Are you ok?

Simple question. No simple answer.

In some ways, yes, I'm ok. I'm not suicidal. I don't cry 24/7. I don't hate every minute of every day.

So, yes, I guess I'm ok.

But being ok is sad. And tiresome.

And I miss so much of what was, that I truly can't think clearly some days.

Nothing ever prepared me for being a mother. Books exist, yes, but they don't really capture how wonderful and how hard being a mom can be. Yet, I did it. To the best of my abilities. And I got two very different, two very amazing sons.

Parenting them both was challenging.

Losing one of them was devastating.

We are close to marking the one year anniversary of CJ's suicide and I have started dying a little more inside with each passing day.

My son didn't just die. I can NOT grieve his loss like a mom that lost their child to something other than his own hand. My grief comes with such intense feelings of guilt, with 100's upon 100's of questions that will never be answered and with a pain that sears me to the core. That CJ believed putting a gun to his head was the answer and that I knew nothing of the real pain that must have been inside him, will haunt me until the day I die.

I wake up each morning and realize as if for the first time, that he's gone. And for a brief moment, it feels like it just happened. Every single morning of every single day for the last 10+ months, I have woken up feeling destroyed. I get up and move through the day successfully but with so much pain inside that it physically hurts my heart. I spend so much of each day trying not to cry. I've learned to cry inside.

Since CJ died, I have not had silence. Silence doesn't exist for me anymore. Instead of silence, I have screams...my own screams rolling through my head. Often. Way more often than I would ever admit to anyone.

I screamed when he did it. Those are the screams I still hear.

They are the screams of a mother who knows her heart is forever broken.

I had no idea being ok could be so hard.

It's not like CJ would have necessarily been here with me for my birthday.

I don't know that he would have stopped by.

Or called me.

Or bought me a Happy Bday Mom card that he wrote something "Shmoopy-ish" inside.

Or brought me a single red rose and a Diet Coke like he had done in the past.

It's not like this day was necessarily any better than it would have been if CJ were alive.

But I'll never know.

And that made this day especially hard for me.

Really hard.

I don't normally cry on my birthday.

Today, I cried a lot.

It's not like I know how today would have been any different if he was alive.

But dear God...dear, dear God, how I wish I could have found out.

12 days until my birthday

70 days until he's been dead for one year

120 days until Connor graduates

124 days until our 20th wedding anniversary

I feel like I'm playing the most horrific version of
"ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER."

There are days all I want to do is try to explain how I feel. And why I feel what I feel. Then there are days that I don't. Or can't.

There are days that I am brought to tears by the kind words, kind gestures, kind thoughts offered to John, Connor and I. Then there are days that I hear something or read something that someone has offered to us and I want to scream. And cry.

It's those days, the days that both spoken and written words cut me to the core, that I contemplate leaving my blog behind. Or signing off FB once and for all.

I actually consider that more than I'd like to admit.

And it makes me sad. Sad that I am either not yet strong enough to take some comments/statements with a grain of salt OR that people (even in their best attempt to be supportive) just don't seem to get it. Or at the very least, think before they speak.

If I had any advice to offer someone that is trying to support a parent of a child that has taken their own life, it would be very simple....

If the situation was reversed (god forbid)and it was YOUR child that put a gun to their head, HOW WOULD IT FEEL TO HEAR THE WORDS YOU ARE ABOUT TO SHARE?

I've told a million people a million times that in this situation, saying SOMETHING rather than NOTHING is a hell of a lot better.

But honestly? I don't really know if that's true.

Most days I crave conversation. Often times it's the only thing that keeps me from crying.

But when that conversation or those written words suggest that I am somehow CHOOSING to not move forward, CHOOSING to stay this depressed or CHOOSING to focus too much on the negative and not enough on the positive, I think I'd rather sit in silence.

I am NOT choosing to be anything.

I am NOT choosing to feel or not feel the emotions that keep pulling me into this sea of despair.

I am NOT choosing to be this devastated.

I am simply waking up each day and living the only way I know how.

It just so happens that living right now is the single saddest thing I've ever had to do.