My name is Lacey. Known by most as Kiba, or Kat, and to a select few- and only those few- “Kat-Kat”. I’m a wolf and a cat. I’m an angel and a fiend. I’m a friend to all, enemy to no one I can think of, and bored as hell to a point where I’m writing another autobiography for no good reason.
No, that’s not totally true. There is a reason of sorts. Because only a few days ago, I had re-read my last autobiographical account. I nodded, smiled, chuckled and cringed. You know the feeling you get when you look back at where you were and can only shudder? Whether it be the person you had been, or the things you did, or- laughs- the things you had created. All my friends are either writers or artists, so I’m sure you can understand what I’m talking about. It’s a terrifying and humbling experience, isn’t it?
Especially when you stop to compare it to what that scrawny, untalented little nerd turned into today. Someone a little less scrawny, a little more talented, and every bit as much of a nerd about adult nerdy things as they were about child nerdy things. Sometimes I’m still a nerd about child nerdy things. This was a lot of the sensation I got from reading my old autobiography. At the time, I thought it was work comparable to Poe and Shakespeare. Now, I’d like to quietly stuff it under my bed where my personal work graveyard is. But it’s encouraging to realize the distance I’ve come from the person that wrote that essay.
Is that the way the rest of my life will be? Looking back at how painfully inadequate I was and grateful always for the improvement time has blessed me with?
God, I certainly hope so.
By the time I reach my ten-year high school reunion, I’d like to think of myself as a person wholly different from who I was when I graduated. That person was agonizingly immature, likely had no idea where she was going in life, and thought marching to the beat of your own drum included trumpets, tirangles and tambourines.
Now I know better. Now I know you really only get the one drum. And it turns out, you have to figure out how to play it before you can work on the marching. If you’re too busy staring at your feet, or at the crowds lining the streets, or at the <i>lack</i> of crowds lining the street, you won’t ever realize that you can’t play music worth a dime, and you’ll be strumming along to some unrecognizable beat without realizing what a fool you’re making of yourself. In the great parade of life, you’ll be thinking you’re the drum major when really you’re the clown.
That’s a lot of what the Art Institute was for me- discovering that I really can’t play a drum.
Oh, but I had my delusion in place and I was ready to take the world by storm with it. I thought I was going to become an animator, taking my art to the next level and be involved in bringing great stories to the world. I thought I would be tackling school with new found energy, charging through the three years and emerging on the other side victorious. I thought this was where God wanted me to be because when I arrived on the campus’s shiny glass doorstep, my heart all but exploded with “Yes-ness”.
Here’s something I learned only years after that day- sure, God wanted me to attend that school. I just wasn’t ever meant to graduate.
It’s disheartening to think that all my friends- even my younger ones- are progressing in their lives with fancy schmancy degrees under their belts while I’m still floundering around in the Olympic-sized academic pool with floaties on my arms. I want a degree, too. I want to move on with my life and start my career and work my way into significance. But as I’m slowly starting to understand, I’m in for the scenic tour of my post-adolescent youth.
AI might not have given me the education I had been hoping for- but it gave me a much different, and ultimately more rewarding education. It taught me a lot about myself, and who I was as a person. It taught me what my true strengths and weaknesses were, and it made me stop and evaluate what it was I wanted out of life. Something I only thought I had given serious consideration to before. That school really taught me that life was hard, and not one for accepting only half-hearted effort.
From what I could tell, most people seem to go through this period of angst, drama and soul-searching when they’re 16 or 17. I guess I just took a little longer.
Wow, even unconsciously through the very stages of life, I’m still a procrastinator, aren’t I?
But most importantly, AI gave me the tools I needed to move on and find my place in the world- friends. I can honestly say that through the pain and tears and suffering of those two years, both in the classroom and out, and whatever balance I owe on my school loan, it was all worth the friendships I had made there.
Good grief, now I’m crying. Sheesh.
