You don’t know what this will crush. You don’t know that once this is done, you won’t be less terrified or feel in control. You will never feel like you would have had enough time to make the ‘best’ choice, but you will always wonder if you really really contemplated all the alternatives. You won’t admit this to anyone, and it will eat you up. You will always wonder if you took a cowards way out. You will always always think about what you were ‘supposed’ to do.

For awhile, you will become militant on the subject. You will support the cause the loudest, preach your rights the proudest, argue your truth the longest and stomp your foot the hardest. No one will challenge your view without fueling a fury they cannot escape. You will eliminate any who judge, any who scorn, any who pity. You won’t question your motives for years.

You will spend some time trying to understand what happened; trying to put it back in order. Sometimes you will think about the alternate endings to this story; this will make you want to smother the part of you that keeps bringing it up. You will start drowning out the noise in any way you can find; you’ll justify your drinking in a voice only you can hear.

People watch. They’ll see every detail of your fallapart; this is painful in a way you’ll spend hours and hours and hours trying to understand. Some people do care; some of them hurt with you every time you rip another piece of you away, but you won’t allow yourself to care back – you’ll spend a lot of time being angry with them for not stopping your train mid-wreck. You’ll punish them for wanting to be near you; eventually, they will stop trying to save you. One will even tell you goodbye early, so she won’t have to keep watching you die. She won’t go though – no matter how hard you push her.

You won’t know how to talk about it at first, and after awhile, you’ll stop trying to put it into words. You will start to convince yourself that not talking equals not knowing, and eventually, never happened. This won’t last. No matter how many times you try, it won’t work, but you’ll still keep looking for new ways to stop knowing.

You’ll start learning how to un-care about things you love. This is only because caring about things feels good, and feeling good doesn’t feel like your ‘thing’ anymore; try not to hurt yourself over this – its a survival technique and at this point, you are simply surviving. This will end – although it is an excruciating wait. You can’t write, so for a while, you just stop. This will feel like the death of a friend; like someone stole all of the peace you had left.

There will be times that you will wish you hadn’t survived some of the battles you’ll have fought. Sometimes the only thing that gets you through to tomorrow will be knowing that no one will love your boy like you do. You will cling to the fact that he needs you. That when he wakes up and cries at night, he wants you and when he calls you ‘mommy’ you know there is no one else in the world that will love and protect him like you do. You will begrudgingly decide that you have to stay alive long enough for him to be safe and not need you anymore. This is a huge burden to place on him and you will eventually turn the guilt into yet another way to torture yourself.

But you do survive.
It takes 12 years for you to realize that what happened was not a quick fix. Not ‘quick’ because it never ever ended, and not a ‘fix’ because everything just felt broken afterwards.
But you do survive.
And eventually, you will start realizing that there were reasons for all of it and that sometimes, you don’t get to find out what the reasons are for a long long time.
You will survive and that’s what counts.

You are eventually able to talk and write about it and once you start, you can’t really stop – and this will finally start making the wounds hurt a little less.

Someday you will finally let yourself wish that someone had told you all this was going to happen. You’ll be pretty sure that you wouldn’t have listened, but you’ll still wish someone would have at least tried to get to you and tell you how this will still ache, years from now. I’m so sorry that no one did.

Someday, I’m told, you will even forgive yourself.

Being afraid of beginnings makes things like an impending January very uncomfortable.. and I just realized that at this time last year, I was a nervous wreck. Turns out (surprise!) it was all for naught.

This year has been better than I could have ever ask for:

I got to marry my best friend. In a perfect, very ‘us’ wedding – that was everything I had no idea I had always dreamed of. My family came together for the first time I can remember for me and was happy, simply because I was happy. People I hadn’t seen in years came from across the country because they love me and my family and wanted to be a part of my life and know who I am now.

And then.. everyone went home and the ‘good’ didn’t go away. I fall in love with my husband everyday, all over again. Who knew just being happy would be easy? No wonder I hadn’t gotten it right yet – ‘easy’ never came easy to me.

Our baby boy was born on November 26th; sealing a several-year-long relationship between me and that date that was ready to be laid to rest. 11/26 has been a very personal and private day of mourning for me for almost a decade; now it has a strong, amazing little life attached to it – and God gave me that. Amazingly, I feel free. I remain in awe of this everyday and thank God every morning for pulling me through to the ‘free’ side – the answer all along was so simple, yet seemed so out of reach – now it all seems so obvious. ‘Healing’ finally feels good.

We built a beautiful family. ‘We’ now consist of a family of seven. Something else I always wanted – but never thought I would have. We are seven pieces of a puzzle that finally feels complete.

Don’t get me wrong – this year has been painful too. Relapse and recovery became two very real terms in our house. They used to sneak out of the sides of our mouths like dirty words – scurrying away from conversation as quick as they were uttered. Now they seem to flow daily and aren’t so spine-wrenching. ‘Relapse’ lost some of it’s mysterious terror and ‘recovery’ started sounding real. It started sounding like a way of life as opposed to something just out of reach. It started sounding like a ‘family affair’, if you will, too. It has become very clear to me that I am not an innocent bystander or observer of ‘my husbands’ recovery’ – but someone who is in control of ‘my own recovery’ as well.

So I’ve decided that I won; and that beginnings are not going to scare me anymore.

I say – Bring it On – I am ready to see what the New Year will bring us. Goods and bads, ups and downs, sick kids and healthy ones, happy and sad days, gains and losses (big and small), bumped and bonked heads, first words and first anniversaries, I am ready – Bring it On.