new chapter, same story

I remember when I used to be unable to go through a day without writing something in this blog. There and Back Again which turned into Into the Wild has been my safe place for the last five years, and looking back on all of the posts brings me some incredibly painful memories...and some absolutely beautiful ones too.

I have never been very good at keeping a journal. I probably have 10-15 notebooks scattered around my room back in New Hampshire that have a few pages written here and there. Most of my entries start off with something like: "so, I should probably write in this more..." or  "I need to be better at writing in here" but of course, I never stuck through with it. But I look back on this blog and I feel a bit more accomplished all of a sudden. This is my story, my life, my adventures. A collection of random musings, moments and memories. The last five years of my life chronicled through pictures and music and my feelings in concrete words.

I haven't written a lot here recently, and while it's been different, I think it's good. It's a sign that my life is moving forward, changing a bit and starting a new phase. Into the Wild was my own personal place for the last five years, but I'm no longer on my own. In fact, in just 2 short weeks, my life will forever be entwined with my best friend's. And it just seems selfish to me to exclude him out of my life as a writer and a blogger.

So, it is with bittersweetness that I announce that I will be closing this blog down. To those who have stayed by my side through these last five years; I can't thank you enough. You have given me support when I felt most alone and have helped me rejoice in my triumphs when I was surrounded by others. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And I invite all of you to continue to follow my story, which now is a part of his, at our new blog Catching Up with the Carrs.  A new chapter of my life is starting; but the beautiful part about it is that it is the same story; only now, it is not just mine. It is ours.

Always,
Chelsie Caroline

California

60 degrees and the California sunshine soaking into my skin.

There is a blue bow on my head and curls in my hair,

and she leans into me and whispers under the hymns

"you kinda match him."

I smile, because we do and we know it.

We walk hand in hand along the front porch,

and they all smile because he's back, he's home.

And the California sunshine is soaking into my skin and I realize,

I'm home, too. 

History 300

"You have an incredible writing style," he says, as he hands back my paper. "You know, I often think that you just can't teach people everything there is to writing. Writing well; it's a hard thing to learn. But you have a natural ability. You write very well."

I smile to myself as I hunch over to keep the rain out of my eyes, avoiding the puddles that stand between me and the car. It's flattering, but also gratifying to receive a compliment like that from someone I respect. And it's comforting; to know that every time I have attempted to put feelings into words has built up to something. I may not be the best writer; but I do know that I am meant to write.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

"I took shame to myself for having been so long a writer of idle stories, and ventured to hope that wisdom would descend upon me with the falling leaves of the avenue"

Fall always seems to be the most perfect time to write.

my greatest fear

I was angry. And that gave me the strength to fight.
The ground became illuminated by the stars
and I reached up and outward;
not caring. not wondering.
just fighting.

You refused to speak to me
and the silence was filled with worn tires on pavement.
The roads we have driven before;
the paths that knew our footprints.
but you did not know me.

you did not know me.

morning breaks

the air is heavy. tangible.

the smell of stale cigarettes cling to it,

like the tendrils of ivy climbing up a forgotten brick wall.

thunder rolls from the East, up and over the sea,

it came just for me.

gray air and sunsets

the air is thick with gray haze

I follow the path before me.

Mud. I forge ahead,

turn the corner and face the sun.

send it away, over the hills

and towards the sea.

just for you.

just for you.

still inspired

sometimes you just need to find yourself again,

even if you haven't entirely lost yourself in the first place. 

through the lens of a camera, the melody of a song or the words of a book.

the way the sun colors the smog of a city.

the sound of tiny feet pounding up stairs.

You begin to realize the the things that inspired you back in the day are worn out and tired,

and you have become worn out and tired.

washed up and stuck in the same routine.

It's comfortable and familiar and warm.

But then you read something the reminds you of who you are.

and what you want to do

and who you want to become.

you start writing again and delving into worlds entirely your own and completely and utterly full of nonsense.

you remember what makes you feel alive;

what get's your heart beating and your mind running and makes the world saturated with bright colors.

you become inspired.

I had a moment tonight as I was trying to fall asleep.

My mind started running in a million different directions and all of a sudden I had to write it all down before I lost to the unconscious land of dreams and half formed thoughts.

I had to sift through photographs and snapshots from the last few months and look at them again. I pulled up old quotes hidden in the depths of my hard drive and open up old documents from years ago with a couple of sentences of tangled words typed hastily down. They screamed of potential and the empty promises I had made those thoughts; that I would complete them, expand them, discover their fullness. 

I found myself setting goals and finding motivation to get back into old pattens and habits that pushed me and challenged me and focused me.

and I realized...

I am still inspired.

