Opening my blog back up~

I decided to open this blog back up for readers. I don't think I will be posting anything new though. My writing caused too much grief for those who are close to me, even though writing helped me immensely personally, the grief it caused in my personal relationships was detrimental to my mental health.
Maybe I will reconsider someday, not sure at this point. I wouldn't want my honesty to disrupt my relationships anymore than it already has, but maybe this blog can help others in the deep throughs of grief?
I spent my afternoon reading some of my older posts and giving myself some time to cry. Its been awhile since Ive allowed myself to do so. Ive had to hold it all together for everyone around me to feel comfortable in my presence.
I hope this helps someone.

Blessings.

Krystal.

Yet Another New Year

This time of the year has always been rough on me. from the time October begins and through the winter. Not only does my grief spring a bit of a hole out of the stitches, from merely reflecting, but the winter holds a place in me of cold hardness. I'd honestly rather sleep all winter long wrapped in a fuzzy blanket staring out the window at the empty trees until the buds emerge and bring promise of new life, hope and warmth. But alas, that is not quite possible and probably not so healthy. So I trudge on over the cold ice and snow, bitter wind chapping my lips and biting my face.
I turn 30 in just 11 days and this is making this winter even harder on me.
30 is a huge deal for me and for a number of reasons.
The top reason being, I made this a mid-point in life that I wanted to;
1. Have an established career. Yet instead here I am moving out of one and into the unknown because what I was doing just wasn't 'good enough' , and not necessarily for myself.
2. I wanted to be done having children. As much as my life is against me having another, giving up on that dream for a rainbow is like tearing my guts out. It literally hurts me from the inside out. I already feel like a failure and giving up makes me feel like one even more.
3. I wanted to be happy with life going into my 30's and I'm just not. I'm am grateful for what I do have, don't even get me wrong on that. But the choices I've made and the choices I am making now are either making or breaking me from this point on.
As of this moment in life, I do not feel that I am where I am suppose to be or suppose to be going. I'm uneasy on the inside. I feel that I'm being taken advantage of and abused in a number of ways through out my day to day. But what it really comes down to is it being my choice. My choice to live like this. my choice to stay where I am and continue feeling this way. But again, if I give up I will feel even more like a failure. Maybe life is this hard because I'm not on the right path? I don't think life should feel this horrid, empty, disappointing. I'm the one cheating myself and abusing myself taking this and not doing anything about it.
I don't feel like me. And really I don't feel like I am allowed to be me. I feel many people in my life expect something else, someone else entirely. And why is it I strive to appease them and not me? Because Im a freaking idiot, that must be why. That is why I'm so easily taken advantage of. Everyday.
I'm not sure where to go or what to do to break this cycle.
Much of this way of life stemmed from my religious upbringing. Being told that doing things for others brings happiness. But when nothing you do is good enough and it does nothing but hurt you, then what is the point?
I'm at a huge turning point in life and I'm not sure if I'm strong enough to make any kind of move. I'm freaking out about this new job. The time, the money, the appease of yet another group of people set out to judge every move I make in a corporate world I promised myself I would stay out of because it did nothing but hurt me before. My biggest problem in life, making promises to myself I never keep.
When I will learn and start making the better choices for myself is beyond me.
Losing Stella definitely put a damper on being able to trust myself and any decision I may or may not make. So I sit, motionless, afraid, sad and completely responsible for every second of it.

This seems to be a lose lose situation for me.

Here is to hope, while I meditate and reflect this winter, when spring emerges I will have the strength to either accept and hope for the best or gain the courage to do something about it.
Really not as easy as it seems.
But here is to hope.......

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.

SOTD~ Feelin' Alright

FEELIN’ ALRIGHT – Joe Cocker / Dave Mason

Seems I got to have a change of scene
Cause every night I have the strangest dreams
Imprisoned by the way, it could’ve been
Left here on my own or so it seems
I got to leave before I start to scream
But someone's locked the door and took the key

Feelin' alright, 
Not feelin' too good myself,  
Feelin' alright, 
Not feelin' that good myself, 

Boy you sure took me for one big ride
Even now I sit and I wonder why
And when I think of you I stop myself from cryin’
I Just can’t waste my time I must get by
Got to stop belivin' in all your lies
Cause there’s too much to do before I die

Don't you get too lost in all I say
Yeah, but at the time you know I really felt that way
But that was then and now you know. it’s today
I can't escape so I guess I'm here to stay
’til someone comes along to take my place
With a different name and a different face
Feelin' alright,
Not feelin' too good myself.

