My Insanity

Hello Blogging world. I know that I haven’t posted in a while, I just haven’t had the space to. However, I felt like sharing tonight. I wrote this spoken word poem earlier this year about my anxiety because it was …

Finding Hope During the Holiday’s After Loss

The following are my reflections on the holiday’s last year and how instead of the searing pain of trauma and loss, I let my life be governed by hope and not fear. I wanted to go into the new year with a reflection on the previous year and how it shaped me. Going through the holidays were hard, but I learned so many things and I am so grateful that I did. I had my family, my boyfriend, and my friends to help me get through and even learn more about myself.

My musings of the holidays begin because you see, most people are excited for Thanksgiving and Christmas. How can you not? The stores already have tons of Christmas and fall decorations. The holidays are hard to ignore, even if you tried. Thanksgiving is a time for family and food, spending time with one another and being thankful for what the year has brought. Christmas, for many and for my family, is about celebrating Christ’s birth and spending time with those we love and showing our appreciation for them by giving them gifts. For those who are excited and happy about the holidays I am so happy for you and may your holidays be blessed. I am one who, even though the holidays are fun and I can enjoy them to the best of my ability, I know there is something missing that can’t be replaced.

When you have lost as much of your family as I have, holidays change. There is no more endless loud laughter and overwhelming joy and peace. There is joy, but it comes with an icy chill at the end. Now with Thanksgiving I haven’t had quite as hard of a time with as Christmas. I know many love Christmas, but I on the other hand, don’t enjoy it as much as I used to. For me, that’s my new reality. A sad reality, but a reality nonetheless. Instead of a fun, bubbly family of six, we are and have been for almost eight years, a family of four. Even though there are four of us, my sister is out of the house, so it can feel lonelier during December than the rest of the months of the year. It can sometimes feel as if all of my sisters died and I’m the only one left. This isn’t to say that my sister has abandoned me, or she doesn’t care about me, or anything like that. She has and will continue to be one of my best friends and sister until we die and I am constantly proud of all the accomplishments she’s made to get where she is today. The fact is she hasn’t abandoned me. She is all grown up now and I would never expect her to live with our parents for the rest of her life and nor would I ask her too. That being said, I am allowed to miss her presence in the house because sometimes it gets dull and boring. Not that my parents are boring, it’s just not the same as having your sisters around to talk to and get sisterly advice. The fact is they don’t know what it’s like to lose a sibling and they can’t understand me as much as my sister does.

It also now has become a struggle for me help to put up Christmas decorations, mainly because we have less help now that it’s just three people living in our house now and partly because it would have been so much more fun to have ALL of my sisters together to help decorate, bake cookies, listen to our favorite Christmas songs and laugh and be our merry wonderful, weird, crazy and adorable selves. Oddly enough, it’s not just the fact that they are gone that makes the holidays even harder. Almost every year since the shooting, around December we have lost either friends or family members. The year after the losing the girls it was my grandpa on my mom’s side who passed away. The second year it was my great uncle. The third year it was a close family friend of ours husband. What made it worse was that several years before we lost the girls, we had lost my grandpa and step grandma on my dad’s side. My grandpa on my dad’s side I was extremely close with and his death hit me really hard. We were always laughing and joking together and those memories I will always cherish.

Our family must seem to many as very fragile and depressing. Yes we had two very precious lives taken away from us and there are many traditions that we did that can’t happen anymore, but the thing I have taken away as of recently is not the sadness of all the traditions lost, but the joy at the new possible traditions that our family can have. All of those traditions I will always look back on and smile, but they are also past traditions. If I get stuck there and constantly wish for things to go back where they were, I would be chasing after the wind, and it won’t propel me forward.

We somewhat have a sense of normalcy now, with new traditions and all of that, which  has been helpful to lessen the pain and grief. We go and chop down our own tree, which has been one of my favorite new traditions. We go to a fancy hotel in our town, drink hot chocolate and walk around and look at all their Christmas lights and decorations. We still have New England Clam chowder, which I am very grateful for, because it’s delicious. One new thing was that for Thanksgiving this year I am went to Oklahoma with my boyfriend to spend it with his family. That experience is one I will never forget and will cherish always. Our new traditions don’t make the pain and grief disappear, as I would wish it would, but at least they help to create a somewhat semblance of being a normal family. What I can do and have been striving to do to help ease the pain and grief is to accept and be extremely thankful for the family I do have and embrace the new traditions even more. There may be times or days where I trigger and feel a spiral of emotions come down, but I can’t control that. All I can do is be aware that it may happen, but not solely focus on it. Fear can be crippling and eat away at us. The thing to focus on is hope. Hope that things will get better and let that thought and the brightness that hope brings to fight the fear in the darkness. If we can hold onto hope and not grief, life can go on with less of an icy chill and our life can burst forth like the first flowers of spring.

