6 Months

6 months, 6 months, this is all I can think about this morning.  How has it been this long already, yet seems just like yesterday every single day???  Today is one of those many days that will forever be changed for me and will never ever be the same.  As the holidays approach I find myself wondering how my life will ever be “normal” again.  I have to and our kids and family have to celebrate holidays that only a year ago were celebrated with the most amazing man!  I tell myself every day that I need to start moving on with life because I know Deej would want this, but how do I do this?  How do I move on with life and start to rebuild my family when I am forever tainted with this label?  This label of being “that girl”, “that girl who lost her soul mate at such a tender age.”  How do I let others see that I want a sense of normalcy in my life again?  How do I get them to understand that while I want their compassion and understanding, I also want to be able to talk about him and look at pictures and reminisce of the life we once had without the uncomfortable feeling surrounding it.  Maybe it’s me, maybe I am the one that until now really hasn’t been ready for all of this.  Maybe I have been fooling myself into believing that I was ok, when in reality I wasn’t.  I never will fully be ok, but I am ready to be ok as much as I possibly can.  Not only for me, but for our kids, our family and our friends.  I am ready to really make the next step into my long journey of healing (I have made it 6 months so far) and begin to move on with my life in a healthy and happy way where I can feel somewhat whole again and be able to do things to keep DJ’s memory alive and honor the life he had with all of us and show everyone who didn’t have the awesome opportunity to know him, know what an amazing man he was!!  And while taking this next step towards the “new” future, I will only include and bring along those who really truly want to be in my life for good reasons and ones that will help me.  I believe I have a whole lot of those people already by my side and I love all of you more than you ever could know!!

And It Begins

Within the next 48 hours my life will be complete chaos for a few days, but in a very good way.  My baby girl turned 8 last Saturday and this Saturday I will be having her birthday party.  This means me running around in every direction like a crazy woman trying to make everything perfect for her special day.  Everything from grocery shopping, cleaning the house, decorating, cooking and planning fun activities for the kids.  Sometimes I wonder if I am completely crazy for taking on such huge tasks, but birthdays are my thing!  I always want to make sure that everyone who I love has a perfect day because this is the one day out of the year that is dedicated ONLY to you!  So bittersweet this weekend will be because I so desperately wish DJ was here to share this with us.  He was SO incredibly awesome and creative when it came to parties, especialy birthdays!  I am putting a positive spin on things however, and taking a new approach!  I have to, I need to, I want to and I know he would want me to!

This ain't no fairy tale!

I haven't posted a blog in over 2 month's. Why? Well, I guess it's because I have been trying to live in a fantasy world, hoping every day that I will wake up and be living my fairy tale again. Well, this ain't no fairy tale, this is reality and always will be. This so called real world sucks!! I am so many things when I take a step back from the busyness of my world these days. I am angry and depressed and I don't want this anymore! I want to be happy again, how will I ever get there?? I try to surround myself with family and friends, but this is only a temporary high that only lasts as long as my time away from our home. Everywhere I look, everything I do I think of him and wish so badly he was here to share every moment with me. I was driving the other day and just started yelling, crying and hitting the steering wheel. I want to be happy again and no matter how hard I try I just cant for longer than a couple of days. Especially lately I have been feeling more and more depressed because there have been a few things happen to make all of those horrific memories come right to the surface again. When I see someone who doesn't know what happened to DJ and I have to tell the story again it brings every emotion that I felt that night and for so many days to follow come crawling back and makes me want to not do this anymore. I am so lost in this lonely world and want to find myself again, the me that I was in my happiest times with DJ. I want so many things and eventhough I do have so much with my children, my family and my friends, I will never again have the one man that I could truly call my best friend, my lover, my support and my everything and that hurts more than anything I could ever know. I will never again have the ring that he gave to me to symbolize our love and show our commitment to each other and that kills me every day. We will not continue to plan our perfect beach wedding or watch our children grow together, a pain that grows deeper and deeper with every waking moment. I would give anything to have my fairy tale life back, but I have to settle with this stupid so called life!

I Hope You Dance

I heard this song on the radio on my long journey home from spending some much needed time with family and friends.  As I left my mom's house this morning I was in tears, bitter sweet, sad and frustrated tears.  As this song came on, I turned up the volume and felt a sudden sense of calmness.  I felt like DJ had put this song on just for me, for me to relax and really hear what the words were saying to me.  I feel lately like I have been on a roller coaster, an intense, throw you around roller coaster and I needed to come to a screeching hault from my ride and take a step back for a minute and this song did that for me.  I sat in my car alone and listened to the words, really listened to them, through tears and all.  During the last couple of weeks I have felt myself falling into a very deep depression, not only because every day I miss my love more and more, but because I am becoming so scared of the future, of what I am going to do to keep our family going both emotionally and financially.  One of the verses in the song really stuck out to me.  It says "Never settle for the path of least resistance."  This is something DJ would say to me and it is so true.  Something that he told me several times was "one reason I fell in love with you was because of your strength."  I am strong and always have been!  I know that I am allowed my times of weakness, but I have been feeling like that strength has left me for good, that I will  never find that strength again.  For a moment while the words of the song flowed through me I felt like super woman, like I could take on the world and win!  After that moment passed, I realized that I AM super woman and any obstacle that comes in my way I can tackle and I WILL succeed!  I have never been one to bow down to anyone or anything and I will not begin now!  I want to make my love proud of me, our children proud of me and I want them to come out of all this stronger than ever before just like their Dad would want!  I hope that all of you, when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, you DANCE!!!     