The day I left the Art Institute, I was told something that I’ll never forget: “Well, just because you’re not going to school with us doesn’t do a thing to our friendship.” Cheezy and cliché as it may sound, that just took my breath away. I wanted to cry, to laugh, to throw my arms around anyone within striking range, to give my friends every insignificant want or wish they had ever desired.
I would go through hell and back for those people. No exaggeration.
My relationship with Jesus Christ is my foundation, but my friends- not only those in AI but all my friends- they’re my structural support. They’re my beams and anchors and struts and insulation. They’re what keep me standing- or, to put it more accurately, they’re what keep me from falling on my face. And boy, did I have a lot of clumsy moments.
While the last year at AI was hard, the two years that followed were even harder. It’s kind of pathetic to think of how low I was when really nothing had really happened. There was no death in the family. We didn’t go bankrupt. I was still the picture of health for all the fact that I ate junk food all the time and considered a walk to the mailbox my daily exercise. There are so many people that have gone through worse- that are going through worse- that would’ve handled themselves with far more maturity and grace than I did. I seemed to grab stress from wherever I could find it and pile it all on my back, as much as I could fit. I was depressed, I barely went out, and I was quickly losing my safe sanctuary.
My home was no longer a place of security. My sister had taken to her teenage life with vigor, locking herself in her room with her music and mascara for company. My mother grew irritable and short-tempered, and I learned the hard way that her shoulder was no longer available to lean on for comfort. The sting from the wounds she inflicted still ache today. And all the while, everyone around me was moving on with their lives- graduating out of high school or college, getting jobs, making plans, going on dates, marching along the path they’ve prepared for themselves. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t bitterly jealous. There I was, without a direction, without a hope, without a purpose in life.
It’d be another lie if I didn’t admit that that last part- the purposelessness- didn’t get me thinking some things I shouldn’t have thought of.
But enough of the misery!
Two years later, I’m in California trying to live my life. I had spent a year up in Washington to escape the miasmic environment only to find my problems still fixed to me like leeches. Eww. More life lessons to be learned and more hardships to endure. I got a brief taste of living on my own (with a lifelong best friend as a roommate), and of working full-time as a data entry personnel at a Northern division of my mom’s company. If there’s one thing I learned from up there, it’s this- I want a degree, and I want it bad. There’s no way I’m spending the rest of my life sitting in front of a computer, entering in numbers all day long. It wasn’t just mind numbing- it was life numbing.
So, when I didn’t find the answers I was looking for up there, Mom offered to let me come back. And I leapt on it in a heartbeat. I missed California. I missed my friends. I missed my church. I missed In N’ Out burgers. I missed the <i>sun</i>.
But, as they did when I went north, my problems were only too happy to follow me back home. They thought, Hey, we’ve been here before. She didn’t get rid of us then, so she’s not going to get rid of us now.
But I did. Not completely, of course, but I’m still managing. And ironically enough, I have one person to thank for that.
Sid Suarez.
Let me start out by saying I never even knew Sid all that well. He was a face that registered as familiar in a few of my classes back at AI. Best I can remember is that he was nice, very polite, and always had a word of encouragement to those that thought their anatomy fairly sucked (i.e. me). After I left the school, I might have seen him once or twice while I stalked around the campus, visiting friends and teachers. He was just a person I knew. Not really a friend, but not really a stranger.
At the beginning of this year, I read the journal of one of my AI friends on DeviantArt saying that Sid had died.
I can only name a few of the emotions that went through me: surprise- He was so young! I didn’t know he had such health problems; regret- I barely even knew him. Why didn’t I ever try to get to know him better?; sympathy- How devastating! His poor family and friends. I can’t imagine what they’re going through; and lastly, a rather morose curiosity- …what would people say if I died tomorrow?
The last thought came as a result of watching my friends’ reactions to this news. They all commented on how full of life Sid was. How he had accepted death and decided not to let his fear rule his life. How he was a person who truly lived life to the fullest.
