positive pointing #64: i have a story

In an effort to relieve my inner writing beast and to enforce some linear form on my tangled thoughts i thought i'd write a super quick, truly simple, blog-sized autobiography. heck, why not!

I am Kyrie Howard...

I grew up in a family of eight
my father loves to rubber stamp. he likes good postage stamps too. my mother is a great artist in disguise. her medium is life. our home was never clean. I always cleaned it. I dusted the tops of the frames and cleaned out the insides of the china cabinets almost every evening. I always finished my cleaning regime by vaccuming. under the dining room table too. I loved cleaning our laundry room. my mother never asked me to do these things. now that i have my own house, i love a good mess.

I have five siblings & we all have unique names given to us by our father.
I am called Kerry alot. I don't mind. My father collected our names from everywhere. I am a catholic mass. My sisters are an irish word for hillside, a crayola crayon color & another word for a goblet. my brothers are the name of a beer & the latin word for peace. some people collect thimbles, my father collects names. He named our cat and our dog. We wanted to name our cat Nova. My father named her Grendle. The villian from Beowolf.

I am the fourth down
I think my spot in the family has made me quiet and peaceful. These are the two most-used adjectives that are used to describe me. I used to hate being called quiet. I still do. I'm not quiet, i'm thinking. If I had something to say, I'd say it. I like to listen. I am quiet in groups. I do not like being the center of attention. I do not like speaking in public. I like to read aloud. I really like talking to one person. I love to ask questions. I think this is because my dad always encouraged me to ask questions.

I was homeschooled during most of my pre-college education
I think this accounts for my incredibly flexible view of my future and my inability to stick to something for too long. Homeschooling made me rubber in a concrete world. Homeschooling made me feel like I was a lucky kid who got to take the secret 'back road'. I took tests on my own and graded my own tests. studying was fun. I was intensely self-motivated. I once emailed the author of my textbook to ask him whether or not i should mark a particular test answer wrong or right. i couldn't tell if i had the right idea or not. I was ecstatic to have a teacher--so cool!. he emailed me back that i should mark it wrong. no fun.

I grew up by the river, in a small town. population: 12,000
My mom knew almost everyone. She didn't know anyone's name but she would always guess and usually get the first letter right. My siblings and I used to take turns going over to our neighbor's house to borrow a disney movie--a VHS in those big plastic cases that made nice, low squeaking noise when you opened and closed it. Sometimes we'd go in groups of two. Their house always smelled strongly of cigarette smoke. My mother seldomly drove us anywhere. My father insisted we walk. We walked and biked everywhere. When we got scooters for Christmas, me and my two sisters scootered everywhere. mostly up and down our dead-end street.

I like to write. essays, poems, status updates.
I like to write because my father liked to read. I think he likes to write too. I think he likes words in general. And correct grammar. I remember he read a paper of mine in middle school and he told me mom "She dosen't know how to write." I think I had lot of grammatical errors. I learned how to write. I learned how to love writing. I learned that you can't do anything well if you don't learn to love it first.

My faith is important to me.
I cannot live well (or very possibly at all) without knowing my purpose. knowing my purpose gives me direction in every avenue of my life. I also think that being a christian dosen't mean my life is easier. sometimes it makes things more confusing. how do i share something that people don't really want to hear about? everyone will share a pie with you. christianity is not like pie. i'm learning how to share it. I think that once you truly start living what you believe, then words become less necessary. I think it's really hard to live what you believe. I think words often come too fast. Actions, conversely, take a long time to cultivate. Doing is difficult. It is too easy for me to be judgemental and prideful when telling others about my faith. Listening is a better tool. When I talk, my mind floats into this strange area where I begin feeling superior. I begin feeling like i have the answers. I leave the conversation feeling ugly. So i've stopped thinking that I have the answers for everything. I've started thinking that there's alot of things worth struggling with. worth struggling alongside too. I also think that I'm learning and that letting myself mess up & get things wrong is okay. I'm learning how to be a christian everyday. I don't have it figured out. I think it is both incomparably satisfying and excruciatingly annoying to talk about human purpose. I am in graphic design because i believe i am designed.

I have always loved going to church.
we drove an hour to church every single sunday. I hated sitting in the back seat. I always loved sunday. I still do. As soon as i was old enough to write, my father bought me a bright yellow notebook from The Gap so i could take notes on the sermon. I always borrowed his pen and gave it back during the last hymn. I still take notes at church. I bring my own pen. i usually start getting excited on friday evening about sunday morning. it's like christmas every single week. just no tree.