Thrones of Cair Paravel

Sleep will not evade me tonight, for the numbers on my illuminated screen confirm that my words have reached your ears. I have touched you once again, and I can almost feel you, through every single one of the 2500 miles that separate my body from yours. And as I close my eyes tonight, I know I'll find myself wandering through the furs and pines, laden with heavy snow, following the footprints of a Lion who knows my name and my face and my heart. He will lead me where he knows I need to be; and I know that my place is right next to you.

My Sister's Keeper

Sometimes I think about what would have happened if it wasn't curable. What would I have done if it had been caught later, if I had stopped responding to treatment, if it got to the point where I was signing up for experimental trials to open up, even though I knew there was no hope that they would work.

My prognosis was hopeful when I was diagnosed. Cancer hadn't spread, type was shown to respond well to treatment. Of course, it was still cancer. It was metastatic, but just because it hadn't spread, didn't mean it was going to be an easy ride. And it wasn't.

You'll never understand what it means to "fight for your life" until you are literally fighting to stay alive. What's funny is that it isn't even a conscious decision half the time. It happens while you are asleep; trying to escape from the nightmare that has become your reality. You let yourself slip away, grateful that you don't have to think about anything. And that is when the boxing gloves come out. Because who wants to give up the ability to dream?

I'm glad I didn't die. Sounds terribly blunt, but it's true. I feel like I should say something profound, but really, I'm just trying to grasp at facts that sometimes seem so unreal. My life is so close to normal now that I sometimes forget I had cancer. I had cancer. I had cancer. I had cancer. I forget about the sleepless nights, about the bald head, about being so sick that I thought my stomach was going to land in the toilet, about losing days at a time while being in a drugged induced coma, about the last time I went up the stairs without having to think twice about knees or bones or breathing. Sometimes it all seems so blurry and unreal. Sometimes it all seems so horrible that I choose not to remember.

But it happened. I had cancer.

And I think that it's okay to forget about terrible things that happen to us sometimes. I've learned that if you hold onto something so scary too tightly, you'll never be able to swim forward. You'll just carry a boulder on your back until you sink so deep you lose sight of the shore. But here's the truth: terrible things happen. And sometimes you can come back from them fast. And sometimes it takes a long time to pick up all of those pieces and glue them all together. And even after you put that last piece in, you're still cracked. You are not the same.

Being different is okay, though. You catch the light differently, form new shapes and surfaces and create new textures. And that's the beauty of it all. If you go through that painstaking process of picking up all those shards and gluing them back together, you become different; you become better. You become a kaleidoscope of everything you were and everything that you could have become, mixed with everything you are now. If you let yourself, you cant take those pieces of a beautiful piece of artwork and turn it into a masterpiece.

I'm a five year cancer survivor and I'm still coming back. I'm still putting my pieces together. I'm cracked and scarred and sometimes things happen that ruin a lot of the work I've done. But I won't let that stop me. When I'm tired, I simply close my eyes and let the boxing gloves come out while I escape to some magical place. It helps me remember that I am still full of dreams and I never want to give them up.

And so, when I wake up the next morning, I whisper to myself: "I will try again today."

too close

You are too close, too close.

And the hallways that never knew you echo of your constant shadows,

scream of their emptiness,

because they understand your absence now.

and your footprints are on the dirt roads, 

the ones that used to belong just to me.

and they all smile at me as they tell me how

your hand has been placed in all of theirs.

and the life I've been waiting to share...

you have discovered it all on your own.

alleograph.

break me down and examine my bones.

the melded fragments, the empty marrow.

I am infused with you.

I am not my own self. I am not my old self. 

I am two of us. I am two halves of one. I am one.

I am stronger.

I live because of you.

I live for you. I live for us. I live for me.

I live. 

break me down. I am not broken.

I am not whole, but I am complete.

I am.

I am.

It is winter now.

And on those empty November nights
when our shadows flicker across the bricks that built last year.
I reach my hands out towards the eastern sky.
You are with me.

You are with me. 

If you really knew me,

you would know that I'm not out to destroy anyone or anything. You would know that I love my friends and family with all that I have and that I'm willing to sacrifice everything and anything asked of me to support them. If you really knew me, you would know that I tear up at allstate commercials and that I like to cook using a crock pot. And that when I go up the stairs, I cry because my knees work. And that I tend to see life better through a camera lens and that diagramming a sentence correctly makes me feel like I can succeed in life. You would know about the guilt I struggle with about surviving cancer and the insecurities I have about my scars and disfigurations. If you really knew me, you would know that when a good song comes on the radio, I roll my windows down and laugh because I remember that I'm alive. You would know that I bend, but rarely break and that I stand up and fight for what I believe in. If you really knew me, you would know that I believe in love and in miracles and in hope and in God. And that I have a testimony of the LDS church and in missionary work. You would know that I believe in forgiveness. If you really knew me, you would know that I'm not dumb and that I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday. And that I'm an English major, and that I can read in between the lines. If you really knew me, you would know how much your disapproval and dislike tears me apart. You would know how many tears I have shed over feeling so misunderstood. You would know how many times I have fallen to my knees in prayer for comfort and guidance about what to do and how to act and what to say. You would know how genuinely hard I am trying to make things better and the dread I carry with me all of the time because they aren't.

