About me:

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A little about me? Isn’t that what the blog is for? To get to know me… How about I give you the quick version.

First, I am by no means a professional writer, nor a master at grammar or punctuation (which I am sure will be noticed quickly). What I am is a person, a woman, a mom, a wife, a widow, and a survivor.

Over the past few years I have gone through the best and worst experiences of my life… There have been so many amazing memories, many bad and some even ugly. Then the absolute worst possible thing ever happened; June came along and I lost my husband to a heroin overdose (or should I say fentanyl).

Here’s the thing, this was never going to happen to me. We were a normal family! My husband worked everyday, financially supported our family, played with the kids at night, helped me cook dinner, gave the kids their baths, tucked them into bed, and constantly showed love and affection. Ok yes, I did say there were bad times as well, but that is when the excuses begin to flow through your head. Because you just know there is no way I could possibly be living the same horror story you hear about on television..right?

But I was living it and I had no clue I was living it. And here we are, he is gone and I remain here trying to figure out this new normal I now call life, learning to be a single parent and all while coping with the reality that my husband joined the statistics and the horror stories we hear every day.

However, each day I work to keep moving and remain strong while going through the stages of grief. Which, by the way, aren’t really stages when you have all of these emotions going on at the same time. I would believe a stage would end for a knew one to begin. Not with grief! I have compared the emotional roller coaster to being pregnant or suffering from bipolar or manic disorders.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, I am not a professional blogger. I simply began this page to talk about these feelings and emotions I go through day to day that I don’t feel comfortable confiding in my friends and family about. Especially since not even the people closest to me can possibly know everything we went through.

Who did I tell what to anyway? I don’t even know anymore. And it isn’t about lying to anyone, it was about only telling certain people details I thought they could handle. All awhile, keeping his secrets and protecting his image and mine. Once I knew about the drug use, him using would be a reflection on me too, right? I felt that people would look at me and figure it out. Then they would judge me… for not knowing sooner, for staying with him, for loving him through it all. My head would literally spin with all the thoughts that would come crashing in.

All that being said, I decided I needed an outlet! Somewhere to put it all out there. Speak freely about what I feel day to day. Somewhere I can express myself, good and bad. You know the days I mean… the ones where you are angry at the world, at him, at yourself; then the others where you are so filled with love and longing to be with them again that all you do is cry. And… let’s not forget all the other crazy thoughts and feelings that come in between.

Finally after a lot of thinking I decided maybe, just maybe, someone would read what I write and not miss a sign that their loved one is using. Or maybe they will just be able to relate and find comfort in knowing they are not alone.

So, here I am! Me and all my emotional disfunction that I have graciously decided to bless the world with… Because I can FINALLY say… I don’t want to go through this alone anymore.

Turning point

So I haven’t posted in quite a while and the past few months have been extremely difficult for me with many revelations and a ton of highs and lows. I can say the largest lesson I have learned is that I didn’t die with my husband. I have realized that over the past two and a half years I have literally become someone else, and someone I have not been entirely proud of. I have hurt people I love, haven’t been the best role model for my children, and really have lost myself entirely. Yet, without going through all that, I would not have made it to where I am today. I finally see things more clearly. I finally believe I have a future and I can make it what I want it to be.

I have enrolled in school. Made many positive changes with the people I was allowing in my life and really working towards a better me. I have finally realized I need to stop hoping for someone to save me and save myself. I have stopped being angry for losing my husband and have been reminded of the blessings that I still have in front of me. My children who have always been my world and yet somehow lost my focus. I may have lost two and a half years but hopefully have gained a future of gratitude for the life I still have. As well as accepting that these rough times we go through really truly do set us up to be stronger individuals who can create the path we lead. I am starting 2021 on a positive note, I am feeling good! And you know what, for once it is not because of someone else. I am feeling good about me. My life, my amazing boys, the true friends that are around me, and the future I am in control of. Now, that is a great feeling! Happy New Year everyone!! God bless.

