fitting right now.

A Promise to My Son ..

I will talk about and share my son,
to honor him and his memory.
Deny me that, and you will deny him life.
Deny him life, and you no longer have a place in mine.

My baby should be 9 months old today, but he's not.
This should have been his first Christmas, but it wasn't.

I'm in a funk. Life isn't great right now.
I'm tired of people that claim they care when they don't.
Actions really do speak louder than words.
I'm just feeling cruddy.
I'm feeling like I've been left behind.
So has my son, by a lot of his family.
But they "care" so that's enough right?
I feel pretty alone.
A lot of things can't be undone, and I'm feeling that list getting longer and longer.
Nothing is the same. I'm not the same.
I miss my baby.

It's Okay :)

I randomly copy and paste things here, mostly so I can find them again in the future if they were helpful to me. These aren't my words, but darn close!



"I spent so long feeling guilty, feeling ashamed of my sadness, and you know what? It just made me sadder. You are allowed to be sad, you are allowed to be angry, you're allowed to be depressed. We all deserve to feel our own sadness in our own time.
Something you will have heard before - you deserve to be happy. That, of course, is not always easy to hear, especially in the depths of depression - so let me add something. You deserve to be happy - but you don't have to be happy right now or all the time.
It is okay to be sad, it's okay to not be ready to be happy yet. One day you will be ready to recover - that day doesn't have to be today or even tomorrow, as long as you know and trust me that it will come.
It's okay not to be okay."

I've found that working through it is much more healing than just pretending. When you're pretending, it all comes back up again at some point and you will feel like you're starting at the beginning. All those feelings of crap need to be noticed and felt to be able to move up from them.

Hi.

Some of you may have noticed that this place went private and quiet for a little while.
I'm only here to talk. About myself, my boy and my life in general.
This is therapy for me.
I cannot control what people think, believe or say about me.
However, I can control what is posted here and the opinionated comments that are allowed through.
For those of you who know me personally, or have at some point in my life, you know that I've always been feisty. Sarcastic. Sassy. Bitchy, even. I've been strong-willed, bull-headed, and heavily opinionated.
For the last year almost, I've been empty.
I cry, randomly, for no good reason.
The littlest things send me totally over the edge.
My stress and emotional level is constantly at a 9.
I don't talk about things. Unless somebody else brings it up, my things are not discussed.
My systolic blood pressure for the last 9 months has been at least 150 consistently. Before, it was 118.
I am worn out. My body is tired. My mind... it's fried.
I have to set alarms and reminders on my phone to remind me when I have to work in the morning.
I'm hurting.
I'm emotionally drained.
With all of that, I had to try to save somebody else's kid who put a bullet in his head this week.
I didn't succeed.
Before you judge me, or any of the content of my brain that I post here, remember a little thing called compassion.
You may know me. You may know of the life I lead.
However.
You do not know my struggles.
You do not know what myself or my husband are living through.
You might know the loss, and if you do, I hurt for you.
But you might not know how exhausting it is to have to pull yourself together to care for someone else when you can't barely take care of yourself. I'm not better than anyone. I'm not stronger. My struggle is no greater than yours. I'm just saying - I don't walk in your shoes, you don't walk in mine.
95% of this blog experience has been so positive, and so supportive and I truly find comfort here.
5% of the time, it causes judgement and attacks and this is hopefully my last post where I have to address this crap.
If you are here to judge or twist or spread stories, just go away. Have enough decency and try to muster up enough care from your cold dead heart to just simply leave me alone. I'm trying so hard. I don't need crap from anybody. I need support. I need love. I need people who genuinely care. For those of you that provide that for me, I am so thankful for you. For those of you that don't, please use the X in the corner and do not return.

Edited to Add: My email is kscharmer5@gmail.com . For anybody who does want to read this blog and continue to follow the story of my life and my emotionally charged responses to it, please shoot me an email with your email address so that if I do have to make it private again, I can keep it open to you. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being there for me.

Removed.

Edited to Add:
Let me know if you would like the link. I've removed it because instead of getting opinions on the topic itself, I'm getting opinions on my life, which is not exactly what I was asking for.
I appreciate that people come here to read, BUT, if you're going to read just pieces and pick out the parts that you want to spin into rumors to pass around town, please just go the hell away.
I'm not asking whether anybody believes we need money or not. It might appear that our life is great. We have new-er vehicles, just bought a house (that we don't need, or deserve apparently), we do own an older boat and have two older snowmobiles. Apparently, I should get rid of absolutely everything and live in a home that haunts me every single day so that if our attempts at growing our family fail, I will have nothing. But that's what people around here want, isn't it? For nobody to have more than them? To not offer support or kind words when somebody is hurting? It's the small town way to talk shit and break down and spread their jealousy and nastiness as far as they can. I am so sick of being bullied. I'm sick of being ripped apart by people who have so much misery that they can't stand it. I mean seriously... I don't deserve a baby because I have too nice of a car and house?
I guess what makes me the most sad, angry, and a million other emotions is the fact that Nate and I literally help people for a living. I sometimes work for 36 hours STRAIGHT. It's not out of the question for me to put in 50 hours in a single weekend. And in the 10 hours I sometimes get off between Friday night and Saturday morning, I respond to VOLUNTEER ambulance calls instead of sleeping. I see people die. I try to help them in the absolute worst moments of their lives. I go home sweaty, sometimes covered in the blood of someone else, and occasionally in tears. I beat myself to a pulp to help others. For what? To not deserve something?
Judge me on my character. Judge me on my heart. Judge me for my husband - nobody in the world can say he's not a great person. Walk a day in my shoes, and then judge me. Feel free to judge yourself first. What do you do for others? Anything? Do you do any single thing to improve the life of someone else?
I may not need the things I have, (and I may not be keeping them, how the hell would you know?), but I do know that I don't need anybody in my life who is not supportive, who constantly bullies, or pretends to care but then runs to the bar to flap their lips. I do not need you. What I do need is for you to get the hell away from me. I'm not doing this anymore. Stop commenting here or to others. We will have a discussion in person because I am sick of your misery and hate and I will not continued to be bullied by you. See you soon :)

