Hello World Out There World!

About a month ago I wrote this around the anniversary of my mother’s – wait… she hated how I called her mother – mom’s death. I was hesitant to post it unsure how my readership would react, but since I want to be honest with all of you and show you the true me I think it best to share with you how it feels after one year after losing someone that formed my world and was a big part of who I am today. This is free writing, which means I did not edit I just let my train of thought take me wherever it wanted to go. I wanted this to be as pure as possible even though my emotions may have gotten the better of me at some parts. Forgive me for that…

So, without delay here is Today Marks One Year:

It feels like years some days and just yesterday on others. There is a piece of me that breaks whenever I see a mother and daughter laughing together. A part of me pings with jealousy when I listen to a conversation on how a daughter will have their mother for their wedding or for their first child. I feel angry when I overhear a daughter ignore or insult their mother because they will have the time to make up for it.

You always will think you will have time to make up for it. You will always think there will never be a time you won’t have her there to support you, to love you, to laugh with you. You will always have that time until you don’t.

Today marks one year.
One year since I lost my best friend, my biggest support, and my selfless protector.

I will forever remember the moment my heart was ripped out of my chest. That all those walls that had protected me for all those years crumbled leaving me to stand alone amongst the rubble to rebuild from the pieces left behind. It is not easy. It will never be easy to take the memories that had brought you so much joy that now make you collapse into a pile of sobbing tears. The memories that made you laugh and in some way still do while your eyes water when you realize that you won’t be making new memories with her.

Time will pass, the pain will fade but there will be moments where there will come overwhelming emotions you didn’t know you could feel.

They said I would hate her. They said I would be angry.
Maybe one day I will be.

Maybe one day when I’m standing at the alter saying ‘I do’, I will have that pinch of anger that she wasn’t there to help me get into my dress or give me advice that all mothers give to their daughters on their special day. Maybe one day when I have gone through hours of labor and I’m holding my little one in my arms, I will have a ping on anger that she isn’t there to help me like she promised she would be. But right now, right at this moment a year from the day she left me I can’t hate her.

I cannot be angry.

It wasn’t her that took her life but the demons that kept her awake at night. It wasn’t her that took her from me but the thoughts that she would never be herself again. She believed she was a terrible mother. She was convinced that her illness was destroying us. She believed ending it all because that was the only way she could be at peace. She is gone because of the lies that filled her head from the whispers of the monsters that we couldn’t see, from the demons the doctors didn’t believe were real, and from the fears she never expressed because of the way society views mental health.

Today marks one year since my mother died.

How easy it is to be so quickly defined by one actions. You could be a famous comedian, a musician, a government official, a mother… but what you only hear about is their death. My mother was creative – she could turned stockings and wire coat hangers into fairy wings without a template. She was selfless – always trying to find a way to better the world and the people in it either through volunteering or helping a single mother at the place where she worked. She loved nature – let it be hiking, swimming, or just spending the day out in the garden. She was a great mother – fighting against the school for my education, giving up all her free time to ensure I had a well-rounded/ event filled childhood with dancing, soccer, swimming, horseback riding, and summer camps. She read to me every night, taught me the importance of being myself and allowed me to explore the world always knowing if I needed her she would be there.

Today marks one year since my mother was a victim of mental illness but her illness won’t be what I will remember about her.