Faith, What is it Anyway?

Since I have been a little girl, faith to me has been God.  Church was a part of my life.  I went to Sunday school, was baptized and took the traditional communion classes.  This to me at a young age and even beyond was what faith was to me.  Now, it has a somewhat different meaning.  In these last few months my faith has been tested to it's fullest extent.  God is definitely still a part of my faith, but honestly some days not as much as before.  Why would God do this to me, to Jaxon, to our whole family?  If God loves me as much as everyone says, why would he want to see me in such pain day after day?  I know that everyone says God doesn't give us anything in life that we can't handle and he will bring us through everything, but I just don't understand.  People tell me all the time that DJ is in a better place now and that he is happy and a part of me does believe this.  I do believe that he is happy and does not have to deal with the evil of life, but he was happy here with me, with Jaxon, with Audrey, with Zach, with EVERYONE, so how can he be that much happier where he is now?  He is watching the rest of us suffer, cry for him and watching us do things that he would have LOVED to be able to do with us!  I struggle so very much everyday wondering why this had to happen to me, what did I do to deserve this pain?  Maybe I will never know and maybe I will.  I sit alone in the morning, during the day and at night asking myself this same question over and over again and hoping to hear an answer from somewhere, but with no response.  Some days I feel DJ's presence with me so strongly and some days I don't and on these days is when I really question my faith and what it really is.  I guess in the end faith is what we make it.  These days faith to me is God and Family and Friends.  On the days that I frankly don't want to have a relationship with God and when I am so pissed at him for taking my one and only love from me, faith is myself, my own heart.  After all, we have to love ourselves before anything else! 

Clothes, Shoes and So Much More

I have had people ask me several times in the last couple of months if I have gone through DJ's clothes yet, and the same answer comes out of my mouth which is, "No."  I then think to myself, will I ever be able to take on such a huge task?  Probably not, at least not yet.  I mean, what am I supposed to do with his belongings?  Give them to Goodwill, sell them at a yard sale?  Hell No!  Those clothes, shoes, bathroom items, tools, and so much more were a part of him and he is always going to be a part of me, so how in the world can I possibly get rid of them or even put them away in a box?  Everything in our house is still the same way that it was that day.  I guess I feel these things are the only things that I have left of him and I can't fathom having to open our closet or look in the shower and not see his things sitting there.  There is the shirt that he wore on our first date, there are favorites that he always wore, there are things that I bought him and I don't want just anyone to have these memories because they wouldn't cherish them the way I do or anyone else that loves him would.  I guess some people would say that I need to complete this enormous, emotional, painful task to start to get closure in my life, but what is that going to accomplish?  First off, I HATE the word closure.  What does it really mean anyways?  Does it mean that the memories, the pain, the tears, the heartache will all go away?  No, no it won't those feelings and so many more will alwasy be with me!  I know that he can't come back, because if he could he would be right here with his family, but that doesn't mean that I can't continue to live in our house with our things the same way that we always did.  The week after this nightmare began I still washed DJ's clothes and put them away as if I would have any other day.  I still sleep on the same side of the bed, sit at the same seat at the dinner table, and sit in the same place on the couch.  These things will not change anytime soon, if ever just the same way that my baby's clothes will remain in his drawers, on his hangers and may never go anywhere but there.  

Maybe I am crazy, or maybe everyone else is who thinks it's just that easy to part with so many precious memories. 

Not So Normal Sunday

I am sitting here in the quiet of our home thinking that I can't believe that it has been 2 months and 2 days since my love has left us.  I am also sitting here looking around our empty house with tears in my eyes because I know what a "normal" Sunday would have been like just 2 months ago had that awful night not changed my life forever.  There would have been coffee brewing, breakfast cooking, HGTV or Food Network on the TV, but most of all there would be conversation, laughing, kisses, I love you's.  Now, like so many other mornings, days, nights there is just that empty feeling.  Sunday's were our day, whether it be spending the day as a family or just the two of us.  We loved and looked forward to this day of the week so very much.  And of course Sunday's would always end up with a cookout at our house with family and friends.  This was a tradition that we had just recently started and we loved it!  Amazing food, great friends and our family all together for laughter and fun. 
Sigh.  I miss those Sunday's oh so much.