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Category: Lifestyle
We had prepared for this day, as a family. We knew what was coming. We knew what her wishes were for after. Because, there would be an after – a time when her wishes were all that was left. I held steadfast to the idea that she would outlast the numbers. When she was first diagnosed with stage 3A ovarian cancer, I remember sitting in the cream-colored chair in our living room, my knees pressing into my chest. She was sitting on the couch across the room from me with my dad. “Fifty-five percent,” I said. “If you do…
“Everything is temporary until it’s not, to me,” he says to me. I’ve had to squeeze this answer out of him and at first, I’m kind of taken aback. Why would someone go through their life thinking people are just temporary? How do you form attachments like that? And why does this make it okay to treat people like they’re nothing? I’m gone soon after, because I’m not wanted, because I am just temporary to him. And although I wasn’t sure at the time…
I have kept quiet for too long. I have felt weak, belittled, and scared – for too long. I refuse to keep my mouth shut about this any longer. I refuse to pretend that I’m okay. I refuse to be quiet when all I want to do is shout. So I’m speaking up, because so many before me didn’t, and so many after me won’t. “You’re the new student? This whole time I thought you were much older,” he tells me when we meet. We are in the entry of a large hotel. There are students…
A week after I found out I was pregnant, I wrote this about my grief during pregnancy. I still have some of these same fears, but I feel less terrified now that I know she’s a girl. It feels like my mom gave me this gift from the beyond. <3 —– They don’t tell you how you’ll feel when life begins again. Grief had taught me many things over the last seven months, but it didn’t teach me how to feel about new life. It didn’t tell me how terrified I’d…
Often since my mom passed away, I think of the turns in life that didn’t happen the way we expected and I wonder if things would have turned out differently. When we lived in Germany and were getting ready to come back to the States, we were originally headed to California for our next base assignment. My mom sold every piece of winter clothing we had. At the last minute, things changed. We ended up getting stationed at Fort Drum, NY. Obviously, my mom wasn’t thrilled she’d let all our snow suits go. And…
Some years are better than others. That’s life, right? Well, 2016 was one of the worst of my life. I can say this in full confidence now that there’s a day and a half left of it. 2016, you’re a damn mutha fucker if I ever saw one, the biggest of bitches. Thinking about 2016 gives me similar feelings of falling into quicksand (which still seems like it should be a much bigger issue in life since all the television I watched as a child had someone dying in quicksand) or peeling the stringy…
*Please note this post may contain affiliate links from which I make a small compensation. If you purchase anything from these links, I truly appreciate you supporting this blog! Things do get easier. At least, I tell myself this constantly. Today. Today is EASIER! I shout at myself. Sometimes it sticks. Other times, I squish my eyes close and try to disappear. I have more happy days than sad days now. I really do. But the sad days are heavy. The moments are bold. They outlast my memory of the good sometimes. I can’t help it. I can…
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Things tend to fall apart for me when the weather starts to get cooler, in the end of October, beginning to mid-November. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the fact that JJ and Wayne died at the beginning of November. Maybe it’s the Amena got murdered then. Maybe these events set me up for a perpetual cycle of sadness. And after that, it was me breaking up with…
A fairly common issue with our generation is the need to either look at the big picture, or focus on the now. We never seem to be able to do both. We sit next to each others, staring at our phones with a sense of amusement or annoyance, the edge of our jeans touching, but our hearts so far away. We talk about the future, about houses and 2.5 kids, and we burden ourselves with the stress of a wedding, a baby, a house, a car, a boat, a goat. You get the picture. Why don’t we…
I sit down on the chair at the island, dropping my backpack to the floor beside me. My mom has a newspaper in her hand and we chat about how my day was. She looks down at the paper and then back up at me, her bangs falling into her eyes. “Do you remember JJ?” she asks me. “Of course I do,” I tell her, wondering why she’d ask me a question like that. He was my first real love. He was the first boy I ever said those terrifying words to. I love you. She slides the newspaper…
