Keeping Up
with the Kardashians.
I think we could learn something from them (no, it has nothing to do with magazine covers, Botox or marrying someone for 72 days. Don’t do that).
I think the Kardashian sisters have something many of us are missing.
There was a season of life that left me alone in school. Most of my friends had graduated & moved away & it was one of the loneliest seasons to date. I was on the brink of tears at any given point and was in the mist of what I could only describe as an internal breakdown. I had held a lot in for a long time. I was lonely, broken, tired, and fearful. And no one really knew what I was walking through.
So obviously I binge watched trash TV (do as I say, Readers, not as I do).
I had followed the Kardashian sisters from the start. I was watching when Kourtney found out she was pregnant and told Scott. I was watching the show pre-Khloe & Lamar and before Kylie’s lips resembled the Grinch’s heart & grew three times their original size.
I had invested in this family. I watched them make terrible decisions. I watched them cry as they confessed to damaged past, and shaky futures.
And I realized I was incredibly envious of them. They let America watch as they fell flat on their faces. They let viewers see heartbreak & setbacks & surprises. But more than that, they all knew the worst & best of each other. Secrets didn’t exist. They knew each other’s hurt & baggage. They fought & they cussed & they screamed, but they didn’t leave.
What freedom to be around people who knew all your skeletons, all the mistakes, but never left?
I craved that. I craved honesty & openness & brokenness more than words could express. I wanted to call my new employer ask “Do you know I’m not okay? And I haven’t been for a while? Are you sure you know what you’re doing hiring me?” I wanted to burst into tears around close friends & family and say “Just ask, I know you can see it. I know you know I am not okay. Ask, and just promise to love me through it. Promise you won’t run when you find out.”
But I didn’t tell. And they didn’t ask.
It wasn’t until almost two years later that I broke. I let myself break into a million pieces. And it was absolutely terrifying and absolutely freeing. And people caught me, just like they would have caught me two years before.
The Kardashian sisters are dysfunctional, narcissistic, broken, and bent. They’ve made more poor decisions the past few years than anyone cares to count. And this doesn't serve as an advocate for their poor choices; it’s the hastiness to confess them, to not bear the secrets alone. To be free.
Because at the heart of sisterhood lies vulnerability.
People who are honest with where they are, where they’ve been and what they are walking through, make the best people.
“ Survivors make the most beautiful people.” -Freefly to Fall
11/18/2014