it’s kind of funny to think about this blog and everything that came from it. i started it almost six years ago, and the first post was about one of my favorite years. life was good, and where i was felt like the right place for me to be – that’s not always a common feeling for me. then as the blog posts went on, they kept document of whatever emotions i was having as a teenage girl. the many memories that shaped me, any pain i was going through, and the existential thoughts you first start to have at that age. then it grew traction, my emotions were used as weapons against me at times, and then when life felt like the right place again, i wrote one last post and the blog ended.

but does anything ever really end? a movie ends after two hours, but then it’s rehashed over and over on your fyp. a relationship ends, but the memories replay in your head for months until your ex breaks no contact. my blog ended, but my life kept going and my emotions kept raging.

i’ve never been very good at “processing” emotions. my mind is an attic with hoarded emotions that i refuse to go through and get rid of; i’m realizing i haven’t let go of a single emotion since i was nine years old, and seven years later my brain finally collapsed from it all. and for the past ten months i’ve been forced to face them all at once.

i feel like I’ve run the subject of grief ragged with how much i talk about it, but grief is never a one and done emotion. sometimes it’s coated in anger, other times it’s coated in love. and with each new emotion it dips into i’m forced to readdress it. again and again and again. and when you’re someone who “doesn’t have emotion”, and then suddenly you have all of them, you start to lose who you are.

i lost who i was, and i lost her fast. i first felt the shift on my 20th birthday. birthdays never really phased me, because i’ve always been the exact same person i was from the moment i came into this earth. that’s always been a stability in me. even when life was shit and things were changing and i was growing, i still had me. when i turned 20, i instantly felt lonely. there were times in my life where i had been alone and didn’t have people in my life, but this was different. i had plenty of people in my life. best friends, relationships i didn’t recognize at the time were bad for me, internet friends i’d never actually met in person. but suddenly i didn’t have myself. for the rest of the year i searched for validation of who i was – and i searched in a lot of wrong places.

then the few places i thought i found myself in were ripped away in the span of three months. at the end of April ’23, i had to move back in with my parents. and I. WAS. LIVID. i immediately regressed to who i was two years before when i lived under my parents roof. i cut everyone off. threw out attitude wherever i could. all of my anger was directed at my parents. my life felt like it took about ten steps in the wrong direction.

three weeks later, the worst possible reality came true. losing your best friend is something you never prepare for. in the back of your mind, you know one day you’ll likely see your parents die. we know our pets will never live as long as us. but a best friend is different, because what is life without? you plan on your best friend being there through every heartbreak, and every new love. you dream of getting ready with each other on wedding days, and being aunts to each others children. you see the reels of the old ladies sitting with glasses of wine and think “yeah, that will be us one day.” knowing i won’t get those moments keeps me up most nights, and it’s still something I can’t bring myself to talk about right now. “we’re two sides of the same coin”, as she’d always say. she was the other half of me, and suddenly that half became a deep black void that swallowed the rest of me.

i don’t remember the next two months. between disassociating from the reality i was in, and different things i was using to escape my reality, i blocked out a lot.

in july, after a weekend of too many things forcing me back to reality, i was suddenly surrounded by everything i was avoiding. i remember standing behind the bar of the coffee shop on my last day of work (I didn’t know it would be my last day of work in that moment), and i could physically feel everything inside of me shatter. it was like someone took a gun to my already fragile mind, and the internal screaming was silenced as i was drowning in the broken pieces. i broke when i got home. and my parents agreed that i needed to leave town with my mom the next day. i tried my hardest to explain to everyone why i had to go, but sometimes you can’t always make people understand. and i never went back to the coffee shop i had dedicated the past two years of myself to.

so what does one do when their self-sufficiency, half of their soul, and all their effort is shredded from their bones? they grasp onto any last threads they can find.

my knuckles turned white, and my palms were burned from gripping the ropes of everything i could feel pulling away. it’s a natural reaction to want to hold onto things that aren’t there anymore – we have had it for so long, so why do we have to go without it? but if you hold onto something that dead, it’ll slowly drag you into the grave with it.

my brain became a graveyard of every version of me.

here lies kansas iz – the little girl that got a taste of the normal childhood she’d always craved but will never be allowed to go back to.

here lies fourteen year old iz – the girl who sat in her room for hours listening to the Born to Die and Lungs album on her vinyl, dreaming of the days when she would become bigger than the life she was stuck in.

here lies senior year iz – the monster that was put on this world to never be understood and never be loved.

here lies twenty year old iz – the liability that gave herself up to the wrong people and was always the one to blame.

i was a ghost surrounded by the headstones i’d made for me. my past lives were dead, and my soul was no longer tethered to me. holiday after holiday i suffered with the loss of who i was. and if i didn’t know who i use to be, how was i supposed to keep living like i did?

at the beginning of january i flew back to kansas. me and natalie spent the majority of the weekend lying in bed watching romcoms and The OC. it was a much needed escape from the emptiness that my life was becoming. and if there’s one thing i know for sure, it’s that i would have never made it this far without natalie. she chose me in fourth grade, and continues to choose me. last summer, after everything happened and i was a dysfunctional mess in a hotel room in portland, natalie started doing “an album a day” with me. we would pick an album, listen to it’s entirety, then rank our top five all time favorite songs from the album and our top five current favorites. it gave me something to look forward to. when i didn’t want to wake up and experience another day, i would look at my phone and see a text that said “what album are you feeling today?” and the day felt a little lighter. the weekend i spent with her in january, we started talking about those albums of the days, and then she asked how i was doing with everything. i told her every feeling i was having, even the ones i couldn’t put into words. and she listened to it all.

we had multiple conversations that week about where i was mentally, and where i wanted to be one day. and throughout these conversations, natalie gave back little pieces of me that i had lost. she would say something and i’d think “oh yeah, that is what i like”, “oh, wait that is who i am.” when i couldn’t hold onto myself anymore, natalie did. and she took care of who i was until i could do it again.

when i came back home, i started to water the grass around the headstones of me. i went through every major time period in my life (it was exhausting. had a breakdown about it at least once a week to my mom, and sometimes i still do.) in doing this, i was acknowledging past hurt i had been through, and all the little iz’s started to feel validated enough that they could start to heal. i started to see the patterns of my life – where i was going wrong, the things i forced myself to hold onto, the situations i kept putting myself in. and the more i kept realizing, the more my subconscious was screaming at me to change it.

and i was finally able to listen. i could finally look at my life and want to be the one in control of it, instead of just letting it happen to me. and that’s where i’m at now.

i can start to see a glimpse of where my life is going, and it’s a beautiful thing to see after it’s been hidden for so long. my creativity has never been so abundant. i’m constantly dreaming and writing and visioning. i’m breaking down my walls and talking again and getting to know all these amazing people that are still in my life. i’m accepting my past and the pieces that make me who i am and reminiscing on the moments that made life feel a little easier.

and some days the grief and rage come back to drown me, and i don’t think i’ll ever live without those days. but the rope i make sure to always hold onto is the one that leads me to life feeling ‘right’ again. through all the fear, the mistakes, the heartache, the rope stays tied around my waste. and i smile thinking about the guardian angel that secures the rope every time.

so i’m thrilled to announce that IZ IS BACK. and i can’t wait to keep sharing her with you guys through this blog, and all the exciting things i have planned.

i love you, besties. it means the world that you continue to stick around.

xo, iz.