The first year.

Perhaps I don't blog as often as I'd like because I feel the need to blog something of importance or interest? Not that anything already here is interesting or important. It's just a blergh blog. I'm happy with that. It makes me feel better to vent. Even if I'm the only one reading it.

Tonight shall be a free blog. Whatever comes.

I'd like to be the girl with the journal. Always writing, but it just doesn't come. I don't know how many of those I've started in my years. Nothing ever flows. Maybe at 2am when I can't sleep but really, who actually wakes up enough to write in a journal? Maybe I need to.

So the "big" week is over. A friend actually said "so it's all over now" as if now that her first birthday has passed and the first anniversary of her death is done we can all move on, put it behind us? Perhaps for some. I'm not at all saying that we should live in the past or be gloomy forever. It just took me by surprise that those around me must have been waiting for this big event with the anticipation that life would once again go back to normal. That they can stop treading on ice and put it all behind them now.Stop asking how I am? Stop caring? Stop saying they'll think if her? Stop understanding?

No need to mention it again. Like the first is the one to make a big deal of. All the rest, well it depends how you want to grieve. Some anniversaries will be just as intense as the first. Some easier. I'm not sure where I'm headed. Best not to make plans. I think that's how I survived the year. Don't make plans. Don't expect anything. Just wake up each day and breathe...

Her birthing day (the day before her actual birthday) was more intense for me. All those feelings, memories, smells, dreams and wishes came flooding back. Like time had never passed. I felt like a video played in my head. It was all so clear. The bitter sweetness of it all. The complete change in our lives from those few hours the year before. Life couldn't have been better. I was giving birth and it was wonderful, beyond words. I spent the day mostly alone, arranging flowers, lighting candles and just wandering around keeping busy. Much the same as I would have been doing the year before.

Then we entered into the intensity of the "birthday" where for me I don't really remember much, actually. It wasn't a significant day for me. I guess we just did what we thought we were supposed to do. Celebrate your dead daughters would have been first birthday. It was just a weird strained feeling. Nice looking from the outside, but something was missing. Hmmph funny about that. I'm glad we did what we did, but it was all just out of place. Although I felt like we should have done something, not nothing, even if none of us actually wanted to.

Then came the ultimate low. Almost like coming down from that birth high. I was left feeling numb and sad. We just spent 2-3 days trying to pretend we're a happy family "celebrating" a person's birthday who isn't here. Life returns to the way it was before. We retreat to the corner to lick our wounds. Go our own way. Alone. Functioning as the days pass into the next year. We survived the first year after the death. Apparently that's a triumph?