Trials and Tribulations

It feels as though this year will never end. I say that like it would make any difference.........Life has no concept of time, it doesn't give one great year and then on horrible year. It just seems like if I can get past this year things might turn around,just another milestone, but it's only August and things just seem to be getting worse. We had to put my dog to sleep on 8/8/09. She was our wedding present to each other and since we don't have kinds yet she was just like one of our kids. I was completely devastated but had know for some time it was coming. Women's intuition or something along those lines, or maybe we were just so connected there couldn't have been a way I didn't know. As with everything else I just curled into my ball once again and just kept telling myself it was going to be fine. Thank God my husband was home and we were all together. If he had been gone I don't know what i would have done. She was one of those rare wonderful dogs who was there for me every time Conrad was gone and that's technically been half of our marriage. A few days after that happened, we found out that my last living grandparent is very sick and might not make it through till the end of the year. Wow. Losing all 3 grandparents in one year........just wow. I'm terrified of what's around the corner and I feel as though I am paralyzed in fear of what's going to happen next.
Life has never been easy for me, from an early age I dealt with loss, addictions, betrayal, your basic soap opera fodder. I am not naive, I've been through the ringer a couple of times and have always come out better for it. I know I will be ok but like I said there's so much else that could go wrong.
My mother has leukemia and has since I was 17. I remember the day we found out. I was sitting at home with her playing on the computer and she limped into the room. Something was wrong. The left side of her face was quickly beginning to droop. I sat there stunned knowing exactly what was happening but completely terrified and unable to even speak. After a few seconds I shook myself out of it and ran over to her and made her sit down. The drooping was worse and I got down on my knees and kept asking her questions. Each answer uttered was more slurred than the next. All the while she was trying to smoke a cigarette......grrrrr. The only thing I could think of was OH MY GOD my mother is having a stroke and shes going to burn down the house with this stupid deathstick. Maybe 2 minutes passed and we had my dad on the phone to let him know I was going to call 911. He told me not to call them! I still don't understand that to this day. Maybe he thought I didn't know what was going on or maybe he thought I was making it up. ( He is the one I learned denial from ). I yelled at him to get home and hung up then called 911. To this day the sounds and sight of firetrucks and ambulances makes me well up with tears ( it's horribly embarrassing when this happens ). Watching them load my mother onto a stretcher and into the ambulance is a memory I can't get rid of. When in the hospital she had 10 or so more strokes and they did every blood work up possible on her. I just remember how defeated my dad looked. That's when I knew something was wrong. You see my dad is our rock always the strongest and most level headed. They finally told me her diagnosis and even at 17 I knew it was a death sentence. What I didn't know then was that they gave her a year to live.......1 year. Well I am 23, 24 next month, and damnit she's stuck it out this long and beaten all the odds, but it's getting worse. She is only 46, on oxygen and won't leave the house because she doesn't want people to see her with her oxygen. Did I mention that she has emphysema because of the cigarettes? Ugh I live in fear that I will lose my mom. We haven't had the best relationship at times ( which I won't get into now ) but I still call her everyday and visit her at least once a month. So you see my husband is leaving for 6-8 months and my mom is really sick and I just feel so completely and absolutely alone. I want something good to happen, I want my mom to go into remission, I want my husband to stay home with me. I know it's a lot to ask God but please?

There is always someone who has it so much worse than you and I know that but sometimes it impossible to put on that happy face everyone wants to see and the military expects of the wives..........


Listening to: Pink - Funhouse

This year has been one of the hardest I have ever had to go through. I lost both my grandparents in the same month, I've lost people who I thought would truly always be there for me no matter what, and now my husband is deploying. Wow. They say God only gives you what you can handle, and I know I can handle this, but why do I have to be alone in doing it? I have 1 friend who has always been there for me and I thank God for her every single day, but she has a baby and a deployed husband too. Not to mention she lives far away so I can't just put all of my baggage on her. That's not what a good friend does. Looking back at this year I wonder sometimes how I got through it. Maybe denial was my coping mechanism. Thank God for Denial. When things start to go sour for me I curl up into a little ball like a porcupine and send my spikes out. As long as I do that, nothing else can hurt me. I always thought of myself as a very strong person. Slowly but surely I am finding this to be completely untrue. I'm falling apart and I have no one to put me back together. I can't put any of this on my husband or my best friend, they just have too much to deal with without my stupid issues. I'm trying to keep it together and hopefully it looks intact from the outside, at least I guess that's all I can hope for right now. I am very thankful for my life and I love being a military wife but that doesn't mean it isn't difficult.

Listening to: Jack Johnson, Better Together