Missing Pieces

When you lose someone and you're not expecting it you don't lose that person all at once, you lose them in pieces over a long period of time. Every time you experience a big moment in life you lose them all over again. Everyday I lose my mom all over again. I wake up and my heart breaks because I wake up and know she's gone. I've had to experience many significant life events without her here, I promise you it doesn't get easier. As life goes on the life accomplishments get more and more significant thus making those moments harder. I should be happy during those moments and accomplishments but I'm not. Some of the things I've had to experience with out her.

• My 16th birthday
• High School Graduation
• Getting accepted to college
• Moving into college freshmen year
• Meeting my boyfriend/future fiance 
• Graduating from college
• Getting my first out of college big kid job
• Getting engaged
• Planning my wedding
• Wedding dress shopping

These are just a few to name. The list goes on an on. Everyday I have something that happens where I just wish I could pick up the phone and call her and talk to her for advise, tell her I love her, ask how her days' going. On and on. Like I said the life events get more and more significant as time goes on.

To name a few she's going to miss as life goes on.

• Watching me walk down the aisle to marry my best friend
• Being there for the birth of my kids
• Being a grandmother and helping me raise my kids
• Holidays, birthdays, family vacations. 

Thinking about all the things she has missed out and is going to miss gives me the worst anxiety. I want her to be here for all these things and experience them along side me. What am I going to do when I'm freaking out on my wedding day and I need her advice to calm me down. What am I going to do when I'm raising my first child and I need her help or I'm tired and need her help. What am I supposed to do without my biggest support system.The worst part is that I know these were her biggest dreams. To see my fall in love, to raise a family, to be successful.  Believe me, I know that if I told anyone this they would say "well you've made it this far without her, you can handle it, just deal with it when the time comes" I've had plenty of people say this to me and don't get me wrong, I can handle it when the time comes. But me handling it is putting on a fake smile for everyone around me and then the second I am by myself behind closed doors I am breaking down. Most people have assumed that I have handled all these situations with such grace and dignity but they don't see the real me. Breaking down, crying myself to sleep for months. Cutting myself. Contemplating life. Punching walls. Screaming. No body see's the real me. And that's okay. Nobody needs to see the real me. All they need to see is fake happy me. I'm getting so far off topic here. 

Back to the topic I intended to write about. Every time I experience another piece of life without mom it gets a little harder to put my broken heart back together. Every day is another day without her and more miserable than the last. Like I've said before. Time does not heal wounds (hence the name of the blog). As time goes on things are going to get harder and the only thing that is going to help me get through these events is the support of my closest family and friends.

Oh, Hello -Side effects

Hello!

I can't believe it's been almost a year and a half since I've written in this blog! It's been a wild ride since the last time I wrote. To be honest the reason I stopped writing in the blog was because I was running out of topics to write on and life just got busy. (not that anyone is reading this blog anyways). Some big life changes have happened in the year, for one, Scott and I are officially engaged and planning our wedding!! Crazy right. I knew it would happen eventually but let me tell you he caught me off guard. I wasn't planning to be engaged until maybe next summer, but now we will be getting married next summer!!! So unbelievably crazy. Anyways, let's talk about this blog and life, things that have been going on.

I started this blog to help cope with my anxiety and depression. Which is why I stopped blogging a while ago, things seemed to get better for a while. I was living day to day, I was happy, things were falling into place in my life. Then the past few months happened. Nothing crazy or significant has happened to cause my depression to flare up again, but it did. See that's the thing about depression, we never know when it's going to flare up and make it's presence know. Along side the depression my anxiety has been through the roof. So my day to day life has been not as good as it used to be. I've decided that I need to come back to the blog. I have this way to express myself without being judged and worrying about what others think. It helps me get things off my chest and my mind. It's a way for me to cope. So for today's blog instead of just announcing (to myself) that' i'm back I want to talk about side effects. 

I want to talk about the side effects of depression as well as anxiety. First let's talk about the depression side effects. To list a few, alcohol abuse, loss of appetite, loss of sleep (or to much sleep), decreased energy, suicidal thoughts, and difficulty remembering. Just to name a few. Lately, I've been experiencing all of the previous listed. The ones effecting me most are my memory loss and suicidal thoughts. Two of the worst probably listed. We have all these thoughts of "oh everyone would be better without me" "I'm not needed in this world" "I'm worthless" and those thoughts are so strong and taking over our mind that we forget all the positive and we have memory loss of all the good things going on in our lives. We forget to acknowledge the positive. The thing is with depression, we have a chemical imbalance in our brain, so do we actually think and believe these things? Most likely not, it's the depression in our brain telling us to think theses things. It's controlling us. My imbalance has been out of wack lately because it's causing me to have all these thoughts. I've tried fixing myself the past few months, but I have been unsuccessful. It's important to recognize when these things happen so we can get help. I'm finally going to get help for the first time in 5 years. If we don't pay close attention to that little brain of ours we won't be able to tell what's the imbalance and what's not. So it's important to always take the safest route and get help.

Now for side affects of anxiety, the most common being living in constant fear and worry. We live in this world now where people are getting shot up at public events and the world is just not the best place. So for me going out into public lately has been a challenge. I have this fear of going out to do something as simple as going to the grocery store. I have a panic attack thinking about going and getting robbed, shot up, kidnapped, raped. These are things that go through my head for something as as simple as going to the store. I have to work myself up to go to the store and sit there and tell myself that it's going to be okay. Anxiety side effects mixed with depression side effects don't really go well together. 

I"m just hoping by going to the doctors in the next few weeks I can get myself some help because it's time to start looking out for myself and my health. I'm always helping others, which I don't have a problem with but it's time for me to take a second and help myself. Because if I can't help myself then I can't help others. One of my biggest goals in life is to help others so for a minute I need to take a break from that and focus on myself. I've become so focused on helping others in my life that I've lost control of my own and have been just standing by watching my own slip away.

Today I choose me.