Some days are harder than others. Some days I want to scream and cry and just tell everyone around how awful I feel. I know that this is selfish. I know that my feelings are so overwhelming that I am often taking it out on the wrong people, those who love me the very most. I know that this is wrong. I just do not know how to control the tidal waves of emotions that I feel when I am so overwhelmed that I feel as though I cannot breathe. I just want everyone in those moments to stop everything and remember my baby girl.
This past week has been one of the hardest weeks, yet one of the weeks where (at times) I have been able to feel my girl so close to me. The hard parts have included that the house was demolished this week. When I first visited, I saw pieces of her throughout the rubble...favorite toys like her cafe where she used to use the scratchy voice to sound like an old lady who had smoked for many years (the quintessential diner waitress). I miss those moments where I could laugh and hear her giggle. There was the stroller that she used to happily push her dolls in both inside the house and outside in the yard and on the sidewalks and drive way. Seeing the wheels popping up out of the rubble next to her little pink chair was a lot.
Adeline was joy and happiness no matter where she went. She was the person who could always make me feel better, could make me go from crying and deep felt sorrow to instantaneous joy and happiness. I miss the feeling of complete joy. I understand that this is something that I will never experience again, but that does not make it easier. It does not make it easy to know that for the rest of your life, you will go through life without ever experiencing complete happiness. Yes, I will be happy (and I do have happy moments now), but I will never again be 100% happy. It is devastating to know that for the rest of the days that you live, there will be a sadness hanging over you. It is just painful.
In addition to the feelings of sadness, there are all of the realizations as to what you are not able to do. I am not going to get to see my little girl go through the 4th grade award ceremony that she was so excited about. I will never see her attend jr. high or high school. She will never get to be at the premier party for the one TV episode that she filmed. She will not get to be in my physical presence with her head resting on my shoulder. She will never again physically be with me on Earth and there are days when I feel as though I cannot handle the pain that this elicits.
This past weekend, I was able to travel to see some of my friends. It was a welcome distraction from the crazy that has become my life. To be able to enjoy some live music and avoid the painful happenings in the world around me was welcoming. I was able to actually have a good time. I shared with my friends the full story of losing my girl. We cried together and laughed together, hugged and danced. It was everything that my soul needed. We went to see Billy Strings and some of the songs really proved to me that Adeline is always with me.
"Bird Song" was a special song for Adeline and I. I always sang it to all of the kids when they would cry as babies, but as they got older for one reason or another I stopped. With Adeline I never stopped. The song was played at the exact moment that two clouds passed by each other and momentarily formed a heart. It was as if Adeline was telling me that it was okay and that she was there thinking about me too. It reminded me of all of the times that we would sing the song together, whether laying in bed and crying over naptime and not wanting to take a nap, or in the car driving somewhere that the song would come up on the radio.
Later in the evening, he played "Tangled Up in Blue." Bob Dylan was the last concert that Adeline saw and the very last concert that I will ever attend where I got to enjoy the show with my entire family. The song reminded me of our night seeing Dylan, of Adeline sitting next to Shane and I and her holding our hands and smiling as she enjoyed the music. I can still remember her dancing around in her seat and shaking her little booty as we watched the show. I remember how happy I felt in those moments, the joy that I felt as I got to cherish an incredible live music experience with my husband, my parents, and our four children.
Life with Adeline was never really sad....this is why life without her seems so hard. It is so sad to live in a world where she is not. It is heartbreaking to live in a space where she does not live. This weekend we will travel as a family to a family birthday party. Then we will travel to see the Weekend in the Cave shows where we get to see a concert inside of a cave. This has been on my bucket list for quite a few years and while I am ecstatic that we get to share the experience with Andrew, Althea, and Huxley...I am also so sad that we do not get to share the experience with Adeline.
I really can't begin to explain this pain to anyone who has not been there. There are not words to explain the level of sorrow that you feel. It is like a piece of your soul has been ripped from you, a piece that you will never get back...leaving you with a hole in your soul that will forever be noticed.
My moods have been greatly affected lately. I have been crying so much more than I had been for months. I have been losing my mind wondering the why's, wondering if there is anything that I could have done to help her, to save her; begging myself to somehow find a portal back in time and be with her again. Why didn't I try harder? Why couldn't I get up those stairs to her? Why didn't I save her? Why didn't I take her down those stairs with me? Why didn't I wait to go ahead and make sure that she was with me? Why did I make the wrong choice?
I know that I am not supposed to be beating myself up. I know that I am supposed to reflect on the good times, the moments that I will forever cling to and cherish as the best days of my life. Perhaps, some of the mental health issues that I am facing have to do with this very concept. Perhaps, the thought of knowing that you have lived your best days and that there is never going to be a day that compares to the days preceding an event is too hard for the mind to handle. Perhaps, it is too much for the soul to handle. Whatever it is is, I know that I am going to have to continue to fight for each day, to continue to force the smiles and laughter, and to continue to try with every single fiber of my being to be better than I was the day before...even if I do not feel that I can be well at all.
In the end, I am working on trying to make my brain work. To have the brain that I had before. I am suffering from trauma response at a level that I did not know was possible. When I used to be able to read something and comprehend it after reading it once, it now takes me five or six times of reading something before I can comprehend it. I have moments where any type of comprehension feels impossible....where it feels to hard to think, to make my brain work. I hate that this is what I am now. I hate not being able to think and have my brain like it was before. I do hope and pray that one day I will be able to think clearly and form complete thoughts. I don't know if I ever will, but if not...I can promise you that it's going to be a very hard thing for me to accept.