New Beginnings

The one reason I enjoy having a blog (even if I don’t use it constantly) is that I can go back and read my posts and see where my head was a few years ago. I can relive the heartbreak and pain I felt and compare it to where I am now in my life. A few years after all of that stuff, I’m married and have a son. Things have changed, I have grew a ton and I almost have my bachelor’s degree (already HR certified). I’ve worked very hard to get to where I am in my life and I’m very proud of myself for sticking to everything. And the greatest gift I’ve ever received, arrived almost 6 months ago.

Jet James Harris was born at 1:10pm on November 13, 2018. He weighed 8lbs 6oz and measured at 21 inches long. Pregnancy was hard. From the moment I found out I was pregnant, I was plagued with morning sickness. I took medicine to keep it at bay. I only gained about 20 pounds through all of pregnancy, probably because of the morning sickness and my food aversions. I hated to cook and couldn’t stand the sight of raw meat. I didn’t even want to eat chicken, one of my favorite foods. At 28 weeks, my blood pressure went up and steadily rose until they put me on bedrest at 32 weeks. I had to do weekly biophysical’s (like a fancy sonogram where they rate the baby on different things, in case he needed to come early) and weekly doctor appointments. Towards the end I went to the doctor twice a week. I was in labor and delivery 3 times after my blood pressure rose because it was too high. I was given a steroid shot at 34 weeks just in case he needed to come early (they wanted his lungs healthy). At 37 weeks I was induced, due to the high blood pressure. After 22 really really long hours in labor, I had a C-section. Because I had a leep procedure 4 years ago, scar tissue had regrown in my cervix and it didn’t allow my cervix to dilate past 2.5 centimeters. The funny part, after all of that I would do it again in an instant.
The first 3 months of his life, felt like a slow blue or very little sleep. I watched him sleep the first few weeks, paranoid that something would happen to him. I never realized how powerful the love for a child felt, until he was placed in my arms. Thankfully, my husband was home with me for 3 weeks, and it was needed because of that C-section. My body was so exhausted from all of that. Jet had a lip and tongue tie, so he couldn’t latch properly to breastfeed. We had it repaired at 2 weeks old, but he never went back. I pumped and combo fed for the first 6 weeks of his life and then he went to straight formula. He has reflux so I think that explains why he hated lay flat when we brought him home. But now that he’s almost 6 months, he takes meds for it and sleeps 11 hours at night (which is so awesome). We did have to sleep train him two weekends ago. I’ll right about that in another blog.
Life is really great. It’s awesome, seeing the love my husband has for my son. He is such a good baby and super happy all of the time. I can’t wait to watch him grow into an amazing human being.

Epically lost.

Sometimes, things happen in your life that make you hard. We go through life and each hardship that we have changes, us a little. Each time your heart is broken, your mind changes. Each time you lose someone you love, your mind changes. Everything changes us, whether we can see it or not. Sometimes all of these changes, turn you into an epic asshole. You don't even realize how much of an asshole you are truly being, until something terrible happens because of it. It takes someone walking away from you, to really get it. I've been in some shitty relationships, I've been treated terribly by some people. But for a long time, I was fine with the all of the hurt. It made me tougher, it made me feel something, even if it was bad. Each time something ended, it hardened me more, which for some reason, I liked. But now, here I sit, alone, realizing that I've turned into such an asshole. People tell me all of the time when I'm being mean and I never listen. I never do anything mean to hurt others, but sometimes I'm just mean. I don't want to blame it on the fact that I lost my mother, but some things just always go back to that. Not having her here for some tough times in my life, has really effected me. Here I sit, feeling all sorts of terrible feelings, and I only have myself to thank for it.

