Light, Dark, and Everything in Between

She had a collection of Alice in Wonderland books and still, at 25, dreamed of finding a secret garden. She never related to anyone dead or alive more than she did Sylvia Plath, a tragedy she both romanticized and despised. She was curious like Alice and longing like Sylvia. She loved excess, a minimalist she was not. Consider her a Marie Antoinette type (except with empathy,) a lover of celebrations and beautiful, material things. She was a Zelda Fitzgerald, a Virginia Woolf, and maybe even a little bit Holly GoLightly. She was sad and beautiful, intelligent and destructive, sensitive and stubborn. She was hopeful while also depressed. She was addicted to art, youth, beauty, and substances that both numbed and enlightened her. She was enthralled by the sea, felt most herself under the sun, and wanted to see the world. She was obsessed with Ernest Hemingway’s home in Key West and dreamed of having a home just like it, crawling with cats left and right. She was multifaceted, complicated, and passionate. She was an Aries, a creative, a dreamer.

She was the love of my life. It took only 25 years for the world to engulf her in both love and sadness. 25 years of life until she took her own.

Now, five years later, nearing her 30th birthday, I’ve come home and found a surprise from the girl who still holds my heart.

***

I left for the Army when I was 23 and have been traveling around the US since. Five years it’s been since I’ve seen my family and since I’ve entered my childhood home. I didn’t know how to return to my hometown after hearing about her suicide. I stayed away as long as I could. With my father becoming ill, I reluctantly decided to return to be with what’s left of my family.

It’s strange driving down these streets. Driving past places we used to go together. The hill that overlooked the city where we used to sneak off to and drink and kiss until our lips were numb. The restaurant I used to take her to every time that time of the month had arrived when she, like clockwork, craved garlic parmesan wings and french fries. Our high school, where I first laid eyes on her. Beautiful even with braces, but completely broken. I could see it before even speaking to her. She was completely beaten and broken by life, but still smiling with her mouth open wide and full of metal.

I turn into my driveway. My parents still weren’t home yet. I’d have some time to myself before an overwhelming welcome followed by endless questions ensued. I walk through the garage like I always did put the key in the lock, and was unsurprised that it still worked. My parents were firm believers in “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” I turn on the light. The house still smells the same, it’s almost haunting. I walk through the living room, not much has changed, and stand to face my brown bedroom door. So many memories flood me, but every single one includes her.

I open the door and it’s like I’m transported back in time. It’s exactly the way I left it when I was 23, just five years ago.

Without hesitation, I open my closet, grab a box that sits on the highest shelf, hidden away.

She, metaphorically speaking, is in this box. Art that she made for me, letters and poems that she wrote for me, a plethora of pictures of us, a sweater of hers, all things I held onto even though we had been broken up for years before I joined the Army.

I begin to sort through it all. Smiling at the photos, laughing at the letters, crying over the poems. I smell the black and white sweater but it no longer smells like her. It smells of dust now, the way anything does when it’s been put away for years. I put the sweater aside and see that there is one last item in the box, one I didn’t expect to see in this box of possessions. It was her book, her little black journal that she carried with her everywhere. She said no one had ever seen inside of it but her. How did it get here?

I don’t open it. Would she want me to? It was personal. I hear the garage door open, followed by my mother yelling my name in her thick Boston accent. Here we go.

Dinner wasn’t that bad. My dad used to be the one to make dinner every night but now with him forced to become one with his bed, my mom cooked. Spaghetti and meatballs. They asked me about my travels and I asked them about what they’d been up to in my absence. It felt strange being around that table, eating and talking, with them. I get up to clean the dishes while my mom walks my dad back to bed. There’s an undone puzzle on the table in the formal living room. Puzzles were something my dad was very into, something she, my girl, would help him with. My mom goes to shower and I sit on the edge of my parent’s bed. “How long has that puzzle been sitting unfinished?” I ask my dad. He sits in silence, pondering my question.

“Kat came by. Years ago while you were still at basic training. She came over with that Spanish dish we always talked about her making for us someday. We started that puzzle together. Spent hours on it. I knew we could get it done the next day if she’d come back...but she didn’t. She spent some time in your room but I didn’t see anything unchanged in there when she left. That was a Saturday. On Monday, it was all over the news.” He didn’t have to say what. I knew what he was referring to. I remember getting the call about her suicide. “It didn’t feel right to finish it without her, but it didn’t feel right putting it away either. It’s just your mom and me in this big house, we don’t really use that living room anyway, so the puzzle has been there ever since.”

Five years a puzzle sat on a dusty living room table. Five years ago she came into my room and left me something: that little black book.

I return to my room and open the book. “Chapter One: A hurricane is born” is written on the first page. She always referred to herself as hurricane Kat. Especially when she broke my heart, multiple times. I begin to read and realize, this is a book, a book that she had written about her life, about herself; a memoir. This little black book contained the very essence of who she was and what she thought of herself and the world. Raw and honest sentiments regarding her neverending anxiety and severe depression. A detailed account of her being raped, just months before I met her. Her spiraling in and out of love with life. Her numbness, her pain, her admiration of the world and people. I spent the whole night reading. Reading through pages and pages of tears and joy and recklessness and little hints of light in all of her dark. I read through our chapters and cried because she truly did love me. She truly did love life, just not enough to keep living it.

The book was everything. The book was her. I get to the last page, read it, turn it, and find a note that read:

“Joey, this book was my life, and I may be biased, but I believe it’s worth reading. Young girls around the world can identify with my experiences and my sentiments and say “oh wow, her too.” The way I felt when I read ‘The Bell Jar.’ Remember how I felt? I realized I wasn’t the only one with a loud mind and overwhelmed heart. I realized that I was not alone.

I need my family to read this. I need young girls and women from all over the world to read this. When I thought about who could make this possible, my last wish, I knew it was you. You loved me more than I loved myself, which is why I know you will see to it that this book is published.

Thank you for loving me the way you did, unapologetically, intense and unconditional. Thank you for believing in me and for giving me what everyone deserves at least once in their lives: a great love story.

Dedicate the book to my family and to my joey. The book is yours. The money that hopefully comes with it is yours. Stop running, go and settle in place you love, and live life on purpose.

Love always, Kat.”

***

A year has passed. A year of working harder than I ever had. A year of working toward what seemed impossible has come and gone.

Next year, on what would be her 32nd birthday, Kat’s book will be published. She didn’t give it a title but I worked with the editors and we feel pretty good about: “Light, Dark, and Everything in Between.” I think she’d approve.

I received a $20,000 advance on the book though I am still getting paid by the Army for being in the reserves. I was able to provide my dad with a beautiful funeral, relocate my mom to Boston to live with her sister, and I am now living comfortably in a studio apartment in the heart of Key West working as a bartender at a popular Cigar Bar right down the street from the Hemingway House. Just a couple blocks away from bookstores she used to wander around looking for copies of Alice and Wonderland. I’m living in paradise, in a place we both loved. A place where fun and relaxation are encouraged. All of this was made possible through the money I received from the book advance, my savings, and my two incomes.

I get to meet new people all the time. Go on adventures. Spend many days with my toes in the sand, a book in one hand, and a beer in the other. I’m no longer running away from the death of my loved one, no longer running away from my sick dad, and concerned mother. I finally cleared the dust from my guitar and I’m writing songs again. I watch the sunset often. I guess you could say, I’m living my life on purpose.

Hanging above my bed, framed, is the puzzle Kat and my dad worked on just a couple of days before she passed. I was able to finish it, with my dad, before he passed.

Love is a whirlwind.

Life is a rollercoaster.

But both are worth it.