Tag: summer

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The Days Keep Dragging

Another calendar month has come and gone. People keep remarking how fast the summer is flying by. For me it’s dragging. Every day is a lifetime filled with nonstop thoughts of Ariella. The thoughts change but are always about Ariella. About what we are missing. About how much I miss her. About how much I want to hear her voice and tell her about my day. About her days in the hospital. About what we could have done differently. She is all around me. Everything is a reminder. And I mean everything. Nothing is safe. She is a constant in my life no matter what I am doing or where I go. Some thoughts are happy memories though they make me sad, and some are tragic. Doesn’t matter. I can’t escape them. 24/7 I am missing my daughter. I count down the minutes until I can go to sleep once again. I survived another day. But then I wake up. Another day to get through. I force myself out of bed. I run or go to the gym, the only thing that remotely helps me right now. And I try to fill the rest of my day until I can sleep again. The summer can’t end soon enough. I’m anxious about going back to work but at least my days will be filled. I’ll have a routine. I’ll have no choice but to get out of bed. I’ll have no choice but to keep myself busy at my job.

Work though is going to bring its own set of worries. I work with children. Everyday I’ll interact with children near Ariella’s age. I will watch them learn and progress and grow. Some of my students I’ve known for several years. They know I have a daughter. They ask about her. They didn’t know she was sick. How do I respond when they ask about her now? Some of them are the same age, in the same grade Ariella would be. How? How am I going to watch these kids learn and experience all the things Ariella will never get to experience? I love my job and I love my students but this is going to be a real test. And not just the interaction with the kids, but interaction with the staff as well. I work in multiple schools so I don’t get to know staff at any individual school very well. But they are aware of the situation. I am mostly in the same schools as last year so I am dreading the first week or so back, having those conversations with people I don’t know all that well. I just hope that it’s far enough out that when they see me it’s not immediately on their minds. I am relieved to be in the same schools because the thought of adjusting to new schools on top of everything else was increasing my anxiety about going back. At least I’ll be dealing with the familiar (other than one new school).

I’ve got a little over three weeks left to fill before I go back to work. I’ve had so many offers for lunch, dinner, etc. and I appreciate them, I really do. I can’t accept them all. While doing nothing isn’t good, doing too much isn’t good either. I pay for it later. Interacting with others is exhausting. Making small talk is exhausting. No matter who I’m with it always hits me what I’m missing, what our lives are missing and as soon as I leave, the world comes crashing down yet again. I’ve always been introverted and even more so now I prefer to be alone most of the time. It’s actually quite the conundrum. I want to be alone but I need to fill my days. I don’t want to just mindlessly stare at the TV all day but I don’t want to go out and do much of anything. Nothing is the right thing so I am trying to find that right balance of not shutting myself completely off but also not exerting myself too much.

I never understood depression before. Anxiety and I had/have a very close relationship, I know anxiety quite well, but was not so familiar with depression. I just didn’t understand how life could feel so bad that one would have no motivation to do anything or be able to take pleasure in various experiences and activities. It made no sense to me. No matter how bad things seemed there was always pleasure and happiness to be had along with the bad times. I get it now. The root of the depression may be different, mine being situational, but I fully understand lack of motivation and being unable to experience joy. It is a dreadful way to live, feeling like there is no reason to keep on going. What is the point of living without happiness, meaning, or purpose? Why suffer through that? If anyone has the answer to that I’d love to hear it.

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A New Month

Have turned the calendar twice now since Ariella died. Almost 2 months without her. Every turn of the page takes me further from her. On the other hand, I wish I could just keep flipping and flipping and flipping the pages to make time speed up. But it’s just the opposite. The days drag and sleep is barely an escape because sleep is elusive. Most minutes of most days are torture and I’m wondering once again how I am actually going to survive the rest of my life without my daughter in it. The okay day Saturday now feels so far away, just 2 days ago.

I can’t even explain what makes one day harder than another. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason. It’s just what I’m feeling at any given time. I will say that today I was triggered by a Facebook memory of Ariella and my father together at a baseball game. They are both gone now and I was so close to both of them. Ariella and my father very close as well. She was devastated when he passed in 2016. The picture was from 2012 so she was 4 1/2. Their birthdays are 1 day apart and were always celebrated together. I think they have a special connection. He died in February 2016 and she was diagnosed in February 2017. She had her bone marrow transplant in February 2019, one day after the 3rd anniversary of his death. I took that as a good sign, that maybe February would finally be associated with good. But nope February sucks. Now they are just 1 grave site apart.

I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook memories. I do like reminiscing but they make me so sad that we won’t get to make more memories. Facebook itself is a trigger. I actually don’t do much on Facebook but post my updates, check in on my bereavement groups, and check on the cancer families I have gotten to know so well. The rest is just too hard to look at. I may start scrolling but it’s all happy families, family vacations, Ariella’s friends doing things without her. It’s too painful to see what Ariella should be doing and what we should be doing as a family but can do no longer. We know our family and friends and Ariella’s friends are sad and miss Ariella, but it doesn’t consume them and it shouldn’t consume them. But I can’t lie, it is painful to see everyone else going on happily living their lives when we are stuck in the depths of despair.

Summer is a trigger. Not my favorite season but my favorite time of year usually. I haven’t worked the past 3 summers so got to do many mother daughter activities. Not so much in 2017 because Ariella was in the hospital much of that summer but even though she was in treatment 2018 we got to enjoy that summer the 2 of us and as a family. But generally during summers we would go to New York (started that tradition when she was 5 years old) and see shows on Broadway and take at least one other day trip. At least one family vacation every summer. Long days at the pool with evening swims. Hikes and finding waterfalls. Family bike rides. Parks and playgrounds. Snowballs and Rita’s. Strawberry and cherry picking. Going to baseball games and amusement parks. Ariella was fearless. The bigger, faster, and scarier the roller coaster, the better! Last summer as a family we went to Disney World through Make-a-Wish and Ocean City with Believe in Tomorrow. In addition to that Ariella and I went to LA for Dancers against Cancer. So much family stuff happens in the summer. I don’t have much to do this summer but haven’t even joined our pool (though I usually love the pool) because Ariella should be there with me, bugging me to watch this and throw this and play with me. Not sure I can go there without her. Not sure how I am going to survive this summer. I guess like everything else minute by minute, sometimes second by second. In no particular order by year here are some pictures from various summers.

One thing did make me smile today. Not one, but two of Ariella’s friends texted me today to see how I was and let me know they were thinking of us. They’ve reached out to me more than people I expected to and haven’t, and I am so grateful that Ariella had such good friends. I am grateful to her newer friends from 6th grade for welcoming her into a private school where the others mostly had been in school together since kindergarten. It didn’t take her long to have a good group of friends and they were amazingly supportive of Ariella during her treatment (she was in outpatient treatment during the entire time she was in 6th grade, all of 5 1/2 months) and when she was in the hospital. I am grateful to her dance friends as well for reminding her always that she was part of their family even when she wasn’t able to dance. I think many adults could learn a lot from Ariella’s friends.