2. The grief felt from a murder, is unlike any grief you've ever known. Before you were killed, we had felt grief. We had lost most of our family members. Losing Dad to suicide when I was 13 almost killed me. I couldn't function normally for a very long time. The depression, anger, frustration and abandonment I felt during that time in my life was paralyzing. It was a very hopeless feeling. But losing you at the hands of someone else, that was a whole new sea of emotions. How could someone hate you enough to kill you? Better yet, how could someone who didn't even know you kill you? How does any of this happen? You go through a lot when the death isn't natural or accidental, too. Identifying your body, going through a list of suspects, becoming a detective yourself, having evidence taken from your loved ones home, getting that evidence back almost a year later, getting tips and comments on their death and trying to deal with those without losing your freaking mind. There's been so much to your passing that it would take me hours to even get into it all, and tonight, I don't have it in me.
3. Grieving as a parent is so incredibly hard. You don't get to be crazy. You don't get to lay in bed for days on end and sleep the pain away, not that the nightmares would let that happen anyway. You can cry in your bathroom for 5 minutes before your kids come pounding on the door. Then you wipe the tears off your face, take a deep breath, and you open that door like you didn't just silently scream into your arm in pain. You quickly leave the store when your PTSD panic attack hits and just tell your kids, "Mommy's not feeling well." You just hope you don't break your kids any more than losing their loving and involved uncle already broke them.
4. Losing your best friend and loved one, can make you want to die too. The day you died it wasn't a matter of if I wanted to live, it was a matter of when I was going to end my suffering. I didn't want to live without you. I didn't want to be alone. Living without you didn't feel like living at all. It felt like someone was stabbing me in the heart over and over again. I sat on my bathroom floor many nights wallowing in pain and crying hysterically. It felt like I'd never get off of that floor and that everyone would be better off if I was gone too. It wasn't until my girls came into my bedroom one night, crying hard, and missing you, that I realized losing their mother would be putting them in even more pain, and I wouldn't be here to hold them and love them through it. I decided to live for them, and for you. The last thing on this entire planet that you would have wanted, was for me to die because you did.
5. Sometimes, you have to take life a single moment at a time. "Do you think you can handle this for 10 more seconds? I learned a long time ago that a person can handle just about anything for 10 seconds, then you just start on a new 10 seconds. All you have to do is take it 10 seconds at a time." Thinking about my future was painful, it still is. You won't be at this event or around to see the kids grow up. There's so many things in our future that you will miss. Sometimes I lose myself in the future and the very long list of things you will be missing, but I have to tell myself to break away from that. What am I doing right at this moment? What do I need to do in the next 10 seconds? I have learned to focus more on now than later. Now still sucks too, believe me, but it's a small moment in time and not the entire span of the rest of our lives. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10....
6. Life can turn you into someone you don't recognize. Before you died, I use to laugh a lot more. Despite all the things we went through together, I had you, and that made me feel so much better. I didn't need those family members who abandoned us and never looked back. I didn't need to carry around the burden of losing Dad on my own, because you shared that burden too. I had you, and you had me, and that was good enough for us both. I smile less. I laugh less. I talk less. Everything is so much less with out you. I don't know who I am anymore. You made up so much of my life, so much of me, that without you, I don't even know how to be me. I don't remember a time before now when I didn't run all of my major decisions in my life by you. You've helped me choose every path I've taken in life. I don't know what path to walk without you, and right now, it feels more like a haunted roller coaster ride that I just want off of.
7. When you're angry, it spills out and into everything. I find myself getting angry a lot lately. Sometimes it comes out when I bang my fists on the steering wheel and scream, and other times, it comes out in my attitude when talking to others. It isn't something that I plan, or that is intentional. Somedays, I'm so furious. I'm mad that my only sibling is gone. I'm mad that you were murdered. I'm mad that you were scared. I'm mad that our family had to go through all of that. I'm just mad. There's only so much that I can do to try to keep my emotions in check. Somedays I'm pretty good at it, others, I suck miserably. I'm doing my best.
8. Grief is not linear. The highs and lows that come with grief are so incredibly devastating. Some of the most bittersweet moments in my life are moments where the girls are participating in something or succeeding and being recognized. I am always painfully reminded that you're not here to see it. There are days where I can push most of it to the back of my mind and I can smile, and have tickle fights with them. Then, there are days where I can't push past any of it. I can't even open my eyes without thinking of you and how much I miss you. It brings me to my knees some days, literally. It doesn't matter how far out we get, it doesn't hurt any less.
9. I am NOT required to forgive anyone. I've had a lot of people ask me about forgiveness, a question no one has a right to ask me. Here is my answer: No! Absolutely not! I don't forgive anyone who put you in that situation, who pulled the trigger, or the people who were suppose to help bring your murderer to justice and dropped the ball on several occasions or refused to speak to the authorities. I don't forgive any of them and I never will. They can call me a lesser person for that, but you deserve better. You deserve our outrage because you deserved to live. I don't believe the crap that everyone says about how it's going to make me feel better to "let it go" or "offer forgiveness." I won't feel better. It's a decision that only I get to make for myself, and I've chosen to place anger and blame exactly where it belongs. I think that's healthier than saying I forgive someone, that let's face it, I could never forgive.
10. I didn't know how strong I was, until being strong was my only choice. I use to think that was just a silly quote that I would see on people's statuses. It is SO much more than that now. In the 48 hours following the first phone call that I received alerting me to your absence from work, I fielded just shy of 90 phone calls. NINETY! I lost my best friend and dealt with NINETY phone calls in 48 hours. Phone calls with family, coroners office, IMPD, the crime lab, your personal detective, animal shelter, funeral home, flower shop, news channels, victim advocate representatives, and several others. I made more trips to Indy in a few days than I can even count. Gathering clothes, identifying your body, dealing with the detective, attending events held in your honor, handling your apartment, writing your eulogy and your obituary, and the many other tasks I took on while you were lying on a metal table, getting ready to be put into the ground. I don't know how I did it to this day. Especially when I didn't even know how I was going to put one foot in front of the other. The only thing I can think of is, I did it all for you. I found strength where I didn't think I had any, because in the worst moment of my life, that's what you needed from me. And we both know, I'd do anything for you.
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