I spend an overwhelming amount of time in an analytical frame of mind.
I am constantly trying to solve some unnamed riddle, some foggy mystery, some irregular little whodunit nobody else even realizes is underway.
You can ask me, “What’s up?” and I will start somewhere around Chapter Seven.
Not at the beginning.
Never at the beginning.
I start wherever my brain happened to leave off before you interrupted the investigation.
So I invite you into the conversation as though you’ve had a front-row seat the entire time.
Except you haven’t.
You have no idea who the suspects are. You don’t know what happened Tuesday. You haven’t seen Exhibit A through G. Meanwhile I’m halfway through explaining why something somebody said three weeks ago suddenly changes the entire fucking case.
And then I wonder why people are looking at me like:
What the fuck are you talking about?
Fair.
I also get this spectacular deer-in-the-headlights look whenever somebody asks me a question requiring more than one second of actual thought.
It probably looks like I’ve short-circuited.
I haven’t.
Quite the opposite.
The entire factory just came online.
Because I don’t know how to casually think about things.
My brain runs checks and balances.
It looks for the false and the true.
Then it checks the truth for lies.
Then it checks the lie for pieces of truth.
Then it looks at the variables.
Then the variables attached to those variables.
Then the thing nobody mentioned.
Then the thing everybody mentioned a little too much.
Then motive.
Timing.
Tone.
Pattern.
History.
Contradiction.
Context.
Probability.
And I cannot stop thinking about ALL OF IT until everything balances out in the mental accounting department.
If it doesn’t balance?
Fine.
Count it again.
One.
Two.
Three.
Start over.
And again we go.
This is exhausting, by the way.
There are probably people walking around out there who simply think a thought and then move on with their day.
God bless them.
I have never known such freedom.
And all of this thinking gets even more complicated because underneath the detective work, the accounting department, the internal FBI laboratory and whatever poor exhausted motherfucker is running quality control in there—
there is heat.
I have a temper.
Granted, my Mars placement apparently makes sure that temper stays locked in the basement until somebody has pushed me to the absolute fucking edge.
But still.
The heat exists.
There is enough of it in me that, under slightly different circumstances, maybe I should have become a boxer.
For most of my life, though, I didn’t know what to do with anger.
So I turned it inward.
I figured it was better to hurt myself than hurt somebody else.
Better to swallow the anger.
Eat the pain.
Absorb the disappointment.
Excuse the words.
Excuse the actions.
Excuse somebody else’s misguided fucking path because maybe they were hurting too, maybe they didn’t mean it, maybe I misunderstood, maybe I should have been more patient, more forgiving, more evolved, less emotional, less human.
I became very good at making everybody else understandable.
And myself accountable.
That arrangement is bullshit.
But it took me a long time to figure that out.
Since I wasn’t physically using the heat, eventually it found another exit.
Words.
I can weaponize language beautifully.
Sometimes I have my own angry code language—a vocabulary specifically engineered for moments when I am anxious, cornered, hurt or pissed off.
And I am not proud of my mouth in those moments.
I can get downright disrespectful.
Not loud-for-the-sake-of-being-loud disrespectful.
Worse.
Precise.
I know exactly where the soft tissue is.
And when I am angry enough, I can put a sentence directly into it.
That isn’t something I admire about myself.
It’s something I monitor.
There’s a difference.
I am also extremely territorial.
Possessive.
Protective.
Probably slightly unhinged about the perimeter.
Very much like my Teddy Bear dog.
I may not piss on your leg at the park, but once I consider you mine?
Congratulations.
You are inside the fence.
My people.
My family.
My friend.
My love.
My little weird collection of humans I have somehow decided belongs under my protection.
Mine.
And I will absolutely fucking bite anybody who tries to breach the perimeter of my life, my family, you, us.
Again:
Mine.
I know how that sounds.
I also know love is not ownership.
People are not possessions.
Everybody gets autonomy and freedom and blah blah blah, yes, obviously.
But there is some primitive little creature living inside of me that hears, “This person matters to us,” and immediately starts patrolling the tree line.
We can discuss her in therapy.
I’m not perfect.
Not even remotely.
I have a tendency to blow my entire life up when something doesn’t feel right.
I can tolerate uncertainty for an extraordinarily long time, right up until the second I can’t tolerate it at all.
Then suddenly I’m standing in the middle of the metaphorical living room with a can of gasoline asking whether anybody else smells smoke.
I don’t have much patience for bullshit anymore.
Especially lately.
And I cannot stand a lie.
This is one of my least favorite qualities about myself because I genuinely do not know how to leave a suspected lie alone.
Normal person:
“Huh. That doesn’t sound right.”
Me:
Interesting.
Very interesting.
Clear my schedule.
We are going to Gitmo.
I will get to the truth of the lie.
Not necessarily because the truth will change anything.
Not because I plan to punish anybody.
Sometimes not even because the lie matters.
I just need the equation to balance.
That loose number sitting there in the ledger drives me fucking insane.
Something happened.
Something was said.
Those two things do not match.
Why?
And now the investigation begins.
I hate this about myself sometimes.
Just let people lie, Kel.
Seriously.
Let them lie.
Let them tell their strange little stories.
Let them rearrange history.
Let them protect themselves.
Let them believe whatever version makes it easier to look in the mirror.
You do not have to subpoena the universe every time somebody’s math is off.
Except—
here is the part I’m still working on:
There is a difference between needing to know the truth and needing the truth to make you feel safe.
There is a difference between discernment and hypervigilance.
Between intuition and investigation.
Between protecting what you love and gripping it so tightly nothing can breathe.
Between anger that tells you a boundary has been crossed and anger that wants restitution for every boundary anybody ever crossed before.
Maybe maturity is learning when the numbers actually matter.
Maybe healing is realizing some accounts will never balance.
Some people will never confess.
Some mysteries do not have satisfying endings.
Some lies expose themselves eventually without your assistance.
Some doors do not need to be kicked open.
Some things can remain unresolved without becoming dangerous.
That is difficult for a mind like mine.
Because I like resolution.
I like the final scene where the detective gathers everyone in the drawing room and explains what really happened.
I want motive.
I want timeline.
I want the missing piece placed neatly into the empty space.
I want the click.
Ah.
There it is.
Now it makes sense.
But life rarely offers that kind of ending.
Sometimes the mystery ends because you stop investigating.
Sometimes peace arrives before the answer does.
And maybe that is the new riddle I’m trying to solve:
How do you remain someone who sees deeply without dissecting everything?
How do you protect people without trying to control the perimeter?
How do you honor anger without letting it choose the vocabulary?
How do you recognize bullshit without building your house inside the investigation?
How do you let an equation remain unfinished?
I don’t know yet.
Obviously.
I’m still working the case.