Letter to Bereaved Parents

Letter to Newly Bereaved Parents
By Sarina Baptista

"You will survive this. It might feel like you won't right now, but you will." Those were the words told to me by a lady at my son's viewing. I later learned that her 4 year old son died about 9 years prior. You never would have known it. I asked her in the following weeks, "Are you happy? I mean really happy?" She knew what I meant. You feel li

ke there will never be another happy day, another smile, another joy. She said, "Yes, I am. Of course there are days when I am not, but most of the time now, I am."

I hung onto those words with all my hope and strength. I knew that she had been heaven sent and that she would lead me to happiness again, or at the very least, to a day when I could smile at my other children, who so desperately needed me.

I am now over five years on this journey. I can say with a full heart that I am happy again. I have found joy again. This happened not by running away from my grief, but by falling into it. I had to fall into that deep darkness, just as Steven Curtis Chapman writes, "So deep and dark that I could barely breathe". I tried to escape it, but it just made it worse. So I succumbed. I learned fairly quickly that by succumbing to it, giving in, as horrible and frightening as it was to be in that pit,
I was not there alone. There were many others there with me -- other family who had met J.T. when he passed from here to heaven, the many angels who hold us up when we feel like we just cannot take another breath, and, of course, God. God was there in that pit too. I didn't recognize it was him until much later, but now looking back, I know he was there holding my head above the muck.

I cannot explain it very well, but I keep trying because I really want other parents to understand this. It is only by truly BEING in your grief that you are able to rise above it. I found that each time I
would feel that wave come over me, I would just let go and let it carry me wherever it may. Sooner and sooner, I was carried to the top of the pit, able to climb out and breathe again. We humans don't like to be "uncomfortable". We don't like to be in pain. Losing a child blows that all out of the water. There's nowhere else for us to go. We HAVE to be in the pain. Try not to run from it, escape it, numb it or postpone it. It will just come back again. You must deal with it.

I've learned so much since J.T. left, and I wanted to share it with you. I AM on the other side of that pain. I DID survive, and I DID make it. You can, too. Life will never be the same without your child here, but you CAN make a new life, a new normal, and truly function.

Be easy on yourself. Don't expect ANYTHING from yourself for at least a year. Do what you can for your other children, as much as you can give, but don't feel guilty about not being able to engage with them or stop their hurt. It just doesn't work that way. Their grieving is different than yours and may need professional help down the road. I put both of my children into grief counseling -- one was fine and we stopped the counseling, the other one is still going and probably will for some time. You will know what and when to do that. The biggest thing is to not think it's your responsibility. You have a lot to deal with yourself.

Take all the help you can get right now. I had people offering to clean my bathrooms. Ordinarily, I would have said no. But, it made that person feel like they were helping me, and it was not the time for pride, so I took them up on their offer. Take the help. It makes others feel like they are doing something for you.

I want you to also know something very important. Our children do bring us signs that they are OK. Watch for them, but try to not obsess on them. Sometimes, grieving parents try to look too hard and then miss the obvious ones, like a butterfly landing on your shoulder, or pennies and feathers in random places in the house. You might hear "Mom" spoken in your child's voice, look around and no one is there. That really is him, and he wants you to know he's OK. They are not truly gone, as I have learned in depth since J.T. left. And they will not leave us. Right now, it is your child's job to see you through this, and he will. So take the signs and hold them in your heart. Know they are real.
Don't second guess yourself. These gifts will get you through those tough nights when everyone leaves and goes back to their normal lives.

In the beginning, I had to have someone come sit with me at night. I called them my "mommy sitters". I was terrified to have the house quiet. I would have panic attacks, and I never had them before. I had plenty of them those first few months. Don't think you are being "weak" or not dealing with things if you have to have someone come over to talk with you, or just watch the kids while you have a meltdown. It is part of this wilderness we are in now. There are no rights and there are no
wrongs. Don't judge yourself thinking you should be done by now, or why this again? It just is.

I wanted to say a couple of things about siblings. I received so much advice on what to do and what not to do with my children as far as "letting them see you cry" or "keeping them from the pain." I learned some very important things. First, you do need to let them see you cry initially. I found, though, that after the first month, they kept trying to comfort me and wanted to take away my grief. Definitely not something a child should have to do. So I spent more time at the cemetery without them. It's a great place to scream, yell, beat the ground, throw things, etc., but not have the kids see it. I don't want to say to hide your grief from them, because they know more than we think they do. But I did have to limit it. Your children might be different. You will know what is best -- go with your instincts and forget what everyone else says.

Whether we wanted it or not, we are on this road. There are many of us on this road and we hold onto each other with all our strength. We are all at different stages of this journey. There are many who feel they are helping by sharing their story with you, but you may find it just brings you down. It's OK to limit that kind of support. They mean well, but sometimes it would leave me more depressed than when I came in! Do what you feel is right.

You are loved. You are loved by many in your community, by your child, by God. You did not do anything to deserve this -- it is not a punishment. I know this for a fact. There is meaning in this, even though you cannot find it right now, know it is there. You may find that meaning one day, or you may not. But it has nothing to do with judgment, condemnation, past sins, etc. I hope you know that. You are loved, and you are never alone. In the depth of the pain, I know you will feel that hand reach down to you, those arms holding you, just like I did. Hang onto that love, and know that it is real.
My family and I are praying for you, with all our hearts.~Sarina Baptista