Done!!

Have you ever just felt DONE! Finally reached a point, where you are done fighting and trying; just DONE! I can only think of a couple of times in my 38 years that I have been there, and I'm there. Everything is broken, I'm sure in some ways it always will be. There are moments when it feels like I have glued the pieces together, but they are fleeting. I have embraced my "new normal" but I'm not talking just about the loss of my husband here. I'm talking about life in general. I'm one of those people that tries to do whatever I can to help in any given situation, when I really should just sit back and do nothing. It's like an addiction, I get a high off of helping someone solve a problem. 98% of the time the high was worth it. but there are a few occasions when I crash instead. The crazy thing is, the crash usually isn't because I couldn't solve the problem; it's usually because the person needing help becomes hateful, arrogant, or full of such selfish pride they can't see who is on their side and who isn't.

I understand the world is a cynical place and tons of people are out to help themselves, but  NOT EVERYONE IS OUT TO GET YOU, some people are genuinely nice and want to help with no ulterior motives behind their help. So, here I am again today after attempting to help someone and getting treated like a suspect deciding I'm DONE!

I know me well enough to know that I am overwhelmed and exhausted right now, but somehow I'll find the motive to keep trudging along until I am strong enough to actually fight again. The problem with that is, I wonder how many times I will try to help before I just change who I am and give up.

It's been a frustrating week, life has not been great this week. I am dealing with the fact that my 11 year old daughter has a life long auto immune disease and has to shoot herself with a MINIMUM of 4 shots a day. I found a pump she agreed to wear and her insurance REFUSES to cover it. What is wrong with the world? She's 11, she could go get birth control or an abortion, but she can't get an Insulin pump.
We got to a restaurant and order her the kid's pancake. It's supposed to be one pancake and turkey bacon. They bring 3 huge pancakes! I already looked up the carb count for the one pancake and dosed her the appropriate amount of insulin for one. Now they have brought 3 and she wants to eat it and argue about it. I'm TIRED! It's not even my disease and I"m tired. I'm tired of being the bad guy ALL THE TIME, I don't get a break where her Dad can take over her care and I can just be fun. Who, am I kidding, her Dad was always the fun one anyway; she would just bat her eyes and he would let her have it. She's not to the age, that she can handle it on on her own; she does her own shots, but carb counting and dosing has to be done for her. I am so paranoid that she will be overdosed, I have made it a double check system around here. Every shot has to be double checked by Angel and another adult. I want her to be able to eat what all her friends are eating without having to count the carbs and stick herself with needles. I want her to be able to go to friends houses for a few hours without worrying about a hypo and the parents not knowing what to do.

  I AM TIRED! I wanted the insulin pump so it would give her the freedom to do more and eat more. She wouldn't have to stick herself if someone offered her a cookie, she could just tell the pump to give her more medicine, but NO, Insurance refuses to cover that and of course it's not affordable to do without Insurance.

Now, I have to find the strength to go fight an insurance company because nothing we can do will fix Type 1 diabetes and some corporate morons somewhere need a wake up call.

ANCHOR

We recently took a vacation to Florida; it's the first time I've been here since Steve and I took the girls in 2011. I did o.k. I think. I was really good until we stopped at the same rest stop where Steve had taken a picture of me and my girls under the "Welcome to Florida" sign. As soon as we pulled in there and I realized where I was, a flood of emotions hit me. 

By the time we arrived at our condo, I was doing better. Until, we went for a walk on the beach. I watched Jamie and Angel walk and leave footprints in the sand and then I watched the tide come in and wipe them away as if they never existed. The impact of that simple yet very complex moment hit hard.  All the things that Steve and I did and the "footprints" we made together  vanished so quickly and at some point it will be as if WE never existed. In 100 years, there is nothing on this planet that will prove the love we had for each other. There is no DNA combination of us that will continue on for generations. There's nothing left but my memories. Just like the ocean tides wiped away the girl's footprints, time will wipe away any existence of US together. It is impossible to wrap my mind around something that can mean so much to two people just vanishing and not only vanishing, but after I'm gone,  no proof of it's existence will remain except for a marriage license document and very few pictures we took together over 18 years. All of that hit me pretty hard while I was standing there watching the tide roll in and out. It took me a couple hours, but I re-focused and snapped back to the reality that there's nothing I can do to change any of it now.

I will probably forever grieve in different ways, but I can't anchor here. 

I have finally come to a place where I have found a new "normal" and, naively, I thought things like this wouldn't take me by surprise anymore. I was wrong! I've been struggling for a few months with realizing that the longer I continue to live the more distant my previous life becomes. Sometimes when I think about Steve or situations we experienced together, it feels more like a dream than reality, and I hate that. I know it's a natural cycle of loss, but I guess I had hoped it wouldn't happen to me.

The only way to keep it from happening is to stay so buried in the pain that you can't live.

For a while, I didn't have a choice; I was buried. But, eventually I got to a point that I felt like our love was somehow diminished if I tried to stop hurting so much. I felt like it somehow meant I didn't love him enough, if I was able to find a way to live without him. It wasn't guilt, it was something completely different; I don't know how to explain it. I'm a pretty black and white type of person, not many shades of grey exist for me. I finally had to give myself permission to figure out how to live in a shade of grey when it comes to all of this. I couldn't be black and white with this level of tragedy. I couldn't stay buried in grief and I couldn't just move on like nothing ever happened. So, I've been charting new territory and learning how to keep living , yet giving myself permission to grieve when I need to. It is a different kind of life and just like everything in life, I know I will screw it up sometimes, but I'm living and doing the best I can. I'm finally to a place where I can say, 

Life is good again; it is different, but it is good. 

P.S. The rest of our trip was wonderful. We made many new memories and took TONS of pictures :)

2011 - Me and the girls

2015 The Girls

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