Now I'm just trying to stay afloat.


the world was at my fingertips
life was so profound
everything made me feel so great
and now I feel like I'm screaming out loud
once I had everything
and now it's slipped away
for a mind so drenched in love
was secretly drenched in pain
if I could take it all back
and rewind it back to the beginning
I'd do it all over again
so you could see
how much you mean to me

A Christmas Wish

The Holidays are always so cheerful and happy. The smell of a turkey cooking (this year frying), a pumpkin spiced candle and cookies baking in the oven. There are so many things that we can smell that take us back to a certain memory. Thanksgiving meals always brought me back to the vision of my mother in a night gown, running around the kitchen and trying to get the turkey in and prep the other numerous foods for our dinner. The last year that she was with us for thanksgiving, she was in her pink nightgown and hadn't even showered that day. She busted her ass to have everything cooked properly, from scratch. I took a picture of the table filled with our food and in that picture she has her finger in her mouth like she just tasted one of the delicious dishes. We were all so happy that year. Everyone was eager to eat, I was happy that I got to watch the parade with my family and the dog show right after. I helped my mother in the kitchen like every year, and we were all excited to be off for a few days. None of us even brought up the subject of cancer at the dinner table. Because cancer didn't rule our lives and it certainly did not rule hers.

Here I sit, 9 days until Christmas, just thinking of my mother. Of course I partake in this every day of my life, but today I think about the last Holidays we spent together. Every Christmas, my mother would sit and wrap presents for hours and I'd sit with her mostly watching Christmas movies. I hated wrapping presents, and kind of still do. Every year she'd wrap up all the gifts that I bought for my friends and family. She tried so hard to make all of us happy on Christmas. One thing she always did for me was she gave me my birthday present on Christmas Eve. Even as a child, she never wanted me to feel slighted because of the day my birthday fell on. As a child she threw my parties at the beginning of the month. She also made sure people always bought me two separate gifts, one wrapped in birthday paper. My mother also would bake tons and tons of homemade sugar cookies. She would make the batter and stick it in the fridge for a few days. I would always sneak spoonfuls of the gooey goodness and eat it. She would get so mad when she saw half of the dough missing and knew exactly who it was. My mother spent 24 hours in active labor with me. Her Christmas in 1986 was a painful one that ended in happiness.

The last Christmas we spent together was a great Christmas. The cancer center she was treating at "adopted" my family for Christmas and bought our family many nice things. My mother was against this from the beginning because we weren't needy and we didn't need gifts. My parent's always made sure we had everything we needed, even if they went without. The people at the center were so generous and made that Christmas very memorable for the kids. Looking back you think, man would I have done anything different knowing that it was her last Christmas? I would have done this or bought this or said this. But you can't live your life thinking about the what ifs.

My birthday has never been the same since my mother took her last breath. No ounce of love, happiness or gifts can ever give me the feelings of having my mother back. Every Christmas my wish is that I could feel my mother right besides me as I partake in the festivities. There are so many things she is missing out on and when I start thinking about it too much the grief completely consumes me. Grief is such a heavy and painful thing. If you let it, it will destroy and cripple your life. I choose instead, to not have the grief control my life. I push it out as much as I can, to prevent it from eating a hole in my soul. But sometimes I have to let it in, I have to remember the pain of losing my mother. That's what makes us human, feeling the all too consuming grief of death. None of us will ever escape it. Especially when that damn Christmas shoes song comes on the radio....

My Christmas wish is to feel my mother around me on my birthday. To know she's standing besides me as I watch the kids open their presents. To somehow know she's silently wishing me a Happy Birthday. To know that she is proud of me right now at this moment. To just feel her love around me. That's all I want for Christmas.

It's only words.

I haven't written in this thing since October of 2014. Here is is, June 22, 2015. April 14th was the two year anniversary of losing my best friend, my mother. Two years, but it still feels like yesterday. I still can remember her smell, her voice, her laugh and everything about her. I haven't forgotten anything. That was always a huge fear of mine, forgetting everything about my mother. On the other hand, I remember with such vividness the last few days of her life. Now those, I wouldn't mind forgetting. I never thought I'd be where I am two years after losing her. I know I've written this before, but after you lose someone you love so much, you just don't think that life can ever go on. You feel guilty moving on without her. You feel wrong in doing certain things, because your mother isn't there to give her advice or tell you when you're being an idiot. The hardest thing to deal with is not having her to give me advice. I told her EVERYTHING, even stuff that you shouldn't tell your mother. She would always be there to listen to me and hold my hand when things got tough. My father is great, but it's not the same as my mother.