There’s a Beautiful Mess Inside

Hello Everyone, I know it hadn’t written in a very long time…. It just never was a good time. At this very moment… It is perfect. I have probably needed to write for a while I just have been putting …

Truly Human

Hello everyone! So sorry I haven’t posted in a while but I have been crazy busy! I wanted to post something though. Poems have been a cathartic release for me, so that is why I have posted a bunch of …

Freedom in a Voice… His Voice

I know I posted earlier today, but I was in the mood to write another poem and it made me so alive and strong I just had to share it with you guys! The story behind it is very personal …

“Don’t Panic….”

 

By now all of you know that I lost two of sisters quite tragically. As for telling the whole story, well that will be something I post eventually. Having said this, being in the hospital that night was the roughest time I have ever experienced. Sitting in the ER not knowing how my sisters were. Being interviewed by a detective. Sitting in the ICU waiting room for what must have been at least 8 hours. Being told my sisters were gone… Now I have said this to give you an idea of how I handled a recent tragedy that has happened in my life.

Yesterday at around almost 8, I was informed that my best friend Maisie Upson was in a severe car accident and had been taken to the hospital. At that point I took it upon myself to run as fast as I could upstairs to my room to have a breakdown. I have heard and seen stories about car wrecks and had wild images running through my mind. Thankfully I calmed down just enough to leave a message for my sister. My dad came up and informed me that he was going down there. My first thought was ” So am I.”

He asked me a lot if I thought it was a good idea.. I honestly didn’t care at that point how it was going to affect me I just knew I had to be there. So we head out on the highway… I have a couple of moments of crying before I realize that we are going pretty far into town. Then it hit me. We are going to the exact same hospital that my dad and sister were taken too… “Oh shit…” was the only other thing running through my mind besides the image of a broken and bloodied friend. My sister arrives (I had talked to her on the phone and asked her to come) thank God. If it hadn’t been for her I would be complete and total wreck. We happen upon the information that my friend hasn’t even left the emergency room yet… The Emergency room. Another one of my least favorite places. When we get there we have to stand and wait to hear from her parents…

I can see the seats we sat on.. Memories of the nurse denying knowing where my other sister Stephanie was..  It finally came full circle. I was on the other side of the fence now. We talked to her mom and found out that the major thing that they were worried about was her head.. She had suffered quite a blow so there was some internal bleeding and swelling. The best thing I heard all night was her mom continually saying “She’s gonna be alright” Just knowing that put my crazy wild mind at ease.

All things considered I am holding up pretty well. The worst thing right now is not being able to see her. In my situation we were family, and in this situation I am not… Whats really holding me together is hearing stories from her mom, dad, and sister saying that they are having a hard time sedating her because she wants to move so much. If you know Maisie, thats exactly her so that has been my happy spot. The funniest thing I heard was that they tried to brush her teeth and she was not having it. It amuses me so much because she loves brushing her teeth and her she is having a fit about it… 🙂 I am now much more confident she will definitely pull through. They are going to try and keep her sedated a few more days in ICU and she had a CAT scan tonight. I am not aware of those results yet but all I can do is pray that everything will work itself out.

It also just so happened that earlier that day I had a counseling session and I experienced a full out breakdown, so as you can imagine I was already an emotional mess.. To be painfully honest, she shouldn’t be alive right now. I saw a picture of her car.. I shudder to think how would have handled it if I hadn’t gotten such good news… God is so amazing… If it weren’t for his presence, my sister, and my dad this whole thing would have sucked. A lot. I mean I am still up and down emotionally. I have had to be the one to tell a bunch of people about it over and over and over.. I had tell my best friend on the phone about it and I just lost it… I don’t know people do that.. breaking bad news to people.. One thing is for sure I couldn’t do that very well.  I will update you guys as soon as I hear more. Thanks for being here to listen.