Shifting

I am wondering how long I will be writing here and if I will continue or not. I don't come here as often anymore, for a number of reasons.
I would love to be able to shift my writing here and transform this blog into what my grief and life are becoming because of My Star in Heaven, Stella.
It is quite difficult honestly to make this anything other then what I have seen it as, a sad story with a sad ending.
This blog was is for her and me. Our [very complicated] mother/daughter relationship.
For me to share her story and her short short life.
To purge the deep grief I have experienced since her death.
To process the emotions that have hit me like a hurricane. Waves of grief coming and washing over me. Winds blasting my face with emotions and ringing the tears out of me like heavy clouds covering the blue skies I once remember.
To try and understand and find any kind of answers to; the what ifs, whys, why not's, how's and whens of this.
Connecting to others who are experiencing this same intense throes of grief, longing, missing, yearning.
To [hopefully] help others realize they are not alone and it is hard., but you come out one way or another. And sometimes back in for brief moments from time to time.

I have battled to utilize this place for all of that.
I hope I had succeeded in at least some of it.

Since I have dealt with being criticized and chastised scolded [I suppose] for my writing here, by people I love and needed deep support, understanding and sympathy from, that has made this place feel almost forbidden, taboo or something I should conceal and keep to myself.
I'm told my sharing is doing nothing but showing my weaknesses and making me weaker in doing so.
I had originally felt that exercising my grief was helping me become stronger in it, as I worked though it and learn to accept her death. and eventually transform this into something more beautiful then what I have felt it was.
I really dont like being told that what I do for myself is wrong in how I do it. That has done nothing but throw me off my course and onto a course built for someone else. & It really isn't fair.  You wouldnt expect a fish or turtle to climb a tree!

I loved being able to come here, in the beginning, and felt free to let my grief flow.
Emotions would shoot out of me like a volcano purging the molten lava that was eating me away from the inside out. When the fault lines took on too much pressure, the eruption would come, sometimes unannounced, sometime shaken to release it because I knew that was what I needed.

But now I feel I can not go anywhere I once did for support. Its watched like "big brother" and I'm judged upon what I feel and what I write so its no longer for me. Its all seems against me.

[Ahhhh the never ending questions of forgian lands along constant changing terrain. ]

What is right in this?
Does this make me weaker?
By writing and feeling make this all harder on me?
Am I grieving "wrong"?
Is this where grief goes?
Smoldering out like the ashes of this volcano, washed into the sea and dissolved as if it never was.
Or will it just burn you when you try to hold on to it?
Is there any happy medium?

Could it even be the same for everyone? Like a little cookie cutter oven machine of grief processing?

Unfortunately, as of now, I've been left with a sour taste for my place, Stella's place, here, my grief or my love for her and how I choose to express that love. As if my love for her is wrong.
Its different, that's for sure! It sure isn't what I had ever expected just over 2 years and 6 weeks ago!
I'm not sure how I will be able to transform this, to continue on like I had hoped to. Or even if I should.  I almost feel like I would need permission to.

I want to be able to write how my day to day comes and goes, how she speaks to me in small ways like chills down my side, a spiritual hug from her during her sister's chorus concert last night.
It was a song called "One Candle" preceding an Italian lullaby called "Dormi Dormi". The ever familiar gym set up I stoon on as a 13 year old girl. Childrens eyes darting the room scanning for thier parents. Sweet voices sing out in unison the lyrisc of this ancient lullaby.  A little redheaded baby girl, sleeping on a note stars adorning the back drop, projected on the gym wall to announce the song title and artist of this timeless beautiful peice.
She was there, as she always is. Can I write about her like that? Can I incorporate her into my day to day and illustrate her in JOY and not so much the sorrow my heart aches in her physical absence. Yet that does linger. That longing will always be there for her. And JUST for her. Am I even allowed to feel that? To write that? Does this ALL have to change?  

It seems all of that is still just so sad.......

 Beautifully sad.
That is what this has become.

After hearing about all of those little children whose lives were taken today in a mass shooting in CT, my heart wrenched out my my chest for those parents and families with out their children tonight.
That God awful grief of child loss. 
I hope they can find a way, a support system, love and prayers to carry them though the depths of grief.
I pray they dint ever hear "Get over it already" or "When are you going to be done grieving its been X years".
I hope they all find that way though, their way and I hope its as peaceful as it can be.

