Ugly Truth

9.12.23

When Keanu Reaves said “Grief changes shape, but it never ends.... People have a misconception that you can deal with it and say, 'It's gone, and I'm better.' They're wrong.”

I felt that....

I fucking hate today.

It doesn't matter what glamorous fucking thing I do to make it better.

I even had my wedding day on this day, to make it a better memory.

Couldn't go to my good friends wedding Sunday, and its been killing me I couldn't be there. Shit happens, and its whatever I know but I hate that I couldn't be there and that its been so long since I've seen her and all my girlfriends and I couldn't go. First my baby sitter cancels due to an emergency, then I lost my debit card and the banks were closed. Everything could've possibly kept me from that wedding did, and everything happens for a reason so we'll just leave it at that,....

So back to today.

fuck. all the feels. here we go.....

Today I got my hair done with Aurora at aunt Mattie's salon, she got her nails did hair did, me too. Talked for hours with Mattie.

took Rori to practice, and then made tacos. normal day right.

Except it just never is.

Now I lost my phone and its no where to be found like literally.

I am pretty sure I broke my toe, hitting it on the kids bench,.

Picked my skin after doing so good the other day and now have photoshoot tomorrow. ergh.

And just fuck. It leads me to now. Everyone is sleeping, phone is still lost in the abyss, and I'm sitting here. With it.

The guilt

The trauma

The memories

The sounds

The feeling of me gripping Matties hand while they resuscitated her after the wrongfully administrated Narcan based off assumption before actually accessing the scene.

She hadn't overdosed on drugs.

That might had been her past, but this time she took all of her antidepressants. And how they reacted with the narcan adrenaline shot, was not bringing her out of unconsciousness but instead she went into a full blown seizure,. I will never forget with the police officer found the bottle of antidepressants on the floor and looked up at the paramedics and told him to page CHC and tell them they need a airlift. I could see in his face he just realized that they're decision to Narcan "just another drug addict" just severed my mothers chances of coming out of this. He knew it, and I knew it. And I squeezed Matties hand tighter....

You wanna know why I hate today?

the real reason?

Because I didn't fucking follow my gut.

My mom all my life told me I have different sense of intuition and that I need to listen it. I need to follow it even if it scares me. On 9.11.01 I was six and I came out at 7am and told my mom I wasn't going to school, i was sick and fake coughed. She said uhm okay you're better at acting than that tf? You're going to school you're fine. I threw a whole fit and told her I wasn't going something bad is going to happen mommy I can't go.

She made me go.

I remember her picking me up about two hours later and pacing in the kitchen on the phone with my grandfather, saying "I dont know how she knew dad, but she knew"

I was watching the new on the Twin Towers in our living room.

I knew.

In 2007 when Stacy Peterson was missing, I had know idea who she was or what the story was I walked by our living room and I said he killed her, threw her body in the river.

My mom said excuse me?! I said, yeah he killed her. Her body is in the river. and I walked back to my room. She was like wtf? I was 12? What did i know about Stacy Peterson? Well I knew she was dead, and her husband killed and her body was in the river. Weeks later they found the cement bricks and other evidence in his boat.

Spooky.

I have done this several other times. Would ask my mom aren't you going to pick up the glass? And then a vase would fall.

I was four when I cam out and sat on her lap and told her "They're not going to let me stay long" clear as day four years old. she said "what do you mean baby? i replied " The people that gave me to you, they're not going to let me stay long, just a, moment"

Big words for someone so little.

So for as long as I can remember she's told me to listen to my gut, even if it scares me.

I think my body knew, the moment she took the meds honestly, when was very late on 9.11.13. And that night there was a big storm, she tried to call me, and I wasn't getting them. I didn't even get her voice until the following night. but all that night I kept telling my friend Chirsta that something wasn't feeling right.

she followed me home to get me there safe and the power was all out in quincy, and I wasn't getting my husbands calls either. She left and then shortly after Steven got home from work.

Steven hadn't watched Remember Me (I had seen in theatres with my mom)

So we watched it.

As my mother was writing her goodbye letter on 9.11.

To this day I haven't watched it since. I literally cant even bring myself to try.

I have no interest in ever trying to.