What the hell am I doing? I thought about that as I stood at his casket, staring down at his peaceful face. Here I was with a relatively good life- no, a wonderful life- and standing next to this dead person, I thought I knew who the real corpse was. I felt like something had gone wrong up in heaven and someone had switched our names on accident. Sid was the one who deserved his life back, not me. He treasured each day. He made as many memories as he could. His friends valued and cherished him. I felt like someone went through the deck and handed me the best hand, cheating on my behalf before I could tell them to stop. Everyone there thought I was crying because he was dead when really I was crying because he wasn’t alive and I was.
It just didn’t seem fair.
God, I’m crying again. –laughs-
But you know what? There is a happy ending. Because like I said, I’m doing better. And it is completely thanks to Sid. Because he taught me to not take my life for granted. Was I unhappy? Yes, but why? Because I didn’t have a direction in life?
Sid did. He knew what he wanted. And he also knew he probably wouldn’t be able to get to it. But that never stopped him.
As I stood in his funeral, listening to the priest speaking in Spanish to the rest of Sid’s family and friends, I felt a rare moment of clarity. I was going to live my life, and Sid wasn’t. I felt guilty about that, but I’d only feel even more guilty if my life turned out to be a wasted one. I couldn’t let that happen. Here I was, standing at the funeral of someone who could have been a great friend to me if only I had not wasted so many opportunities. I couldn’t let that happen again.
Sid, thank you for the lesson. I wish it hadn’t taken something as extreme as your death to teach it to me, but I promised you that day that this time the lesson would stick. And it has.
It’s been a few months since then. I don’t know if I’m living every day to the fullest, but I’m a helluva lot fuller now than I was before. I’ve gotten in touch with a whole bunch of people that I haven’t talked to in years, and find myself making new friends at every corner. I’ve reunited with a lot of my friends from AI that I had grown distant with, and suddenly my heart feels full again. I’m working on being a better person- I’m trying to be more patient with my family, I’m trying to be more honest with myself, and I’m trying to be more communicative with my friends. I’m trying to remind everyone I know that I love them dearly and that I’m grateful for their presence within my life. I’m trying not to let my own failures stop me from trying stuff anyway. I’m trying to improve.
Notice how the operative word here is “trying”. A lot of the time I still fail or I forget or I’ll do something that seems absolutely right only to realize that it was so completely wrong. But you know what? I’m not falling to my knees anymore. That’s at least some improvement.
You know, I started out wanting to write this for myself. Partly to document my growth over the last four years. Partly to get rid of the irritation that had spurred into my heart after re-reading my first biography- it was really badly written. And partly because I was curious as to what I would say. I never know what I’m going to write when inspiration strikes, so this was as much a process of discovery for me as it likely was for anyone reading this.
In a lot of ways, I’m still the same person that wrote the really bad autobiography three years ago. I’m still crazy. I still love chocolate. I still can’t wear dresses without my usual accessories: a scowl, a snort, and a pair of cheap flip-flops. I still cry when I laugh and I still catch myself wondering if I’m not really from the planet Neptune afterall. I still want to march to my own damn drum.
I still want a significant life, although maybe my definition of “significance” has changed over the years. I still want to write children’s books. I still want children. I still want to meet the man who will one day become my soul mate and life partner and best friend in no less than 5 galaxies. I still want to touch the heart of everyone I meet so that when I die, I might be able to inspire someone else to start living their lives.
If nothing else, the last four years has taught me this- Christianity means signing a user agreement on a plane ticket. Final destination- heaven. But the journey is liberally scattered with millions of layovers, delays, technical failures and the occasional need for an emergency landing. And I’ve found that if I don’t know where my next plane lands, what time I need to get to my next flight, or if I even have a next flight- I’ll still be okay. Because I’ve got that plane ticket. And as long as I have that with me, I can be assured that I won’t be stuck in the airport waiting for someone to tell me where to go. At least I’ll be going somewhere.
Scribbled_Crayon_Heart Community Member 
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