the most abrupt and surreal way.

The email came, and I opened it on the conveyor belt. Now I have to decide. This is my last major opportunity to bail, if I want to.

I am massively exhausted by this loop I’m stuck in right now: the ups, which are more like plateaus, and the violent downs. Rinse later repeat. For lack of energy to write a better metaphor: it’s a rollercoaster, speeding through the dark.

(Fun fact: I hate rollercoasters.)

Others have pointed out how exciting they think this is and I guess I can see how they’d think that, but I’d like to kindly add that in response I also feel the involuntary urge to reach through the phone/web cam and slap them across the face…gently, just a little. I’ve felt a lot of things in the past few months but excitement is not one of them.

I feel: a little bit terrified, deeply exhausted, emotionally drained, overwhelmed, and so on and so on. My tear ducts are achy and sore, which probably isn’t a real thing but it feels like it is.

Anyways, this is real-time so I can’t wrap this up in a neat little bow and say that I’m fine…but I know that I will be, eventually.

Regardless, now feels like a good time to pay $10 for comfort in the form of small batch ice cream scooped into a made from scratch waffle cone, right? Maybe even some hot fudge, I don’t know. Asking for friend. ;)

For the follow up post, click here.