I traveled to four countries in Europe when I was 14 with my 18 year old sister.
My sister wanted to go visit a guy friend in Slovokia. I don't think my parents wanted her to go alone. So they sent me with her. I was dead weight the entire time. I liked the old cathedrals. the nude beaches in greece made me feel like a nun in my one-piece. I read Moby Dick and The Adventure of Huck Finn. I liked Huck Finn best. I remember feeling very tired the whole time. i remember thinking that the women were dressed so nice all the time. we ate alot of small loaves of fresh bread. with jelly.

I love to work.
Mostly I love to organize and label. i like to put things away. i like to vaccum. i enjoy cleaning. i like creating systems to keep things orderly and running smoothly. i usually spend the last twenty minutes to an hour before bed cleaning up my apartment. i don't think about it, i just begin doing it. The empty space left behind on the couch by a coat i've just hung up makes me feel peaceful. I sleep better if the dishes are done. eric has yet to get used to this.

I went to Georgia for college when I graduated highschool. I was 17.
I never felt like i truly belonged at covenant college. It was a christian college and it made me feel strangely rebellious. i knew i wasn't rebellious so i knew i was in the wrong spot. i also felt like it was a predictable place for me to end up. A christian kid at a christian college with christian friends. And i felt that to be "truly christian" you had to leave everything comfortable behind and see if it still stood on two feet. otherwise, christianity was just something that made everyone feel really great and gave you alot of sweet friends. But i always felt loved at covenant and the most free to love than i ever had or have since.

I started dating my first boyfriend in the fall of my 18th year.
we met in drawing class. he stepped all over his charcoal drawing to make it smudge better. bizarre but wonderful. and then he took me to a concert and i fell asleep on the way back. I remember he told me that he "had to pee like a race horse" I think that's when i fell in love with him. he always looked out for me. he always took care of me. he always laughed. when i expected him to get upset, he laughed. it was very confusing. unpredictable. and also fascinating. i realized that i wanted him to be around me all the time because he made me laugh more and get upset less. everything was casual and held potential to be hilarious with eric around. i never felt like i had to be anything else but exactly me. he liked exactly me. he liked me more than i liked myself. and that was empowering, refreshing and mind blowing. alot of guys had crushes on who they thought i was. flattering but stressful. i remembering seeing him from across the school cafeteria just hours after he asked me to be his girlfriend. while i felt intensely proud and satisfied, i also felt foolish and confused. who was i to have "dibs" on a guy like that? i didn't attend any of his soccer games or make an effort to hang out with his friends. i didn't want to make a display of it. i just wanted to have some of his time.


In the fall of my 20th year I began attending a new school in Philadelphia.
bike rides and rain and echoing halls. lots of girls. Moore College of Art and Design was open exclusively to females. I liked the independence. i was giddy about being in an art school. i was numbingly intimidated. I liked the idea of living in the city. i didn't like living in the city. I like my teacher's hands. I cried alot. I made new friends--they were my first friends who didn't know my family. More importantly, they didn't know my sisters. just me. scary. finally! this was what i wanted but what i wanted was hard. even though i lived with people, i lived alone. i learned more about what i wanted. i learned more about everything. i learned painfully but quickly. i loved learning.

In the spring of my 21st year and as a junior in college, I moved to Colorado.
I decided i wanted eric in my life all the time. for a long time. possibly forever. i didnt want skype calls or phone calls or letters or packages in the mail. i wanted to walk beside him in silence and for him to meet me after a long day and give me a hug. i wanted him to make me laugh and have a light heart. i moved to colorado to be closer to him. i cried more than i had in philadelphia. my eyes were always red. i cried daily. every night. it was like brushing my teeth. i didn't know what i wanted. i never doubted that i wanted eric. i began hating alot. i hated almost everything except eric. there was no joy left. every inch was covered with disappoinment. i remember sitting on a bench on a sunny day in a park. there were geese on the lake. it was a public park. and i was just crying. i had cried so much it was no longer embarrassing. and i was angry so i didn't care that much. and then i went to church and i took notes and jesus saved me from my bitterness.


In the summer of my 22nd year, I married my boyfriend.
i wore a gown. it was really hot. he wore a white shirt that we picked out together at EXPRESS MEN. it was $50. i thought it was really expensive but i thought it looked so good on him. so we got it. and i worried the whole month of june. and all the way until july 31st and then i didn't worry anymore. i couldn't. i was just happy. i felt the happiness starting in my chest and going right out onto my ears and into my hair and beneath my toe nails. i felt how easy it was to smile and to keep smiling. all day. i didn't want to do anything but be nice to people because eric was so nice for liking me. he made me all sorts of promises that he said he would keep. he promised to stay with me all the time. no matter what. it was a huge celebration of nice. we wore pretty things and said pretty things. we danced and ate burritos and had pie. we got gifts and heard nice things from people. i loved hearing what people said to me but also felt like i wasn't in reality. i was happy to leave in my gown with my one person. it's funny how 300 of my closest friends is also just as preferable as being with just eric.