Kate Didd

Day:106

I woke up today feeling like myself, not quite the old version, not quite a new one either. Just me, somewhere in the middle of becoming, with the smell of coffee already drifting through the house before my feet even hit the floor.

The last couple of days have been a whirlwind of getting my rental property up and running, and it’s wild to look at the series of events in my life that led me here. I love a good project. I love a reason to upgrade my life. I love learning, growing, doing. But none of this is actually new for me, I’ve worked on rental property for as long as I can remember, because my parents did too. It’s a hustle, it’s equity, it’s whatever you want to call it. I’m just good at it. Not big at it. Just sustainable. And for the first time in a long time, I’m asking questions instead of just knowing the answers, and it’s nice. It’s nice to know I can build something for myself, a place that can hide me in plain sight.

First thing this morning, I visited the little house. The front door still sticks a little in the frame, and it groaned when I pushed it open, that dusty, sun-baked smell of an empty house hit me first, wood and old paint and something faintly like rain that soaked into the carpet once and never fully left. I took a video while I walked through my task list, my sneakers echoing on the bare floors, running my hand along the counters to feel where the laminate is starting to peel at the edge. And I felt something I don’t always let myself feel: happy that I’m not where I was a year ago.

A year ago, I walked away from everything.

Absolutely everything. And I didn’t look back. I was willing to lose it all to start over and what I found out is that if something is truly yours, and you built it right, it can’t be taken from you unless you hand it over yourself. You can’t be leveraged. You can’t be broken down to nothing. If it’s yours, it’s yours.
Getting my life back has made me realize how powerful I actually am. The only thing that burned away in the fire was a healed version of me, like in medicine, when they use maggots to eat away dead flesh from burn victims so the healthy skin underneath can heal. It sounds gross at first. But it did a lot of good. It destroyed everything in my marriage I no longer needed and left the healthy parts behind, and it keeps getting healthier and stronger, just like my projects. My whole body was tingling by the time I locked that front door back up, like static after a cold shower, like something in me had exhaled for the first time in months.

The Orthodontist

After the house, I went out of my way to the orthodontist for a check-up. That office always smells the same, that clean, faintly minty, faintly plastic smell that never changes no matter how many years pass and the second it hit me I felt fourteen again, even though I’m thirty-seven. We were talking about my medical stuff, I’m double-jointed in my jaw, so rubber bands never worked for me the way they’re supposed to work for everyone else. He agreed. And it reminded me: things that work for other people don’t necessarily work for me. That’s not a flaw.

That’s just how I function.

Then he told me we could finally schedule the date. One more month, and the braces come off.

I jumped up out of the chair, the paper crinkling loud underneath me. I was speechless. I asked him, are you serious? One more month? Do I actually get to see what I’ve worked so hard to become?

He looked at me and asked if he could be frank. I told him please, I’d prefer it that way. I love darkness, even when it’s a little messy.

He was a little messy, too, my dears.

He told me I was a wreck when he first met me. And I laughed, because I was. My mother had just died. My father had just taken everything I’d worked for. I couldn’t get words out. I’d been abandoned by everyone I’d ever known, right after losing my mom. And I told him then: I would show up if he would show up. I thanked him for being there, for letting me prove that no matter how hard my life got, I could show up for myself. I needed one person to believe in me, and at that time, I had no one. I met him instead.

He told me about another patient, a woman who became so vibrant in her life once her braces finally came off. It gave me a glimpse of my own future, sitting there in that vinyl chair with the faint metallic taste of the mold trays still lingering on my tongue from years of appointments. It felt like confirmation that I’m already headed exactly where I want to go.

Then he hugged me, that quick, warm, slightly awkward doctor’s-office hug, the kind where you can smell hand sanitizer and feel the stiff fabric of a white coat against your cheek because he knew what it took to get here. Every hurdle, every procedure, fixing my jaw, removing teeth, reconfiguring basically my entire face, fixing a sinus issue. I’ve spent enough on my mouth to make people weep at the thought of it. But it was never just about the smile. It kept me busy working toward myself instead of wasting money on things that didn’t matter. I traveled to 38 states in the time it took to get to this point. This was never just a smile journey, it was about becoming a person I could actually smile back at in the mirror, someone whose actions matched the person looking back at me.

I cried right there in that office, the kind of tears that catch in the back of your throat before your eyes even sting. The most validation I’ve felt in a while came from a man who bet on me when I was not my best self, who could have turned away a broken girl who’d just lost her mom, and didn’t.

At 37 I felt embarrassed that all I wanted, underneath everything, was my mom. I’d never gone a day without her, let alone months or years. But now I smile, because the car rides to appointments have become some of my best moments with my daughter, her voice narrating everything out the window, the radio turned low. Because my son giggles every time, this bright little hiccup of a sound that I’d know anywhere. Because my oldest kisses my forehead now, he’s almost as tall as me, and I can feel the little scratch of his stubble starting in, which still catches me off guard.

Home

One more month. I can hold that.

I really am going to get to smile at the end of this, for all the right reasons. I’ve put in the work. I’ve failed plenty. I packed myself back up and tried again. It hasn’t been a perfect journey, it’s had a lot of side quests, a lot of extras, a lot of this and that. But it’s mine.

I drove home with the windows cracked, that warm asphalt smell mixing with the tail end of someone’s backyard barbecue a few streets over. I took a bubble bath, lavender, the only scent that actually gets my shoulders to drop and washed my hair, and brushed my teeth, feeling the wires against my tongue the way I have for years now, one month left of that particular feeling. I washed my face. I looked at my kids. I texted my husband and asked if he wanted to take the family to see Toy Story 5.

We went, and the theater smelled like butter and cold air conditioning, and I cried through the whole thing. pure nostalgia, pure beauty, the kind of tears that come with a lump sitting heavy in your chest before you even know why.

I didn’t expect today to be this emotional. But it was, and every tear was a happy one. My life is complicated. I’ve got three stitches in my hand from yesterday, and I could still feel them pulling faintly every time I laughed too hard in that theater seat. And it was still a good day.

Who am I, that I’ve become someone who rolls with the punches and comes out the other side every single time?

That’s really how I feel right now. One month out from the braces coming off, standing in a house I’m rebuilding with my own two hands, I feel like I made it to the other side.

It was hard. But I made it because I was always meant to.