the world famous katbox

Someone told me today that they have hard time reconciling my real life good cheer with whatever the tone of the moment is in the ol’ Kat Box.  I’m cheerful to the point of being annoying most days, and often those same days, the postings in the Kat Box will be sad or serious or pissed.

I think the explanation is that I sort out all of the mayhem in my head right here for all the world to read so that when you deal with me in person (for the lucky few of you that get to bask in the glow of my glorious Katness), you get a fairly happy Kat most of the time.

It’s an interesting contrast to who I used to be, and who I used to be was a mess of exceptionally angry with huge doses of sad and fearful thrown in for good measure.  I was a raging out of control wreck for a long time with a menacing temper (for example, it’s been a few years since I’ve Walker-Texas-Ranger’ed a deadbolted door open with a swift kick).  

My temper is still fairly quick to heat up these days, but it’s just as quick to dispel.  I try not to hold grudges.  Sometimes I need some quiet to collect my wits, but I don’t like to argue anymore—arguing is not a sport that I want to medal in.  I’m not perfect, I still yell, but then I feel like a jackass, so I try not to do it often. 

I’ve learned to let it go, let it go, let it go…sounds so simple to type it out, but it took me years to get a handle on who I am (not who others want me to be, who someone manipulative might wish I was and try to push me to be). Once I got a grip on who I am at heart, then I started evaluating negative situations to determine if I could change anything about them or control any aspect of it.  If I couldn’t change the negative, then I had the choice to roll with it as it was or just walk away. 

I’ve walked away from a lot—not just the Mr. Kats, folks; over the years I’ve walked from friendships and business opportunities and the like because there was more negative than positive.  Walking away was rarely easy, but for the things I get to choose, I want to choose the good stuff, the happy stuff.  And I’ve also chosen to roll with some of the negative, just roll with it, not accept it all as my problem, just go with the flow.  Stampin’ T and I say almost every single day “It is what it is.”  We’re zen like that.

And when I get irked or sad or need to sort something out, I come here because every day isn’t rainbows and unicorns and Hallmark cards.  I type it out.  I make sense of it as I go.  Seldom do I blog about a problem and not feel at least a little better right away.  And then you have your Happy Kat back, the bouncing Tigger-like spaz that I am in person, ready to cheer you on and bake cakes and take calls and send 100 emails and sing songs and be a goofy goober.  I believe it was the wise Spongebob Squarepants who said, “We’re all goofy goobers.”  Find your inner goofy goober and nurture it!

I’m a writer not a talker.

I type somewhere between 4 and 100 billion emails a day.  I talk on the phone maybe twice a day, maybeeeeee.  I am so addicted to blogging that in the less than 36 hours that the Kat Box was down in transition, I was pacing the floor and having what could only be described as a hissy fit.  Need to write, need to type.

But sometimes, you have to say things out loud.

And today, I did pretty good with that, I think.  In one of my blogs that disappeared into the ether in the transition, I talked about my friend with cancer–I don’t think he’d mind me using his name as long as I don’t give out any other personal info.  Kevin has stage four colon cancer with spots on his liver and his lungs right now.  This news is pretty fresh to me, just learned it in the past month, even though Kevin and his wife have been working through this nearly a year now.

Kevin was my first real boyfriend in high school and we are so close in age that the word “cancer” confuses me.  No one our age has cancer, right?? I’m still processing the information really.

Got to have a short visit with Kevin a couple weeks ago, and he said some good stuff to me, things that were good to hear, good for the heart and soul.  Got me all teary-eyed indeed, and I was pretty much speechless on the spot. 

So then I had to decide what I wanted him to know most, because there are so many things to say!  Think back to any single person in your life who was important to you; what would you want to tell them?  Do you thank them for passing on their love of crazy fast cars?  Do you thank them for spoiling the snot out of you so much that you now operate under ridiculously unreasonable expectations?  Do you thank them for class rings and passed notes and mixed tapes (god, I love mixed tapes/CDs, they are SUCH a gift!)??  What do you say?

I thought about it, and I decided what I most wanted to tell Kevin.  I went to see him this afternoon, and I basically told him this, which I don’t mind sharing because it’s so very true: Thank you for telling me I was a worthwhile person at a time when I really didn’t know it; thank you for telling me that I was a good, special, beautiful person even though I couldn’t always hear it back then, couldn’t accept it.  Kevin’s positive opinion of me made a difference that I’ve carried with me all this time; he pointed out to me back then that I was not broken, was not damaged goods, was perfect just as I was. 

And that’s a lesson that I’ve carried on through the years—-if you’ve ever been in a moment of personal crisis with me and you’re falling apart on me, you know I will tell you that you are perfect just as you are, that you are worthwhile and great, even if you are in transition, a work in progress, that you are perfect to me.  Only in comprehending Kevin’s cancer did I recognize that the lessons he taught me way back in high school I still carry with me and use every day—and isn’t that incredibly cool? 

I know it might sound cheesey, but we are all our life’s experiences mushed into the here and now…so who taught you what you know?  Who taught you to love ranch dressing on captain’s wafers?  Who introduced you to Slayer? Who took you mountain biking for the first time?  Maybe there’s someone you should thank, and if you’re feeling especially brave, maybe you should say it out loud.

Thanks, Kevin, and I wish you and your wife Brenda good things as you push through this, as you best the beast together.