We were on a soccer team together, Blue Ice. I miss you and think of you often, Kim.

This is Jessica( Jesse as Kim always called me) but spelt it differently, always had to help her with spelling things..lol..she had dyslexia but the way I approached it made her and I both laugh(most of the time..teehee) I have so so very many memories with Kim...we were inseparable for most of our early to mid twenties, a crucial part of both our lives. We had our ups and downs. Both trying to stay away and out of troublesome situations/times. We both took so much care of one another. Kim and I were pretty much sisters. We know everything about one another.
I knew all about her sickness issues forever. I did my research for years. Kim was my roomate for almost 6 years, I wouldn't have had it any other way. I had moved away back to NY and we never ever lost touch.
I drove to visit her in both South Carolina( where we shared the most incredible memories and years of our lives) and her hometown Connecticut,  where I met some of the most important people in her life ❤  she was my sister! I love her so much and not once did we ever ever ever hang ip the phone without telling eachother just that. I have so much more to write. Unfortunately I am extremely sad and upset so my next stories will come to follow.
Kimberly taught me many things about myself , about life, about art and poetry and what it is like to have such an amazing friend. I love you so much! I know you are always with me forever. You are amazing, ALWAYS!

Kim and I had met someone new and were excited. I don't know what happened. If you know this person, please connect me. I would love more information about what was going on with Kim. After this, she never messaged me again. I, of course, messaged her several times. :(

This makes me so sad.. Fede is an attorney and Roy Vargas was Fede's friend and the attorney that they used for the divorce. I am sure that less represented than Fede. I wish that she would have reached out to me. I should have gone down to see her again. This makes me so mad and sad.

I love traveling and your father and mother came to pick me up at the airport. I was meeting your father for the first time and learning about normal life in Costa Rice, which is quite different than the states. I knew a little Spanish but not as much as I would have liked. I knew enough to get around. At that point, I knew more Spanish than your mom. I don't think your mom had a cell phone with internet and internet wasn't consistent at home either. I showed Kim the app that I use to learn Spanish and told her about Google Translate. We went to the cell phone store to get her a phone with internet - which is challenging when no one spoke each other's languages fluently, lol. 

She was trying to figure out 'married' life - what to expect. Being a new mom, taking care of You/ Noah was her full-time job. You were around 2 years old. Fede's family was very worried about you getting dengue fever from a mosquito bite and didn't want you and Kim to travel much with me. But with permission, we got a mosquito net, hopped on a bus and went to Manuel Antonio National Park. One of my favorite pictures of your mom is over looking the beach in Quepos. You would not let us eat without crying. You wanted us to be walking around the whole time. So we took turns eating. 

Your mom / Kim did not have any friends when I went there. Maybe she had a few acquaintances but no one that she could go to dinner with or shopping... Fede's sisters had been pretty nice to Kim but there were politics / drama there. I encouraged her to meet more English speaking travelers at hostels / backpacking hotels. There had to be more people that spoken English and wanted to hang out. I think Kim would have gotten a job at a place where English travelers went, if she wasn't a full time mom. It is fairly normal for new moms to not have much interaction with adults with young children. However, this was the beginning of her lack of support. I was only there for 1 week and I had made plans to travel further south on my own. Looking back, I wish I had spent all my time with her. I had begun to get frustrated on her behalf. I had showed her some tools and encouraged her - that was all I could do then.

I think it was 2008 when Kim came to live with me in Columbia SC. I had not heard from her in years. She had been really close to Rachel Boling and Renee Lyons in high school and middle school. We had played on the soccer team that my dad coached, called Blue Ice. I liked Kim but didn't really have a chance to get to know her better. / She said she wasn't doing well. I drove and picked her and Tasia up in Greenville. She said that she had lived with Thomas Westmoreland for a little while and her bother Ben on and off. She didn't like living with her brother - too much chaos and drugs, even though she cared about him. 

She was down to a size 0 or 1. She had found out that she was allergic / sensitive to Soy, but no one would believe her about it. We we went through every box in the grocery store, reading the ingredients. We found the things that did not contain any Soy and bought those. She gained weight and started feeling better - the extra butter in the organic Mac'n'cheese helped. ;) We did some research and found that Soy is not good for you. It has natural toxins that they try to remove with high heat when making products like tofu. Soy is easy to grow anywhere and 'no' bugs eat it. Companies have spent tons of money promoting it. It is a filler in many products. Kim still had not figured out what her physical medical conditions were. She went to so many doctors and they all told her it was different things. It was challenging for her. She wanted answers. 

