Shattered

I'm stuck.

And it's beginning to show.

My creativity is falling away from me. I've barely touched my harp all year except for business, and I've let guitar, cello and piano fall by the wayside. I've quit taking walks with my camera, and I've even quit drawing and painting and scribbling. I haven't knitted or crocheted for months and have no notion to go back to it.

What if I'm not an artistic person? What if I was just playing pretend to fit in? If I'm not creative, what am I?

I can't even describe myself, with or without artistic adjectives.

I don't know who or what I am.

I know that: I am female. I am a wife. I am a sister. I am a daughter, granddaughter, niece, aunt, great-aunt...but none of them describe me specifically, and none of these point the way.

Who is Kaitlin?

Insight tells me that this has always been my problem. Or at least, ever since the loss of my brother. In November, 1989, I had a little brother. There are videos of us playing together - me telling and acting out stories for him, reading to him, holding him, loving him. In June 1990, when he was six months old, a Fisher-Price toy claimed his life.

Afterward, my world and anything inside me was shattered.

I remember seeing pictures of me getting older - but I have no thoughts or feelings from those times. I remember hurts - a parent laughing at me for misspelling my name, another parent laughing when I confided what I wanted to be as a grown-up, people ignoring me because of how I dressed, or because I, a rather plain child who knew it for a fact, sat in a corner and watched and hoped that someone would come talk to me because I was too crippingly shy to go up to someone myself.

All I remember is hurt. And yet I know there were happy times - Summer in Cody, Wyoming where I got to ride horses and took my first ride on a four-wheeler.

Actually, that's the only happy time I had until reaching Spain.

Spain opened up the world for me. I remember having my first conscious thought, making friends, trying new food, seeing old, forgotten palaces, fountains, and treasured art. Those nine months enabled me to feel fourteen years' worth of feelings.

And then we had to return to the States. And I closed up again, unknowingly, until my senior year of high school (which was by turns torturous and hysterical). I remember flashes of memories - visits to Spain, a perfect Thanksgiving, a lovely harp teacher, art classes, ice skating.

But I can't remember most of my life and it plagues me.

The pieces are scattered too far apart and there's no way I can ever gather them up. Most of my existence is made up of anecdotes and pictures, with nary a real thought or feeling to connect the twenty-four years I've been alive.

And it looks like this pattern will continue.

Because I keep getting hurt. I keep trying to remember. And I keep trying to discover who Kaitlin really is.

That's why shows like Dollhouse are so poignant for me. The search for identity, the core of your being, your soul, knowing who you really, truly are...the search continues. There are no easy answers.

I've resorted to lists.

"Describe Kaitlin in 10 movies" or "10 foods Kaitlin loves that describe her" or even "music that sounds like Kaitlin". But there are no words, really. At least, I haven't found them yet.

In my mind, I know that if I'm a Christian (and this is a debate I have at least once a day), I'm God's child. He made me. He knit me together. HE knows me, even if I don't. And that's a comfort. If I'm really a believer. But how to know when I can't even describe myself in three words?

I'm just a made-up person. Parts of me are because my parents wanted me to be a certain way. Forced to become an A-type, first-child musician/artist, I grew up thinking that's what I was. But now, at twenty-four, I realize my younger sister is the First Child, A-Type Musician/Artist. She sells her paintings and gets commissions for more. She evangelizes. She goes to music conservatory and plays in orchestra. She lives in Europe. She is a perfectionist. She always does her best. She practices without being told. She's a grown-up.

While I, four years older, sit alone at home and whimper in a corner, wondering if Kaitlin will ever come out of the box she created for herself when Morgan left.

Because I'm still a little child inside. Waiting for her world to be put back together. And I'm not even sure if it can be done.