Will they ever have that beautiful sad?
Even in such tragedy's?
Its so hard to see that from a beginning point like theirs.
Today, today they became bereaved.
Today their angels entered the gates of heaven and our babies were there to greet them with Jesus. That alone is beautiful and yet so so so sad.

Do you leave things like this alone? Trudge on?
Be nothing but grateful for the blessings you have now?
Those parents... would you expect them to?
Tell them "It couldve been worse"

I think not.
Not today, not tomorrow, not next week or even next year.
I Pray for them, today, tomorrow, next week and even a year or 2 from now.
That is what they need.
Gods touch, and the touch of God through each person who graces their lives today tomorrow and for the rest of their lives.
Just as anyone would, anyone who has lost love to any tragedy. They need LOVE. The REAL kind. The Jesus kind. The God kind. The honest, unconditional, loving, caring, compassionate LOVE that LOVE really is.

I Hope I can find that too, everyday.
The media just right to paint the transformation into what this is becoming. Into what I HOPE this becomes. A balance of beauty built out of sadness.
This 2nd year of grief.
Its growing, like she should be, here, physically.
Emotionally, she is growing inside me, changing me, my love for her, my longing, and my grief.

I found this picture on another blog and it surely describes how I personally feel about grief.
Naturally, I found this just after I was drilled on how my grief is pretty much a disease like depression and ruining everything in my life and all those around me.
This Dr. explained it perfectly.
I have done my best, and that is all I can do. Everyday.

May God be with all of those families tonight and along the rest of their journeys through bereavement here in this life.

Who knows, maybe I'm just not there yet in all of this to find those right words.
Maybe my hindrance has, like I said, just left me in a block.
I was/am not allowed to move on like I was, in my flow. I have been deterred like a damned up river.
Rerouted waters into a pond that stills, becomes swamped and is just stopped.
I would imagine there needs to be a continual flow for anything to change or flourish.

EDD

November 13th

This was the estimated due date for Stella's arrival in 2010. She shared this EDD with a couple other babies on my DDC. I'm glad they are here to celebrate it. I wish she were here too.

Simple things like this, some mothers forget, when they bring home their little BIG blessing, mothers who lose their blessings just never forget.
When your left with nothing but memories and unable to make more, you seem to cling to those you had. Because that is all that's left.
I will never get to see her smile for the first time, or crawl, walk, say ma ma. Celebrate birthdays. none of it. Everything I expected and hoped for.
So when days like this approach, it stings. It pulls out that yearning, longing, missing, the edges of the hole in my heart BURN with the desire to see her, to feel her, to have what shouldve been.
It physically hurts.
Emotionally crushes.

I'm not sure what to do with myself today. I have off of work and the house to myself. I may just go digging through her things. Let myself fall apart like I did yesterday. I'm not sure.
I doubt anyone would benefit from my company today. So I will probably just keep to myself again.
I know how everyone is quite "through" with hearing about this and my grief, so I will just take care of that myself. Just time for me and Stella. Its the only time I get to "spend with her".
Falling into my grief.
Letting it just wash over me and consume me for even just a moment or a whole freaking day if I please.
I almost feel ashamed to do this.
Like everyone thinks or feels I just drag this on too far, too long.
I have nothing else.
There is no happy ending to this story.
I have this and this only.
I WANTED her, I WANTED to raise a baby, a toddler, a little girl, a woman.
I wanted her to have her big sister to look up to, I wanted her sister to have HER.
Her brother to have HER. He would make such a fantastic big brother.
I know I seem to always be talking in circles.
I'm not inspirational or happy about Stella's death.
It is still hard for me to deal with the longing. I still miss her. And on days like this the longing tugs a bit harder.

I don't know what else to do.

I miss you Stella. I miss me too. I miss what we all were before you left and took such a HUGE part of my heart and life with you.

#onedayatatime.
#stillpickingupthepieces.
#griefisasneakymeanbitch.
#imissyou.

Pity Party

Just one of those days.......

Im pissed I will never have my "happy ending" to this story.
Its just a dead end of grief, a dead horse, the stinky carcus everyone wants to avoid.
A story with out a happy ending is one no one wants to read or hear about. It just sucks and people want you to just forget about it.

Im haivng a really hard time with birthdays lately. Especially an upcoming one. the whole idea of this is just throwing me into a pity party.

And that is pretty much all it is.

Bust out the balloons.