Recently, I've had to go through some tough things. Towards the end of March I went in for my yearly check up with the GYN and my pap smear came back with a positive result on bad cells in my cervix. I had to go through what they call a colposcopy, where the doctor puts medicine in your cervix that lights up these bad cells and then takes biopsies from the inside of the cervix. There is no sedative and it hurts like a mother fucker. Then you proceed to bleed and have cramps for a few days. The biopsies came back for the positive pre-cancerous cells and I had to go in for a LEEP procedure where they burn out a layer of your cervix taking all of the bad cells out with them. This wasn't too bad and I was only in bed for a few days. At the end of August I'll go back to have another PAP smear to make sure the cells haven't returned. I'm praying that they haven't. The more times you have this procedure performed, the higher the risk of infertility becomes. I don't want my chance to have a child taken away from me, but I also don't want to get cervical cancer. It's a cluster fuck. This is the stuff I need my mom for. When I received this news I was so upset that I didn't have my mom to help me deal with this. I cried myself to sleep before the procedure. It really really sucks.

Besides that, my life has been pretty awesome. I'm coming up on my one year anniversary with Jimmy. I can't believe it's been a year already. He's such a great boyfriend. And he can put up with my bullshit and family drama. I guess that means he's a keeper. School has been great and I'll be graduating in the spring with my associates degree in Psychology. After that I might take the PHR but I'm planning on transferring to Stevenson University for my bachelor degree. I'm very happy with my life. For a bit, I really really wanted to have some babies, but now I've realized that finishing school and becoming stable are more important to me right now. Plus I really enjoy sleeping. However, I can't wait to get married and have a few kids. I can't believe I'm 28 and I'm finally getting to the point in my life when I'm very happy. Besides, not having my mother life is working out.

An itch to write it out.

I've been itching the past few days to write something. Anything, I just need to get stuff out. My life now is crazy hectic, but most of the time that's okay. Work is becoming overwhelming and my school is crazy hard. Damn statistics, no one really uses this stuff that much, right? October 8th would have been my mom's 53rd birthday. That isn't going to be easy to live with. Birthdays, holidays and her death are always the hardest. And no matter what they say, it doesn't get better with time. The heart ache is still as fresh as the day I walked over to her lifeless body. I miss her terribly. Not a whole lot of people will read this, so I'm going to put all my feelings out there.

My dad has recently found a "lady friend" (I just can't say girlfriend, too weird) that he goes out with and enjoys being with. I have nothing against the woman. There's nothing to tell me not to like her or to be weary of her. From what I've seen she's a very nice person. I just can't wrap my head around it. In the beginning it didn't really bother me, then it started to little by little and now it drives me crazy. Don't get me wrong, I want him to be happy. I don't want my father alone for the rest of his life. I'd hate to be alone. But it's just very difficult for me to deal with. Even though people aren't, sometimes I feel that people are forgetting my mother. I don't feel that people talk about her as much as they should. It's just not fair that she's gone. My mother should still be here with my father. And when I hear him talk about his friend it breaks my heart in two. But again, I don't want my father being alone and I'm not saying he can't have this. It just hurts me, but it's not about me. This is about him. I can't be selfish to a parent that has sacrificed a lot for me and my siblings. Who continued living after losing the love of his life. Who showed us how to be strong when all you wanted to do was crawl up in a ball and die with her. And if he's happy, I'll live with it. But god does it hurt.

Even though my mother's death has always upset me, it feels like its creeping back up again. I'm starting to feel pain from it like I did when she died. Like it's re-hashing and its coming back strong and hard. I've cried a lot in the past few weeks, all at random times. A song comes on, I see a picture, I speak and I hear her, I dream of her, I can smell her. She is everywhere and nowhere at all. The more time that passes, the harder it becomes. I feel like school and work has suppressed most of it, and most of the time its not in the forefront of my mind. Two days ago a friend of my mom's and her friend passed away from breast cancer. She was my mom's age at the time she died. It's not fair.

