You know, I died twice in my life already. The first time was when I was 18, and I learned I would never actually physically grow up. I never got my long awaited growth spurt. I never moved an inch beyond the midget, feminine height I had been since age ten. And I had spent eight years being stuck the same due to a medical condition called Precocious Puberty. I literally never grew up.
All of my hopes and dreams to be a world-changer for the future died sometime in that age, and I died with it. The current day "me" is the zombie carapace of who I used to be. An empty shell. This isn't getting into my abusive mother, abusive backstory, or abusive "origin," so to speak. I was literally ready to "die" die by age 24. I wasn't supposed to live beyond that and with all of my dreams gone and buried by 2004 at the end of high school, I literally had no reason to live on. I had nothing left. No hope. No future. All taken away from me by my own worst enemy, my own body, betraying me.
But I actually "died" twice, in my life. The second one is what I'm talking about today.
After I turned 18 and learned I was doomed to have poor health and an unfinished puberty the rest of my life, I spent the next several years attempting suicide stunts and living real life like Grand Theft Auto. I legitimately had no reason or will to live. My time was over and my dreams were dead. And although I never once got arrested for everything and all the gambling and all the people I physically hurt, there was a brief shining moment where I thought things could turn around and improve for the better. The day I met her. Kaitlyn.
Kaitlyn was, is, and always will be, my soulmate. My literal perfect match. She wasn't made for me, but she was my guardian angel. My real life "Clearance" in the story of It's A Wonderfully Shitty Life. I've written about her before on here.
...Twice.
Describing My Ideal, Dream Girl
I also wrote about my own life and troubled childhood, in the past, which mentally scarred and fucked me up so bad, I still have issues and baggage from it today.
My Experience Struggling with Depression, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, and Never Being "Good Enough"
And I have said how I've always felt that Kaitlyn was too good for me, or that I was never good enough for her. That she seemed too good to be true or real. And in a way, I was right. She died the morning of Saturday, November 3rd, 2012 following a raging fire that took down her whole apartment complex. Only her and a child died out of that whole ordeal, so the news focused more on the child and never showed her face at all. I'm not even sure they mentioned her name on the news, either. It felt like they were actively ignoring her because the kid would elicit more views.
It happened so long ago, that I couldn't even remember the right date for a while, and at first thought it happened Halloween night. But that's because the place I was working at, still had Halloween decorations up even on November 3rd. So sometime along the way, I must have convinced myself she died on Halloween night/November 1st morning, and not the 3rd. But going back and looking on the calendar, yes, she did indeed die on a Saturday morning. That's the only day I sleep in and because I was forced to work a fucking impromptu double-shift, I had missed meeting her for a midnight stroll date, planned for Midnight, November 3rd.
This FUCKING fat piece of shit new guy never showed up for his first day on the job to relieve me of my security desk post at work. We had planned a midnight walk through the city date for 12am after I was supposed to get off work at 11pm. I lived far away from her at the time, but where I worked, downtown Philly, I was halfway to her place and it was much easier to get to her apartment from my job, then from home.
But the stupid piece of shit got lost in traffic, never showed up on time, and I couldn't leave work, and our date had to be canceled. I still think to this day, he was indirectly responsible for her death and if I had a gun, I'd shoot him myself. Or, if I could predict the future accurately, I would've just walked off my post anyway and accepted possibly being fired for leaving it unmanned, so she could be outdoors when the fire happened and still possibly alive to this day.
But people say, things happen for a reason. "It's fate" and all. Well, I don't believe that. I believe life is one big chaotic ball of shit and that if you look at the actual universe and get beyond the rotation of the planets and stars from each other, most of the universe is pure chaos. And it's human fallacy to try to make order to that chaos, when there is none. I can accept the circumstances of that, when it comes to my own life, because that medical condition already "ended" my successful life and future once when I was 18. But to take someone else's life just so you can fuck with me? That is a bit to much chaos, even for me to bear.