She was getting bored while I went to school and my roommate Darren wanted to rent out the spare room she was staying in. During the time she lived with me, she helped me as much as I helped her. I was still dealing with a bad break-up. She wanted to work. She started working for my mom in the family pest control store. There were some miscommunications and Kim's dyslexia started becoming a problem. Mom did not know how to handle the situation. I wasn't there to help :( She started drinking more at Grandma house. I know she worked at EarthFare at one point too. I don't remember exactly what happened but she wanted to move. She did not have a car and transportation was challenging. I wish I would have been there or maybe she could have moved back in with me but I was at the mercy of my parents during that time. They paid for my rent and food while I was in school.  

She told me she had met someone and that she was going to visit him in Costa Rica, where he was from. I was so happy for her. She did not know she was pregnant when she left and that she would never come back to the states. She would have packed differently, had she known. I have some of her art but I don't know where all of her things are..

I will try to add more when I think of them but..

She loved silk robes. Texture mattered to her. It was like painting with the right brush. You can use a different / any brush to get the art out but it won't feel as good while you are doing it. Fuzzy, soft sweaters. 

Picasso - she loved his work and understood things about fine art that I will never understand and I am an artist too. 

Poetry - I think I understand poetry pretty well but when she spent time with poetry I think she was spending time with the author and understood their situation on a deeper level, reading 'between the lines'. She seemed to understand so much more than was on the paper. 

I see Kim as this bubbly and sarcastic magical Fairy, trying to fly smoothly, but weighted down by disabilities. She had this way of seeing through everyone's BS and pointing out something that everyone was missing but that totally made you stop and think for a min - like a really good point in an "argument", mic-drop style. She had a sense of clarity about ideas and a way of expressing them that was beautiful, like a piece of art with words. But, most of the time she wouldn't share her ideas if she didn't know you well. Unfortunately, I think she second guessed herself and she didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable. She liked keeping the peace, being romantic and loved listening to the people she cared about. She was like a flower that brightens your day - delicate, fierce and beautiful. She literally heard sounds differently than everyone else... I hope that she is happy now and watching over you/ Noah often. 

Hearing sounds differently / disability example: I thought that she would love Harry Potter and hadn't seen any of them. So, we watched the 1st movie and I asked her how she liked it. She said that she didn't understand much because of their (British) accents. I was shocked. She didn't say anything the whole movie and it hit me really hard how challenging life must be for her. This is way before she moved to a country and didn't know their language... and this wasn't her only disability/ difference from the average person. 

She was amazingly strong and independent considering the challenges life threw at her. She felt so many things that were hard truths but didn't act on them. She didn't stand up for herself enough and she didn't know how to explain her limitations to people. Numbers were like art shapes to her sometimes. They did not have the same meaning that they did to everyone else. I think she was smarter than me and I adored her. She didn't have enough of the kind of support and admiration I could/ would give her. I wish that she had reached out to me. I will never understand why she didn't. I know her dark side and I try not to judge her for her bad habits (drinking) that had started at a very early age. We just worked on how to make things better. If she was supported (mentally, physically and spiritually) and busy enough (activities/ job), I don't think the drinking would have been such a big problem in her daily life.. especially at the end :(

When I think of how she was treated in Costa Rica by Fede and his family, it makes my blood boil. I think you (Noah) were around 2 years old, the first time I visited. She asked me if I thought she was "contributing enough". She was a stay-at-home mom and contributing $700 a month to the household, being on disability. That is waaaay more than most new moms can "contribute". I know they probably wanted her to "do" more but again, they were not understanding of her disabilities and tried to "encouraging" her in a harsh way. Many times they were judging her and treating her as if she was not as good of a wife as she could be.. 

Noah, Kim paid for your father's office when he first started as an attorney. She paid many of the bills in the house too. Your father was not good at providing consistent internet service for her computer or cell phone. She needed to be able to learn Spanish - I showed her the DuoLingo app and with internet she would have ways to communicate with everyone in the states. While I was there, she would regularly use phone cards to call her mom / your grandmother. Even though money was tight, she had asked for a mattress that didn't have springs coming up through it and instead, your father got a moped and other things that were not needed. He seemed to "forget" to go to the furniture store or "forget" to pay bills. He did not make her requests or needs a priority. I think that she was very much neglected. Was Kim perfect? No, but she was very reasonable. 

I think that Kim would not want me to talk down about your father but at the same time she would want me to explain how things didn't work out between your father and her. I am not one to sugarcoat things and I don't think she particularly liked me being so direct and upset. She was such a classy lady and yet a rebel at the same time.

Noah, please come visit me when the time is right. I will always be here for you throughout your life.