If only you really knew me.

Meticulous Markings

The horizon reaches up to meet the sky

and for a moment, they are united.

they are one.

I'm okay on my own.

I am not so alone.

Rainbow in a Bottle

"Did you know," she says "that when you see a double rainbow, the colors mirror each other?"

"Really?" I say with genuine interest, because no, I didn't know.

"Yes," she says as we both peer out the windshield at the blackening sky stretching before us, squinting as the sun burns into the side mirrors of the car. "I learned that in my weather class."

I drive on, both hands gripping the unfamiliar steering wheel and her feet curled up underneath her in the worn leather of the passenger seat that knows her well. Mist kicks up from the tires and for a moment, I concentrate on my speed and the way the tires feel beneath me; making sure I have control.

"Look!" she gasps and points ahead of us at the sudden apparition of two brilliant arches of mirrored color stretching across the pavement ahead of us; a welcoming gate into a perfect storm. The sun flares behind us as we climb a hill and we both stare in silence at the bold colors that seem to be breathing in the sky. It's one of those moments, I realize, that we'll never adequately be able to capture in film or even explain in a story. It's a moment that is taken in the most extreme raw format, corked up in some hazy blue-stained bottle and saved for a winter day when all is white and cold. And I think about all those bottles I have stashed away just for me, the glass stained with different colors of the seasons and the corks worn from being unstopped often; and I wonder if I'll ever be able to find a way to document my collection of priceless moments. Maybe they will be buried with me when my time comes, and as she wrote some time ago, whispered into the dirt and back into the atmosphere to become part of someone else's collection. I like that thought, I think. It is a little morbid, but it's something to hold on to when the despair hits as I realize I'll never be able to find the words or music or any concrete, tangible way to share those ten minutes we were hit by the most glorious rainbow I've ever seen. But maybe those thoughts will seep into the rocks and roots someday and be breathed back into the air, for after all, I am just a small part of something so much bigger. I am insignificant but count for something anyway. It is all part of the plan. I have a part in the plan. And my rainbow in a bottle is part of my plan.

I wanted to write

I wanted to write.

I wanted to write things that had the ability to move people. I wanted to create sentences that transported them to places that were beyond their imaginations. I wanted to use my words to paint pictures of the most vivid colors and textures and sounds-things so tangible and palpable that you would want to reach your hand out and test out the reality for yourself. I wanted to put a voice behind emotions that seemed too raw to have a description. I wanted to pen out every deep thought and idea that crossed my mind on paper and and create a solace that documents every beautiful and damaged thing I came across. I wanted to write.

I considered myself a writer in some respects. I wrote a lot. I wrote frequently. I told stories and molded my world around black print and letters. I tried, and hey, that's a heck of a lot better then doing nothing at all, or so they say. But sometimes, I stumbled across someone who wrote their emotions so brilliantly that by the end of the story I felt like they were my own and I thought: I want to write. I want to write like that.

and so, I kept writing. But between the lines and the dotted i's and the crossed t's and overused phrases and cliches, I realized that I'm not writing for anyone but me. These are my emotions and my thoughts and no one elses and that by putting them down in a concrete way, I'm becoming the writer I wanted to be all along. And that is good enough for me.

quiet nights

I love having time to myself and being introverted; curling up with a cup of tea on an absolutely perfect summer night and being alone. It's during these rare moments that I find myself staring out my window and watching a tiny city of lights blink against the crow's black wing of night and allow myself to be whisked away to another time and place. I go over lists and goals I have, or examine the finer details of what makes me who I am. I think about where I want to go or what I want to do with my life and I travel down the various potential paths to test the waters with barefooted toes of determination. I dream. I make plans. I listen to the rumbles of crickets hidden in the grass and the wind breathing through the woods and I realize that this is my life, and I can do whatever I want with it. When I think of it that way, it's almost intimidating. I can do anything, I can be anything, I can go anywhere; so much power, so much potential. My life is what I make of it. It's empowering. I am filled with desire to improve, to change, to become, to do my best, to make my second chance at being alive worth something so that at the end of the day someone can say: "Yes, I'm glad we gave her a second shot."

Morbid? Maybe a little. I just want to make someone proud. I want to be deserving of my life. 