So when Kaitlyn died ten years ago to this day, I "died" again. My fucked up medical condition of Precocious Puberty meant I would never become the influential, respectable man I was meant to be. And the one bit of happiness I had left, beyond all possibilities and odds, was then taken away from me and her family that night/early morning, and I "died" again.
I should have literally died. Why her and not me? *I'm* the one who never grew and failed to become a full-sized adult man. I'm the one who already had their hopes and dreams lost, besides her. I'm the one, to this day, isn't afraid of death and have nothing to live for. Her life would flourish if she were still alive today, and I am stuck here, incapable of doing fuck-all about this shitty Dystopia we all are living in.
Kaitlyn had the kind of warmth and radiance that seems inhuman. She was like an angel from Heaven. A BIG, tall, 6'3.5", redheaded angel. Her kindness and warmth seemed impossible. She was grounded in reality and not cloying sweet or naïve. She would, on rare occasions, swear. So she wasn't someone who came off fake and phony. However, she had a level of patience and tolerance with humanity I can never achieve.
I hate most human beings. Most people are fucking stupid, selfish, and destructive. They think they're special for existing and contribute absolutely fucking nothing to the species, let alone most of the planet. I'm not even saying this in an angry mood. I just mean it. I have this mindset where I actually WANT to and NEED to contribute to the species, as a whole. In any small way I can. Most people don't "care" enough to worry about how their existence makes life better or worse for the people around them. This never even crosses their mind.
And that's what I hate about most people. Their sheer innate selfishness. And their mediocre mindsets where the term "average" doesn't disgust and repulse them like it does me. Most people exist pointlessly, but if you put a gun to their head, will beg for their lives as if they now of a sudden matter, when their entire existence flies in the face of that. Kaitlyn knew this about me very well. And she loved me, despite it all. Because to her, she thought she could make me see people in the way she sees people. And while I'll never get to know who was right between our unofficial wager, I do respect the hell out of her for that.
To put it in other words, Kaitlyn made me a kinder, better person. A more empathetic and less angry person. She had such warmth to her, that she was even able to melt my absolute zero, cold-wind heart. It's not as if Kaitlyn didn't understand what I thought about people and social relationships. It's just that she had a different perspective on it.
In some small way, she agreed with me that people are stupid and self-centered. But she just chose not to focus on that. Simply put, she was the ultimate optimist. She KNEW people were negative and usually selfish and easily manipulated. Kaitlyn was nowhere near as smart as me, but she was much more wise and intelligent than most people. (If we were to use IQ scores, I'm a 150 and she was about a 125-130. Not that IQ is the truest sign of intelligence.)
What I'm saying is, the more time I spent around her, the more empathetic and forgiving I became to the world around me. And mind you, this was in the shithole city of all shithole cities, Philadelphia! Quite literally the most negative, vile, pessimistic place in America. I literally had to use Google right now to come up with an accurate analogy, but Kaitlyn was like the impossibly-bright quasar in the deadest, most black-hole filled part of space, drowning out all the darkness around her, even my own.
As someone who's own body became their worst enemy by 2012, I felt like I didn't deserve her. But Kailyn was street smart, despite her middle-class Annapolis upbringing. She had a state trooper dad (who was 6'2.5", so an inch shorter than her), a gardener mother (who was 5'10"), and a sassy little sister who was married before her, Juliet (who was 5'9.5").
She didn't grow up affluent or shielded from reality. She was bullied early on for both her height and weight. She had guys cheat on her in high school and college and admit they were only using her for sex or emotional validation. She also disliked being so tall herself; although nowhere even remotely close to how much I despise my own height in being so short, 4.5" below her. Kaitlyn had been through some stuff, and didn't live this squeaky clean, problem-free life. I guess, one could theorize, this, combined with her family support, is how she was able to become the person she was.
