Monday, January 14th, 2008 - Shock Fading . . .

Good Morning. The past few days have been very difficult ones for me. I believe that the shock of Alex's passing is fading and the sadness is setting in. For some reason, Friday was a horrible day for me. I spent the morning at the computer, attempting to get some order back in our lives and by 11:30am was utterly exhausted. After picking up ZG, I went to sleep and rested for quite a while. The tears come at the drop of a hat. There is no known trigger except my own thoughts. I am having a hard time fathoming living the rest of my days without him in my life. AS I said before, being a mom and being Alex's mom, is the best thing I have EVER done in my life. It brought me so much happiness and joy not to mention pride. I was one of THOSE women who loved being pregnant because I knew motherhood was going to be grand (and I never had morning sickness)! How do you go on without your joy, your happiness, your pride, your heart? I just don't know. I know Zoe brings me great joy and luckily for me her strong will does not allow me time to wallow. When she wants attention, she gets ATTENTION!!! If you have ever met ZG (or any two year old girl with a mind of her own) then you know what I mean. I love her so much. Bedtimes have been difficult the last few days. My brother-in-law was in town on business, and ZG was sleeping in our bed. We have a collage of Alex and Zoe pictures, portraits and drawings on our wall (it was the one at the memorial service). Saturday night after looking at this collage for a while, Zoe wanted to sleep on the floor (the only time ZG slept on the floor in our room was when Alex was very sick and my sister's family was in the nursery) and was very sad because she wanted "her Alex back". I echoed her sentiment and we had a soft cry together. Yesterday she talked about Alex quite a bit too and all I can do is empathize with her. Steve is also going through this new "realization process" and therefore has been emotionally exhausted after working all day. This past week we had very little communication except about "household minutia". I found out through the week that he was planning a guys' night out (normally fine) via a third party; then he started doing other little things that made me feel very lonely and unwanted. Finally by Saturday night, I was fed up and had to leave the house. I left my mobile phone and headed to the bookstore. There I purchased a journal and pen and started writing a letter to Steve. I then just wandered around the bookstore browsing and thinking and not thinking. It was really great and quite cathartic. I never knew how popular bookstores are on Saturday nights. I am pretty sure I will do that again. It was fun and I had a gift certificate so it was cheap too!! Anyway, my demeanor Saturday night and Sunday morning revealed that I was still irked and Steve wanted to talk about it. I told him about the letter and he asked to read it on his way home from the airport (to drop off Blake.) It took him several hours to return and we had a very good, poignant, honest talk when he did. Nothing is resolved yet but a plan has been put into place. So wish us luck. You see it is just too hard to be there for someone else, focus on work or child rearing and be emotionally available to a grieving spouse all in one day or as we found out in one week. This is not going to be an easy road for our marriage, but Steve and I do love each other and are at least quite willing to do everything possible to make it a marriage we both want. So last night I had this dream, at the very end of it was a woman running around like a mad person. She was caring an extraordinary large piece of luggage with stuff hanging out of all sides. I was taking care of Zoe in the dream when this woman was running around us, but a therapist once told me that some dream theorists propose that we are every person/thing in our dreams. So what does this tell you? I'm carrying around a lot of emotional baggage and feel out of control? Nail on head!!! The image in my mind is pretty comical so I have to laugh at myself and wanted to share this with you all. Well, today is the eight year anniversary of my and Steve's first communication. You see we met on match.com. I was in the first day of my free trial and he had been a member for a few months. My login was Buttercup and his was Montague. I told him about my love for Colorado (was in OKC at time) and he invited me to come play in the mountains with him! At this time I believed fairy tales and "falling in love at first sight" were rude fantasies to put in little girls' minds but after meeting Steve and spending just a few days with him; I had to shut up on that opinion! By April, I was driving to Colorado with a carload of belongings and one year later, Steve proposed (on this day) and in August we were married. We bought our home in December and Alex was born the following October. Good story huh? Since that time, we have met several couples that met over the Internet. It seems to be the way of the future! So far today is starting off okay. Wish me luck for the rest of the week. I have appointments set to start interviewing therapists next week. Love, hugs and God bless! G