9.12.13

My best friend Mattie and I skipped school to go get our hair cut because we had a coupon. Maybe somehow that was a trigger for me today? Who knows, at this point everything is,. and I cant avoid them all.

We wanted to go show my mom our new hairs, and so we were gonna stop by there and smoke a doobie, hang with the momma for a sec. She had been looking for me the night prior down the road at my friend David's house.

I remember saying to her several times that something wasn't right, something felt off.

We got to my moms and I went in, and she was sleeping..

Well, I thought she was.

Now this is part I don't talk about.....

quite frankly have never talked about, and just recently in the last year finally actually admitted out loud to my therapist. (mind you served many self destructing battle with myself from internalizing all this for so long)

Up until then, and me writing this the only humans who knew what I'm about to write, is Mattie, My husband, and the neurologist that handled my mothers case because I asked him had I called 20 minutes previously, would it had made a difference. His answer was there was no way it could have, she more than likely was already brain dead by the time I got there the FIRST time.

Now, he said most likely.... And it may have just 19 minutes.

But that 19 minutes has haunted me for 10 years now.

You see, 19 minutes is BOTH my mothers and my favorite book by our favorite author.

19 minutes can change your life.

And never ever, ignore your gut.

I saw my mom sleeping in her bed, and I called out her name and I figured ehh, she's nappin we'll just stop by after we run to Meijer...

I went to go to get back in Mattie's car, and I had a feeling maybe just for a moment, that I should go check her. I had a feeling something was not okay and everything in my body told me to go back in, but also every bone in my body felt scared for a second.

I shrugged it off as anxiety and ignored these feelings.

You see I often time overthink things, feel things strongly compared to most, and often times its just me getting in my own head, being an empath or just simply anxiety.

But more so than its ever been any of those things, my intuition has been right. Spot on.

And I chose to ignore it.

When she said to never do that, even if it scares me.

19 minutes later we were in Meijer had a couple things in our cart were going to get some stuff we needed, and get my mom some stuff before I went home and mattie went home.

My moms friend Sharon called me hysterically 19 minutes after I left my mothers driveway.

She said (well as much as I could make out) was...

"KAELIN YOU NEED TO GET HERE RIGHT NOW THERE PARAMEDICS HERE SOMETHING IS WRONG YOUR MOM SOMETHING IS WRONG COME NOW"

Now see this is where is gets heavy, because many many people think I found my mom.

And I did.

Many people might say, why would you leave here there?

How could you leave her there?

Right?

No.

Its the brains instinctual reaction to protect yourself from fear/harm.

My body sensed something was wrong and I went away from it.

Its a normal response.

I guess.

That's what my therapist said.

And that tiny fraction of a chance, that I could have done something 19 minutes prior has almost made me lose my god damn mind.

It doesn't matter what any professional says.

What Steven said, or Mattie even,.

I know there was a fragment of a chance, and that's all there is.

My two favorite quotes from the book are....

“In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn; color your hair; watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five.

In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world; or you can just jump off it.”

“If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?”

― Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes

These two quotes, were my favorite two quotes in the book BEFORE SHE DIED.

INSANE

In that 19 minutes, I wish that true instinct would have kicked for naïve, ignorant little ole me.

I wish I could back just for one second, and change my actions.

Checker her, given her cpr, because she was napping.... She was dying in a pool of her own vomit.

I wish I would've assessed the scene before the paramedics and first responder made a huge mistake.

But we wont go down that road, yet. Lets just stick to what happened.

We get to the house, and I will never forget one of the turning point moments in my life just then.

I was standing in my mothers living room of her little green house, her favorite place besides Siesta Key Beach and sitting on the porch watching a storm roll in with her daddy...

I was gripping Mattie's hand, tight.

She was unconscious and instead of just doing routine CPR they administered Narcan adrenaline stimulator to jump start her heart because they had ASSUMED she had overdosed on heroine because well, opioids were a great love of hers.

Except, they should have assessed the scene, first.

Because instead of the Narcan bringing her out of unconsciousness, it sent her into a very scary physical seizure.

And I will never forget the moment that the police officer in her bedroom picked up the pill bottle and looked up at me and to the paramedic and said page CHC and tell them we need an airflight immediately. In that moment, both he and myself realized he and his paramedics order and decision to give her Narcan had severed any chance of her surviving this.