Love made her the loving person I knew her to be. While I came from an opposite household; an abusive mother I wished died every night and never came home, who I started calling by first name instead of referring to as "mom" as early as age 14, along with growing up dirt poor, sometimes moving across the country every year or so, with friends who eventually betrayed me while I was in school, all while staying the exact same height and looks, since age ten and "peaking" at age ten, like some kind of somewhat-taller Gary Coleman. I started out in school as a star athlete and happy and well-adjusted, and was voted "Most Likely To Be Our School Shooter" by senior year, and ready to literally take my own life, not just figuratively die.
Me and her came from two very different backgrounds. She had a rough upbringing, hating herself and her body, but with loving family to support her the entire way through. I had a rough upbringing, hating myself and my body, but with no loving family to support the entire way through, and in fact, an abusive mother making everything that much more worse. Okay, so maybe we weren't that different, then.
I spoke before about my past life. My mother moved around a lot, from Virginia Beach, to St. Petersburg, Florida, to South Central, Los Angeles, California, until I was in the 3rd grade and we finally permanently settled in my grandmother's hometown, Philadelphia. I then made three friends at school who were unpopular outcasts at first, and later turned their backs on me as they mentally and physically outgrew me through high school. By senior year, I lost all hope in having a better life and started first seeing my main psychologist of the week; the one I'd spend 14 years seeing every Thursday afternoon at 6pm, from early 2003, at age 17, until late 2017, at age 31. I'd usually have to see a secondary, college or backup, shrink or therapist throughout the week.
That mental health dosage twice a week, plus a fuckton of every anti-depressant on the market, is the only reason I didn't take my own life from suicide-by-cop or jumping off a high building or something (insurance covered 100% of it all; though I'm not sure if that's normal for Medicaid, or a special case regarding me). 90+ percent of my entire life has been shit and filled with hopelessness, and most of it wasn't even my fault or my own doing. Kaitlyn was the ONLY ray of hope throughout that entire experience. My life literally didn't become less shitty, until I moved out of the US, which was only at the end of 2019; just a few years ago as of the time of writing this. Kaitlyn is the ONLY thing I wouldn't throw away, from all of those previous years of fuck-ups and misfortune.
When I was 18, I tried to join the army, to die in some pointless "war on terror," only to be told I was ten pounds overweight at 205 pounds and they wouldn't accept me until I lost the ten pounds first (I never did). I then wasted time in art school, in 2005, just like Adolf Hitler did! In 2006, I went to Community College and messed around there while working part time, until Spring 2009. I got my Associates Degree from them and started working full time, but this was right AT the time of the US housing recession, so finding good work was hard. I did a few sales jobs in 2009 and 2010 before I joined a security company in 2011 and worked for them, part time, for three years, while most people around me were completely unemployed at that time. I also did freelance executive protection work as a bodyguard in 2013.
After being fed up with all of that and with the economy SLOWLY recovering, I worked for a media company in 2014, and then went back to college in 2015 to complete my undergraduate degree, while also working part time as a concierge in one company in 2015-2017, then another, worse, but higher-paying company in 2017-2019. I was in college the whole time, first being wrongfully expelled, before suing the university. Then completing my undergraduate degree at a separate university, before spending the next two years getting my English Masters. In late 2019, I left the US to start teaching English in South Korea.
In short, it took me 14 fuckin' years just to do what most people get done in 5; earn a half-decent college degree and get a stable job.
Meanwhile, Kaitlyn spent her 18 to 21 working at a bank. One company, Wells Fargo, the whole time. She got her associates degree at a community college in Maryland, then moved to Philly, at one of the local Wells Fargo branches like she previously worked for, and was working on getting her Registered Nurse degree part-time, and was almost a nurse by the time she died.
She worked at a bank and did nursing school part time. That's it. Her life was so stable and so much better than mine. Compared to the complicated and convoluted shit I had to go through for 14 years, all while seeing up to three psychologists every week, at some points throughout it all.
Kaitlyn was so much "better" than I was, in life. So much kinder, nicer, more stable, and more positive. Although I definitely win in the "who has a worse life" competition, her life was not all perfect and rosy, like I said, and her parents started out working class, before working their way into middle class, over the years.