 

  How do you handle being back in similar traumatic situations? What are some things that help you the most?  Whats the best thing to do in a situation where you can’t see them? Is it best to just stay home until you can see them? How do you handle breaking bad news to friend or family member?

I May not be like Elsa but I sure am like Anna….

I know by now you all have heard about the Disney’s, Frozen. This movie has captivated both my heart, my inner child, and my soul. If you haven’t seen I suggest that you do! It is a fantastic movie and connected to me in so many ways.

Anyway what do I have to do with a princess you may ask???? Who do I think I am comparing myself to Anna?? Am I crazy? Well, yes but that’s a different blog post and for another time:)

Well, like I said, I might not be like Elsa, but I definitely relate most with Anna. Her spunk and imagination reminded me of how I used to be when I was younger… The good and the bad. Mostly when i woke my sisters up in the morning by jumping on their beds, much to their annoyance. 🙂 She also relates to me in my present life. Her dreamy attitude is exactly like me in my love life… which, being nonexistent, is mostly me fawning over guys. Remind you of anyone????

This is me all of the time… in my head.

Oh boy shouldn’t Anna have seen it coming???…. Except she doesn’t, which is a lot like me… I always dive headfirst into what I like to call Dreamworld. But not just with guys, with about pretty much everything. Much like Anna’s relationship with Hans, I go right into thinking  “OMG this guy likes me ,and now were going to date, then we will go to prom and were gonna dance, oh and then he will propose, then get married, then travel ect.”  You get the picture so I’ll save you the countless upon countless stories of my sad and nonexistent love life.

Anyway, back to the point. I think all of us have a bit of Anna somewhere. All of us, sometimes in our twenties and sometimes in our teens have a hard time navigating our way through love or life for that matter. We all start out curious and excited, but at some point we get disappointed… hopefully not as bad as Anna did…

Douchebag alert!!

Ouch… I think I am still in shock at the magnitude of douchebaginess that is Hans. Han’s betrayal for Anna was, at least to me, is that splat moment in a relationship or crush. All of the sudden you wake up out of the dream state and are hit with all the lies you had been telling yourself. You realized that “Oh I kind of let my feelings get away with me there… hehehe” Anna had been completely oblivious to the lies Hans had been telling her, and then BANG! They all slammed her right in the face! This doesn’t only happen in love. For me I think it happened when I realized that I still needed help dealing with my sisters passing. Sure I thought I was over it and passed it, but finally coming to the realization last year scared the heck out of me.

Oh what do you know, I still have things unsolved…..

Can you imagine?? I’ve been living my life totally oblivious that I still have issues to deal with??? “Wait what, slow down…” As you can imagine I went into a state of shock, then went into crisis mode and kept saying to myself,” Oh maybe when this hectic week of school is over then I will get help”…

Let’s just put it off until a better and more convenient time….

Which never ends up happening. Tadaaa! Thankfully my amazing older sister was the one who made me realize I needed help in the first place! Go Sis!  But as much as I really and truly appreciated that, like Olaf I couldn’t deal…. So, here I am giving you all of these Frozen references for how I relate to Anna and yes even Olaf, and you wanna know something??? I haven’t gotten help yet….

I know I know… I give you all these great analogies and tell you that I realized I need help, and you think, “So you got the help you needed and everything is in tip top shape again??

Not really, but its’ a constant journey. No I haven’t gone back to counseling, but talking with friends and family has strengthened me. I feel more confident in myself. And just so you know, once this semester of school is over I am making it a priority to go back to counseling. I had a great talk with my mom and she helped me to realize that it’s ok that I haven’t gone back yet.

For right now I can just accept that I am broken and accept that I need help. What I have learned is that there is beauty in that. There is beauty in your hurt, your vulnerabilities, and your sorrow. Out of sorrow springs love. This kind of love no man can give me. A love for myself. Loving every inch of my body, loving all my faults, and even my dark and dirty secrets I never speak of. This love has been just about the best healing for myself right now. I am still learning and some days it isn’t easy. Just one step at a time. One step in the right direction and the load will lessen.

 

Do you think your most like Anna, Elsa or both? How have you dealt with some of your disappointment? Did you ever have any embarrassing moments with men? Do you struggle loving yourself? How do you get to a place where you fully love yourself?