Hi baby. I miss you. 

I miss your cute teeny tiny face. 

I miss your mullet hair.

I miss your kicking. 

I miss waking you up, and ticking you off. 

You hated to be woken up, just like mom. 

I miss your little bird legs, with big knobby knees. 

I miss your pretty blue eyes. 

You liked opening them for auntie more than me, stinker.

I miss your little fingers that could grip so tightly.

I miss your huge feet. 

Yours were little versions of daddys, but cute. Not big and smelly.

I miss hobbling down to see you in the middle of the night. 

I miss our alone time, just holding on and hanging out. 

I miss being blissfully unaware of what was about to happen. 

I miss you being here.

I miss you just being.

I miss the happy.

I waited a long time for you baby boy. 

Turns out I'm going to be waiting a lifetime more. 

I'll miss you til then my little love. 

Questionnaire!

So Ms. Lindsey over at Two Boys, Two Pair of Wings so sweetly tagged me (awhile ago, sorry Lindsey!) for a Leibster award nomination thingy. As you may have noticed, I haven't been here in awhile because my life has been ridiculously busy. Stupidly busy! I'm about to run out the door again actually, but I wanted to acknowledge this because it was so nice of her to think of me. 

I'm going to do this incorrectly, just because I'm time crunched today, but I did want to answer the questions that Lindsey picked out. 

1. Do you work outside the home?  If so, what is your profession?

     I do! I am a Paramedic with two different ambulance services! 

2. What song most reminds you of your Child(ren)?

    Oh gosh. So many of them. A Thousand Years by Christina Perri is a big one. Ships of Heaven by Blackhawk (Gavin's funeral song). Who You'd Be Today by Kenny Chesney sends me into a total tear-filled meltdown every time. 

3. What are you most looking forward to these days?

    This is so pathetic, but I truly don't know. I feel like I don't have anything going on in life to look forward to, and that makes me so so sad. I'm usually planning a trip or a remodeling project, and a trip is not in the budget this year and the new house doesn't need any projects yet. I've always been the planner, and I'm just truly lost in life right now. (another reason I haven't been real present in the blog world lately)

4. If a genie granted you one wish, what would you wish for?

    To have a family.

5. How long have you been married, or been with your significant other?

    I have been with the Mr. for almost 9 years, our 6th wedding anniversary will be in June! 

6. What do you do in your spare time?

    Spare time... ha. I spend time with my friends, love to hang out with my niece and nephew when our schedules all cooperate, mope around, check out restaurants and wineries with my other half. Cuddle with my doggy. 

7. What resource helped you the most after the loss of your child(ren)?

    I don't think I have one specific thing that helped. Being here and talking with other women has helped tremendously. Just talking about it has been the biggest thing probably. Unfortunately it doesn't happen much.

8. Do you have pets?

    Yes. We have a very attention-hungry black lab named Addie. She rules the roost and is my favorite non-human little person ever. I am wanting another dog very badly. Although, I am very aware that I only want another dog to fill a void. I don't care. We have kitties also. I'm pretty confident that I have the best cat on the entire planet. Just saying.

9. What is your favorite color?

    Pink :) 

10. Who is the most supportive person in your life?

    I'm not sure. My other half is most of the time I guess.  my support system isn't all that great anymore, mostly because I don't reach out or ask for it. 

11. If you had to live anywhere else, other than where you are currently living, where would it be?  

    South. I crave the south. I would move in a heartbeat. 

The New Year

A New Year is here with completely mixed feelings.
As always, I am excited for what it represents: a new start. In the minute between 11:59 and midnight, we expect some things to start fresh. What is it that changes in that minute? We all vow to be better people, to improve our lives, our relationships, and to change our ways. Everybody wishes for something.
For those of us who don't know what to wish for, it can be scary.
What are people like me supposed to do with a fresh start? A new year normally brings new goals and new dreams, but what happens when you carry around this weight that doesn't allow you to move forward? (Totally not meaning Gavin there, I mean our medical issues)
I should be happy to see 2012 go. It was hands-down the worst year of my life. But for a little while, it was also undoubtedly the best. To wish to move on from that would be to wish for it to be left in the past, which is something I'm not okay with. But moving on from the hurt and sadness would be a nice thing, so hopefully I can find some balance.
Resolutions... ohh they seem so simple and so stupid to me this year. I could easily say that I will do many things, but most of it would be crap. I'll list some things I'm hopeful for, things that are not promises that would lead to let-downs. Basically, just things that would make me feel better.
 I want to be more appreciative of Nate. He doesn't reveal his feelings often, and shortly after midnight last night he shared something with me that isn't my story to pass on, but that let me know that he still struggles and is hurting too. I feel alone often and completely misunderstood, and I need to learn to find more comfort in him, and find ways to support him as well.
 I want to ease up on myself, although I'm not sure how to do that. I need to not be so hard on myself for feeling the ways that I do, and allow myself to work through those feelings and hard days instead of hiding them. It sounds really simple and dumb, but it's hard to not put on a show during the bad days.
 I want to be more thankful and happy for the amazing relationships I do have. I have some friends who have shown me so much support and love that I never expected. I am so lucky to have them, and I want to put more good energy towards those who light up my life.
 I want to let myself let go of the relationships that aren't amazing. I've felt for so long that I need to maintain the crappy ones that bring me down just because nothing bad has happened to push the relationship to an end. This one is really hard for me, but I just don't have the energy to maintain them when there is no energy put in on the other end.
 I will make sure Gavin is a part of my life. I will talk about him, show his pictures, and let my love for him be known. He isn't something to be hidden, and I know once I am able to separate more the happiness from the sadness as it pertains to him that it will be much easier to do all of that.
So there is some of it. The reality is that while the Best and Worst year of my life is now gone, it will always carry on for me. There may be worse yet to come, but my boy made it the best by making me his mom, and that will forever be there.

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.