Love you madly

A few weeks ago mom gave me a ribbon-bound booklet (the word booklet is a link to the book) of some stories and poetry you had written for a project for your 9th grade English teacher. It consisted of various journal entries, poems, and articles that you had written throughout the year. It was bound together by three tiny pieces of pink ribbon and I pictured you meticulously tying them together and then I thought, "You probably stole these from some unsuspecting little girl or a cat's toy or something."

I am not sure what it was entirely what it was that took me so long to finally read it; perhaps I was afraid of what I might find in it. I have spent a lot of time trying to gather the broken pieces of me and shelter what little bit is still intact, but you can’t spend your life running from the pain. So I read it, and I am glad that I did. It was like I was seeing your quirky personality and sarcastic tone come to life again on paper. As I was reading it, I could hear your voice saying the words out loud. At the bottom of some of the entries you added a personal commentary, obviously feeling the need to explain the entry to your teacher. It made reading the poems and stories so bitter sweet; knowing how much thought you put into the project as whole, a project about your uncertain future. Some of the entries were heartbreaking while some I literally had tears rolling down my face. There is something about keeping your personality alive that is intoxicating to me and I feel like these writings truly capture the essence of who you were.

The first line of page one is “before you begin reading though, I have some things to explain to you about me”. You are the only person I have ever known that would need to explain to your readers your insane thoughts. I read that line and thought to myself, “Yeah, ya do, that is the understatement of the year”. You go on to explain that, basically, you are the best writer in the world and by withholding your talent (“gift”) from your audience you were somehow depriving the world of something really important, like oxygen. Ha! It is just so you, to fluff your own tail feathers. You even take the time to thank your humble teacher for projecting you into the depths of your talent. You explain the order and “intensity” of your compositions so that your audience can see your “strategy”. In the true spirit of you, you end the first page with, “Have fun. Be good. And may the force be with you! Love you madly, Chelsea Lynn Kiessling.”

After the introduction, comes what the first entry of your “poems” section, a poem you named “Dear Me-In the Future”. It is a poem about 5 years from now, now being May 21^st, 2008. Obviously, you never made the five year mark, but reading it was softening and peaceful, none the less. I laughed so hard at so many parts of this poem and felt the crushing loneliness in others. It wasn’t until I got to your personal commentary on Dear Me- In the Future that the weight and impact of your death was truly felt.  The last line in your commentary is “I can’t wait to see what comes of me in 5 years!” I almost expected to turn the page and discover that they were blank because I know that you only had a chance to partially fulfill those 5 years. But luckily, the pages were filled with even more of your crazy, cynical, impossible banter.

Your personality seemed to infect the world and everyone in it, and I have all but given up trying to figure out how this could happen to you, but reading something that came straight your own thoughts has given me a new sense of resilience. Whether it is a poem about a pet squirrel, a story about revenge, or a review of the greatest invention in the world, the waffle iron, there will be things that we will stumble across our whole lives that will bring you back into our minds. For the rest of our time here there will be sentiments of you in everything that we do, little reminders of the great impact that you had in our lives.  No matter what, you will remain in our hearts and we will always “love you madly”.