I could see it in his face. He thought was "just another drug addict" and his orders to give her narcan, just killed her. That's like taking 1000 units of adrenaline to the heart, with no heroine to counteract and instead it gave the antidepressants the speedy fucking reaction they needs to eat my mothers brain.

But she was just another drug addict.

No she was my mom. And she had touched heroine in over two years.

And what led her to heroine wasnt even her fault. It was her doctors, the ones she had the one she was married to. Nahhhhh, not just a drug addict,. not at all. That's too simple.

Everytime I talked or said momma momma im here she would seize harder.

That was a good sign, they said.

She's responding to your voice, they said.

Once they got her to the hospital about .25 miles down the same road we lived on...

You'll need to go back to our family room because we need to get her stable and everytime she hears you she seizes harder.

I should've just stayed quiet

The same best friend of hers i grew up with as like my aunt, was the one telling me I needed to leave the room.

I guess thats procedure, but I hate that fucking room. I just paced.

911 steps

I counted every one

Yeah I know.

911

before she came back in and said they cant her to stop seizing the helicopter is here its taking her to Bronson in Kalamazoo and you can follow it.

I did.

After getting there it was realized shortly after she had only overdosed on Antidepressants.

The whole bottle because the week prior I went with her to her doctor and she had said her antidepressants were no longer working right, he wrote her something else and sai it might take a few to work correctly, please call or admit yourself if you have any suicidal thoughts or anything.

She just took the whole bottle and short circuited brain instead.

And she knew what she was doing, she was an RN nurse.

The way her body responded to the narcan with the high amounts of antidepressants in her body, sent her into a seizure.

And they finally got her body to stop seizing, but her brain still was.

Her neurologist said, its like computer. if you keeping turning it on and off and on and off again and again, it will eventually short circuit and break.

And her brain computer, fucking broke.

Her heart might not have stopped until I pulled "the plug" on her life support on 9.15.13 at 2:33 am, was her time of death.

But she took her own life on 9.11.13

and she died on 9.12.13

Would that 19 minutes have made a difference ? I may never know and my guilty conscious never lets me forget it.

I do know that she didn't get sick until very early in morning

I know deep down, that I could have saved her in that 19 minutes and even I couldn't have, could have at least fucking tried, harder.

Listened to my gut, louder.

Because if knew what i know now, i would have had them give her activated charcoal instead of narcan to absorb the toxins in her body.

I would have done CPR or had them give her CPR or both, had I known she was dying.

I would have done, something.

Instead I went to the store.

I thought that I was overthinking and over feeling and I left her there in her own puke.

So. I fucking hate today.

I hate that nothing I ever seem to do to make today happy, works.

I hate that got married today three years ago, to make it a better day because it just shaddows a horrific one.

I hate that I hate today.

Ten years later.

Because people die, but the grief you feel after someone dies, doesn't.

Because it may be a fucking decade, but it feels like yesterday and I can still taste her covergirl lipstick on my lips from her grabbing my face and kissing me goodbye 48 hrsy when I dropped her off after we had dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings.

I hate today because I can't wear covergirl liptick anymore

Because it tastes like her, smells like her

I hate today because of those 19 stupid mother fucking minutes

I hate today because today, is the day I drove 95 mph behind a helicopter

as it carried my best friend, to her demise.

I hate today, because i didn't listened my gut, like she always said to.

I hate today because I ignored clear sign of her planning to end her life.

I hate today, because Id could back, there is so so much I would do different.

I would go, sit up with her all night.

Because now, I know, how to save a life.

I will always hate today.

Because today sucks,

Because today, stole my favorite person from me.

And time doesn't matter because it doesn't make it easier.

It makes it all the more harder to keep her alive and try to have my babies know their Mimi, who's not even here.

So Fuck You today.

Fuck you medical system

Fuck you opioids

Fuck you depression

Fuck you to stigma that used to dark cloud over mental illness and still does.

Fuck you people who weren't there for her and didn't help her when she needed you most

Fuck all of you because she was always there, when you needed her, isn't that right?

Fuck you to everyone who thought her addiction was about them, and failed to realize it was about her self coping from trauma she never spoke about.

I will speak about mine,

I will make sure people know its okay to speak their ugly truths

That its okay, to not be okay.