Where I am Now......2 years-1month-4weeks &1day.

At least that is what the ticker says......

For me its been too long and went far too fast.
I feel too far away from her.

For the last 2 years after Stella died I joined in with fellow BLMs in a "Where You Are Now" Blog roll. Once I find those posts, maybe I will link them up here.

(ETA the post I read was from May 2012, so..... yeah. This is where I am anyways, dispite the whole blogger round up being now or then! [hand to forehead] O'well)

Angie at Still Life With Circles, yet again has hosted a fantastic blog gathering. You can read her post here and join in as well if you please. [From May- Funny how I didnt even remember reading that post from her then....]

I really felt I could relate to much of Angie's post on where she is now. A whole year and 5 month difference can really take you a long way when it comes to grief. Its like a train you ride. We are all on the same train, on the same track for the most part, but in entirely different cars. Some may look and feel the same, have similar colors, smells, memories tied into them, but they are VERY different. Just saying "I'm 2 years out from the death of my daughter" has an entirely different feel then "Its been 3, 4 or 5 years since she/he died" and that will be different when someday I am saying, "Its been 10 years since Stella died". It will look, feel and even taste different coming off my tongue as the words someday escape my mouth as time has since Stella died. And many of us have completely different stories to our lives and to our grief. All of those differences between life and time put us all in our own cars on this train. A train that just doesn't stop. Once your on, your on for life. Some of this track is nasty, hard, lonely, but eventually it gets better. Not sure if you just get used to it, or if in fact the scenery changes and the ride becomes smoother. Or maybe its just a combination of it all.

 Angie wrote a paragraph that I can relate to when it comes to blogging about grief and where I am there.

"Honestly, my biggest grief-related issue right now is this space. I fear that I do my readers a disservice. Women and men who find me after they have just lost a child. Who have grieved for a day, two weeks, three months, for six months, for a year, for ten. Perhaps my grief resonates, and it is true grief. But I edit my grief. I massage the words. I clean it up, make an analogy. After a long, winding life, I kill the analogy, then I resurrect it and make a holiday in its name."

The bolded I can relate with, but like I said, it just isn't the same because the BUT changes it all for me.
I have had a REALLY hard time with this space and sharing my grief, since the beginning of this entire mess. I have wrote numerous posts on this subject as well.
I come here and this is where I grieve. But maybe what my problem is, I don't edit. I don't edit at all. Sometimes I don't even re-read what I have written or spell-check. I come and I dump my heavy grief like a garbage truck dropping off the unwanted emotions and feelings at the dump with out sifting through and carefully placing them here.
The heavy, stinky, once cherished feelings and memories of what couldve been but instead died and rotted my heart out. My grief that hung on my like a dead rotting carcass, the grief everyone could see, smell, feel. I dumped it off here in my blog. But I made the mistake of giving everyone of those people who don't want to see it in the everyday life a window into that dump. and They look at me through that window and it becomes my day to day in their eyes. Its been hard, its made my day to day harder then what I had hoped. I didn't want everyone to look through that window before seeing me. To smell how pungent my grief could be, so strong they could taste it. It hung on them and changed their perspective of me, even if I wasn't actively grieving at the moment, they thought I was. All.the.time.
I couldn't escape the dump, I couldn't escape my grief.
That is what Stella has become to so many. My grief.
And to me that is so so so sad.
If I could do this all over again (And as hard as it was and from how far I have come I feel I shouldve done it differently.) I would not let ANYONE in my daily life know of or see this blog. I wish none of them had EVER read it.
I wish they would've just come to me and asked me if they wanted to know at all. Instead of coming here and changing the raw grief I had shared and made it into something it was not at all. Something their own minds created out of what they had read and not even bothered to ask me about. And through that, changed how they see me.
It been a difficult enough road, but this made it harder in my day to day. Entirely harder.

I shouldve never let anyone into my grief dump.
There are things there people maybe should have never seen.
Suppose I should clean it up, at least the front of the house where people look. Make it look pretty with some flowers and fabreeze it a little. Get one of those plug in fabreeze things to make it smell all pretty for all the visitors.  Maybe I should just keep all that raw rotting stuff hidden far far in the back of the dump. I should start sifting though all of this I bring here and carefully place it in pretty little spots with frames and paint it all to make it look pretty even though underneath it all, it is still stinky rotten grief no one wants to see or hear about.

Stella is more then that, and so am I.

I still miss her, deeply. I still daydream when I see my niece or little girls her age, and wonder what she would be like. How she would look. But at the same time I have accepted her death, I know she is gone and I know she isn't coming back. I know I have to carry on with out her. I know there isn't anyone to blame, that I shouldn't feel guilty and I am almost though that. I don't think I am guilty at all, but I do get twinges of guilt every now and again. After all that is a mothers job, to bring a child into this world alive and well to raise them into adult hood and teach them, keep them healthy.... And I failed that. In turn I feel guilty for that alone.

Ive been battling life in the after affects of her death. 
The whole "Rainbow" deal after the storm. I lost my chance. No rainbows for me.
Accepting that alone has been a whole new set of grief to deal with.
Marriage has been difficult after her death. Something that brings me a whole new set of grief as well.
Those two combined make the grief of Stella much sweeter and easier to manage I guess.
I have her in my heart. I have her in my soul. I feel her around me and she makes her presence known and I have that. She has made the idea of death easy for me. I could not care less about death because I know when my time comes I will be with her and that if I were to go, I could still be with my kids in their hearts and spirits.
Death is easy, peaceful. Living is the hard part.
Figuring out how to live again after such a life shattering event and all of its aftershocks is challenging. I'm trying as hard as I can to make this work. And that is all I can do. 

I am moving. Not sure in what direction, or if its the "right direction".
I'm moving. I'm standing and walking, talking, laughing, working, striving to do better.
I am moving.
And that alone is enough for now.

I still miss her and I will for all of my days.