When did I quit breathing? Part 2

I can't sleep. I've been lying here thinking about when it was that life started standing still and I was tossed head first into this "review". I stopped working in March. I'm sure that has something to do with it. Being a working mother is completely different than being a stay at home mother. It was a while yet before life got extra emotional. Aha. In May one of our best friends died. The grief that comes along with losing someone so close to you on account that they chose themselves to leave the world (I am not yet able to confront the word "suicide") is wholly different than losing someone to an accident or health, etc. There is such an intense anger and personal guilt that comes along with that kind of grief. I think that is when I started looking around again. Amid all those questions of "Why didn't I see that coming?" "What should or could I have done differently that would have prevented this?" "What kind of friend am I for not seeing that something was that desperately wrong?" It's an experience that can certainly throw anyone into an emotional tailspin. I made a pact with myself to pay more attention to what's going on around me and how my behavior affects other people or doesn't affect other people, for that matter. As a group of friends we made a pact to take better care of each other. I think this is when I started searching. I find that while I'm going thru the things in my head that I want/need to address about my "who i am right now" my friend often comes to mind. I think my grief and my soul searching have intertwined or set each other off or just taken over. Why on earth would I work thru something like my soul journey or my grief journey where anyone can read it? I don't know. I have to have an outlet somewhere. Isn't this something that is more of a quiet, private thing? Blah. I've never been very quiet. I talk too much too often and am aware of it. I've never been very private either. I don't like having secrets. Well, if they are your secrets you can bet your life that I will keep my mouth shut. I don't like having secrets of my own. It makes me feel like I have something to be ashamed of or I'm hiding something. That's an icky feeling. I try to eliminate as much ickyness as I can. So, if you don't care to get personal then don't read. I've always worn my heart on my sleeve. And I'm okay with that.

It feels good to have at least an idea of what set this whole thing off. You never know. I thought that maybe I was unhappy about something that I wasn't yet aware of or something. I was getting paranoid about everything. Is my marriage stable? Am I a bad mom? Have I just screwed everything up to the point that I am standing here wondering what has happened here? No. It's nice to have answered those horrible questions. I started searching for answers to some incredibly difficult questions concerning my friend and like most everything I start...went off on a tangent. There is alot concerning my deceased friend that I am not yet ready to face. I can't face "the word". There is an incredible stigma that goes with that word and I just can't attach that to my friend. But I am ready to face myself. So at least I can feel good about that. I just feel like I need to know what's going on around me. I need to be aware of the people in my life. I need to put out as much as I can for the people I love. I don't ever want to feel like a crappy friend again. I don't want to feel like I could have loved someone more or been there more. I don't want to speed past people including myself. I'm honestly trying to fulfill that too. I wrote my grandma Irene that letter. I drove to Norman and visited grandma Euletta today...for the first time ever. I want to learn something from what I've been thru this year that will help me feel like even though something really bad happened I learned a lesson and put it to good use. The pain I have in my heart for my friend isn't just here to torture me. It's trying to tell me something. I've figured out part of the message but I still have a long way to go.