I was 25 years old for most of 2012, seeing as my birthday is in November. Kaitlyn was 21 and her birthday was October 10th. Kaitlyn had a more stable life than I did, and that I didn't come close to having until ten+ years later. I always felt like we might not have "gone the distance" due to how fucked up and dark my life was, and how stable and sunny her outlook was on life.
But like I said in the past, she was the one who asked me to make her my wife. She was the one who proposed to me (in a non-emasculating way, mind you!) She was the one who felt like I was marriage material, despite our ONLY arguments/fights being about my supposed "lack of confidence" and the "mean words I say to myself," that she said she wouldn't even tolerate someone saying about a friend, let alone me saying them about myself. I'll never, ever, truly know if she truly "loved" me or not. But it seems like a 51% chance she more likely did truly love me, to the 49% chance it was a fleeting romance.
As I said before, I saw her profile on 2012's OKCupid dating site, but didn't talk to her first because she was attracted to "confidence" in men, and was way taller than me, so I figured I had no shot. But you could see the visitors to your profile on there, she saw me visit her profile, followed me back to mine, read my entire profile summary (it was as long as a book; you can tell by this, I can write quite a lot), was impressed by every word, and initiated the first contact message to me.
Pretty much every milestone in our relationship, she made the first move in. Wrote to me first, called me on the phone first, made "first date" plans first, where she arrived extra early at the diner, already seated, and sat for 95% of the entire lunch, because she didn't want to intimidate me with her height. When she DID finally get up and we were standing "almost eye to eye," she was actually a little annoyed that I was "only" a few inches shorter than her, and it wasn't a 7 to 9 inch height difference, like she assumed it'd be. (I just told her I was short, but never stated my actual numbers of the 4.5 inch height deficient. She must have assumed I would be 5'8" or shorter, so expected me to be much shorter than I really was.)
But still. She was one of the only women to ever show that kind of interest in me first, even though I was VERY much physically and romantically attracted to her the entire way. When a woman you consider to be a 9 in looks, and a 10+ in personality, makes the first moves on you, it can be quite overwhelming and intimidating. In my case, it even seemed implausible, so for a long time, I suspected she was a catfish, troll, or scammer, and didn't even take her seriously until we first talked on the phone and her soothing, sweet, feminine voice melted my soul like butter, and hardened me downstairs like diamond. She really did have a damn sexy, feminine, extremely hot speaking voice. Especially for a girl her size, which one might assume would be a deeper or more sultry voice.
She also had her own single apartment by 21, which I never had until 28, and I was still living at home with my abusive mom and earning $7.50 an hour during this time at the age of 25. And although I felt like a loser during this recession time of 2012, she NEVER once made me feel bad about it or like I wasn't making enough money for her. Not once.
We got along so well and everything just "clicked" and was automatic with her. I never had to try to "impress" her, like with most other women, and like how most men have to do with with a woman. We almost always enjoyed each other's company. Like I said, the only thing she ever disliked about me was my lack of self-esteem at the time. She would say I "was her ideal man if not for the lack of confidence and self-hate." And I, of course, took "be more confident" to mean, "magically grow six inches taller, get a bigger dick, get a gym body with abs, get a better looking face, and become an Alpha Male/Chad." And that (mis)interpretation of her words, always upset me and made me feel insecure.
But in short, we spent most of 2012, from January until that one November 3rd, enjoying each other's company, with our love blossoming and flourishing. I never felt wanted by anyone until I met her, and I'd have done anything to keep her happy. She truly was my "soulmate" or whatever you want to call a perfect match.
And then she died in a fire, on November 3rd, 2012. Ten years ago, now. Ten fuckin' years... Where does the time go? She was taken from me, but I'm still here, somehow. Life truly is unfair, isn't it?
Well, this is my anniversary post for you, Kaitlyn. The only glimmer of light in my dark and hopeless existence. The woman who saved my life after I died once, before she literally died, and I figuratively "died" again. I'll never, ever forget you, babe.
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