Onto more pleasant things. I've now been in a relationship for 3 months. 3 whole months. That's like a record for me in the last couple of years. Ha. He's awesome. I feel bad because I've never really had good relationships, so I feel like I don't show affection like I should. Or sometimes I can be a whiny girl. He's still with me, so something must be going right. It's weird how when you really do quit looking for love, it knocks you off your feet. My best friend introduced me to him and I was very against the whole setup from the beginning. Because I'm crazy. But when I sat down to dinner that first night and we talked the whole entire time, I thought to myself, well this is weird. And things progressed and I still thought: "okay Heather, figure out what's wrong with him" and "you know something about him bothers you." But I never did find anything. He buys me really thoughtful gifts, he says nice things, he takes me out, he buys me creepy Halloween themed things and he even hits my best friend up for advice on stuff that I want. I feel like I'm one of the luckiest girls alive. To have found someone that really loves me, no matter what. That's pretty incredible. And he'll even watch lifetime movies with me. He's also the biggest nerd, but its so freaking cute. But both of us have been through hell in relationships before finding each other. I feel terrible that he's dealt with the stupid stuff that he has. But that doesn't matter, all that matters is we finally found each other. I finally figured it out and I've finally figured it out for myself. People always say when you love someone you just know. You know how I know? Even after I've seen him days in a row, thinking about seeing him again when I get home from work or school, still gives me that weird butterfly feeling in my stomach. That's love. I think my mom had a hand in this.

I guess I'll have to buy my best friend a really really nice Christmas gift this year...

Clarity

Everyone has their bad days and then we have good days. Really good days, and they make the bad days not even exist. It's funny how you go through life accepting something that you think you deserve. You always settle and think that's just how my life is supposed to play out. It always happens to me, I always get the shit end of the stick. Those type of thoughts often plagued me many nights. Over the course of the past year and a half I thought I had done something wrong to have the horrible events unfold in my life. Especially losing my mother. Was there something I could have done to prevent this? Why me? Why did I have to lose my parent? Why did I watch the person I love the most, wither away and die before my eyes? My healthy parent. God must hate me. The universe is against me. I did something to make all of this bad stuff happen.

One day you wake up and have clarity. You realize no one did this to you. It's not your fault. You did nothing wrong to make this happen. You never set off an event that ultimately led to this disaster. It's no ones fault, not even God's. One day you realize bad things happen to good people all of the damn time. But guess what? They also happen to bad people every single day. You shouldn't wish ill will towards anyone, but some of your dark days you couldn't help but do just that. You finally understand that you don't deserve what you keep settling for. You are so much better than that. One day something or someone comes along and makes you open your eyes. And then you just change, a good change, like for the good. You stop with the bad, negative feelings. You grow into something else, something new.

Life is a constant transformation. Most of the time we don't even see it or notice it. But we are constantly evolving into better forms of ourselves. There's still pain, and it still hurts like hell every single day. You will still have your bad days, but you can deal with them. You'll get through it, because that's who you are. You weather the storm, you walk through it. And you come out unscathed on the other side. My mother always taught me these things, but I never realized how true it all is. She always told me I deserved better than I was getting, everywhere in my life. But I was content being quiet, getting stepped on, being emotionally abused. I was settling every day of my life. But I can't anymore. I've hit that clarity mark and I don't think I can go back.

Just Don't Do It.

It's amazing how much of our lives we let other people affect. We live day to day depending on what someone else is making us feel or what they are saying to us. Why do we do this? Time after time we let other people influence everything that we do. And no one will ever understand why we do this, even other people on the outside will tell us how dumb we are for certain things, but we never listen. One day you will realize that it's just not worth it. For all of the bad and sad feelings that you get from someone, one day you realize those people were never really worth it. You wasted so much time trying to be there for someone and so much time worrying about how they feel, that you lose yourself. You stop remembering what you feel. You stop being you. The sad part about this situation is it will take them hurting you or screwing you over one final hard time, to make you finally get smart about it. It sucks, but thats what it takes.

These people will always be toxic to your life. If you find these people it's best to remove them right away. If you don't they will exist to torture you until you can finally cut the cord. You will be hard headed, you will not listen to anyone else around you, and you'll keep trying. But when you finally break free and cut the cord, it'll be the best thing you've ever done.

You're strong, stronger than that other person ever let you show. You should never rely on someone else to make you feel something about yourself. You should always depend on yourself. But humans always want to see the best in people and we try too hard to pretend that people aren't severely fucked up. But people are and you can't fix or change them. So stop trying. Because it only ruins you in the end.

It's just life. And humans always tend to ruin it.