Here I am

After all this time and me never truly knowing what to write, here I am. You see, we experience grief in so many different ways, how can one express it. Aside from the fact that everyone’s journey with grief is so different. But this blog was started to let people know that they are not alone, grief sucks, and no one going through it knows which way is up. We work so hard to find “the one”, to plan our lives, to have dreams and a family, to create our image of perfection (whatever that may be) and in a single moment it can be gone. Wiped away without warning. Our reality crushed, altered, wrecked, devastated, and in turmoil. We resort back to teenage mentality, or at least I feel like I did. But did I really? Everything was a complete fog, I was and probably still am misplaced, misguided, searching and hunting for anything to feel right or make sense. And yes I sure can say that even some of my actions were that like a teenager. Parenting seemed to take a back seat, so did bills, work, hobbies and friends. Who are we now? What do we want in life? Where are we going? It is like one minute you have a goal and plans, only they are all with the person you look to as a partner and then they are gone. All of the sudden the goals don’t make sense or have the same validity they had before. You have no idea what your next move is. I still say, “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.” because frankly, I have no idea, yep at almost 40 years old. Things that used to seem so important don’t carry the same weight. But…we keep moving forward because we HAVE to. Here I am moving through time, working harder than I ever did in any career just to keep a smile on my face to give off the impression that I am ok. Knowing darn well, the pain I feel inside and yet knowing I don’t want to be the kind of widow people pity. And yet, why? Why can’t people look at us and feel our pain. Why can’t they look at us and appreciate what they have in front of them? Why can’t they hold their loved ones a little tighter tonight because they see what they can’t bare living through when they look at me? I guess if I can help someone else have a little more appreciation for their life or the life of their loved ones, then it is what it is. Maybe that is just my new purpose, right? All I know is this is what I do, I go around and around in circles about how I feel, what I should feel and what I want people to think I feel, all awhile truly having no clue about anything. What I really want is normalcy, but that is no longer a thing, and the “new normal” truly is difficult. Now, keeping everything together on my own, playing mom and dad, feeling empty on the inside, and yet I guess the only piece of advice I have is don’t think as much as I do. Know that you aren’t alone. Know that not many people in this situation truly know what they are doing. (and if they do it is most likely not their first loss). We don’t need to have it all figured out and we don’t need to live our lives based on what the next judgmental person thinks. We need to follow our own paths, make the mistakes we are sure to make, so that we can learn,grow stronger and get back up. Take a minute to be kind to yourself, Love yourself, forgive yourself, breath and believe we will get through this!! Cause we have to!  

Denial

I know others who have faced these challenges. Especially nowadays, which is crazy because I never had before. I never hung with anyone who used drugs and if I found out they had, I cut them off. It was that simple, that easy… I was against it. “That thought process right there taught me never to judge! You truly never know how you will react”..

The truth is my husband and I were soul mates. We had overcame all odds to be together. I could never live without him. We broke up one time.. and for the entire time I felt like I couldn’t breathe without him. So, when he said it was a one time thing.. that he could stop any time. I believed him, not because I truly believed him, but because I wanted to. Not to mention, if I believed him I didn’t have to go against me.

The first time I was faced with this news, he was in a car accident and wasn’t responsive at the scene. A police officer came to my door and said he had a seizure and was being airlifted to the city hospital. I remember my heart dropping and racing to be by his side and I stayed there the four days he was recovering. Before he was discharged from ICU he told me he had used. He came clean.. I didn’t even know he ever did drugs, “except for the one time he said he took a Percocet, oh and the other time I found out he had used cocaine. But he wasn’t doing anything, they were just one time instances”. Then for him to admit he had used heroin. I remember staring at the wall in shock and not knowing how to react or what to say. But I told him we would get through it and together. And then he said he saw the pain in my eyes and never wanted to do that to me again. We all want that, right? To be enough.. enough that they won’t need to use. We can love them enough, support them enough that they won’t need to think about that. We put the blame for them using on ourselves.. because if it is our fault we can’t be mad at them.

The day we got home from the hospital we had a house full of people. I walked into the bathroom to find him zoned out and clenching his fists. It looked like it could be a seizure but I knew better. I knew he hadn’t had one before, so I knew what this was. But he said I was crazy and that’s not what i saw. I didn’t want to argue with him, I just got him back. So I let it go again. And over and over.

We could go for months, even a year where he seemed to be doing well. He was clean…. I did it. I was enough, I saved him. But I didn’t. He had another OD a year after that.

One day we were driving with our newborn and he drove right through a red light completely zoned out and we were in an accident. His anger started getting worse. And I kept ignoring it. Well, if I was wrong and I was accusing he would use from me accusing of using. Yeah, I know how it sounds, but it seemed logical at the time..

Then he OD’s again. Only this time he isn’t so lucky. It was bad and there was no coming back. I was left with our four year old baby boy, who adored his father, other grieving children and myself not being able to breathe again. A half of me was gone and this time I couldn’t save him. My life was never going to be the same. Why?

I should have fault with him then, maybe I would have been able to fight with him now. Maybe I could have pushed harder, maybe I could of simply asked him not to go out. But we were doing so well. He wasn’t going to do that. So now, all the what if’s. How could I have saved him? The questions, the realization.

See, that is the problem with denial. At the end of denial, lies the truth.