So, on these quiet nights when it's jut me and a warm mug of chamomile sitting in between my cupped hands; my eyes glossed over as I stare out into the blanket of black, I fill up with gratitude. And then I make my lists and I set my goals and I go to bed ready to wake up and prepared to do my best.

In this crazy world where there is never enough time in the day to get everything done, it becomes very easy to lose track of one's self. Getting caught up with the day in and day out routine slowly erases the finer lines of a soul; blends them into unclear images that eventually get lost in that grey area. So it's important to me to set aside a quiet night here or there to take care of myself and to refocus and recommit to my goals. It's taken me a long time to learn how to invest that kind of time into myself; but let me tell you, it has made all the difference.

No matter what happens, life will continue to be beautiful. 

the truth is

even if i could break through the velvet layers
and reach through the summer haze,
the heat saturating the world with color so vivid
even my perfect sight cannot
focus on a single entity
and it all twists into one perfect blur of deep brown,
truth is, i wouldn't stop it.

truth is, i used to wish that i could reach up into the sky and
past all of the clouds and stars and planets
and find the sooty corners of a seemingly endless space
where treasures were waiting just
for me, but now
as i squint through the muggy vapor and watch as colors
forget their names in a dance of uniform harmony,
i wish to collapse into the earth
and crawl into the empty spaces left by shadows and profiles,
listening to the whisper of silence
and find myself drifting away in a granite lullaby.

and the truth is,
even those who leave their lives engraved in stone become sand,
and no one cares that they are washed away
and smoothed down into miniscule grains that no longer make a difference in the world
but long to be remembered as the boulder originally hewn from, and no longer
exists.
so i let the heat haze vaporize the colors and
turn everything into a chestnut
haven and i sink knee deep into the ground
and i listen to the silent voices of stone
because their grains of sand still have stories to tell.

truth is, i am a grain of sand
hewn by God from a granite boulder,
part of the earth,
reduced to a shadow of a memory.

How to Tell if Somebody Loves You

Somebody loves you if they pick an eyelash off of your face or wet a napkin and apply it to your dirty skin. You didn’t ask for these things, but this person went ahead and did it anyway. They don’t want to see you looking like a fool with eyelashes and crumbs on your face. They notice these things. They really look at you and are the first to notice if something is amiss with your beautiful visage!

Somebody loves you if they assume the role of caretaker when you’re sick. Unsure if someone really gives a crap about you? Fake a case of food poisoning and text them being like, “oh my god, so sick. need water.” Depending on their response, you’ll know whether or not they REALLY love you. “That’s terrible. Feel better!” earns you a stay in friendship jail; “Do you need anything? I can come over and bring you get well remedies!” gets you a cozy friendship suite. It’s easy to care about someone when they don’t need you. It’s easy to love them when they’re healthy and don’t ask you for anything beyond change for the parking meter. Being sick is different. Being sick means asking someone to hold your hair back when you vomit. Either love me with vomit in my hair or don’t love me at all.

Somebody loves you if they call you out on your bull. They’re not passive, they don’t just let you get away with murder. They know you well enough and care about you enough to ask you to chill out or to tell you to stop. They aren’t passive observers in your life, they are in the trenches. They have an opinion about your decisions and the things you say and do. They want to be a part of it; they want to be a part of you.

Somebody loves you if they don't mind the quiet. They don't mind running errands with you or cleaning your apartment while blasting some annoying music. There's no pressure, no need to fill the silences. You know how with some of your friends there needs to be some sort of activity for you to hang out? You don't feel comfortable just watching bad reality TV with them. You need something that will keep the both of you busy to ensure there won't be a void. That's not love. That's "hey babe! i like you okay. do you wanna grab lunch? i think we have enough to talk about to fill two hours!" It's a dream when you find someone you can do nothing with. Whether you're skydiving together or sitting at home and doing different things, it's always comfortable. That is love.

Somebody loves you if they want you to be happy, even if that involves something that doesn't benefit them. They realize the things you need to do in order to be content and come to terms with the fact that it might not include them. Never underestimate the gift of understanding. When there are so many people who are selfish and equate relationships as something that only must make them happy, having someone around who can take their needs out of any given situation if they need to.

Somebody loves you if they can order you food without having to be told what you want. Somebody loves you if they rub your back at any given moment. Somebody loves you if they don't care about your job or how much money you make. It's a relationship where no one is selling something to the other. Somebody loves you if they'll watch a movie starring Kate Hudson because you really really want to see it. Somebody loves you if they're able to create their own separate world with you, away from the internet and your job and family and friends. Just you and them.

Somebody will always love you. If you don't think this is true, then you're not paying close enough attention.

-Ryan O'Connell

This may possibly the best description of love I have ever read. Had to share.