Recovery is crazy.

Why is it that it seems that I feel like just when I am getting my feet back under me. Bang! Something happens and I feel like I have been thrown back into a wall. Not that everyday isn't a struggle it's just that everyday is a little less painful than the day before. I start to get into a routine where not every single second is my mind consumed with the fact that Pete is not right here beside me. I can wake up in the morning and not feel that horrible stab that he is gone. But I feel that I am back in the beginning stages of recovery, again. Again, again, again. Honestly. Recovery is interesting. because when one thinks of recovery it's like thinking that the hard part is over. People who suffer from drug additions or alcohol they talk about being in recovery. When I hear this sentence I think of being past the withdrawal section of detox. However when I think of it in terms of grief or maybe just in my grief. I think of it in the fact that I can now remember how to get dressed and get the kids to school. Have a new routine in life. Where the wound isn't constantly gushing  it;s just on occasion. But for me it's just when the scab is about to come off it gets re-opened again. I am back to not being able to listen to the radio or read a good book or sing certain songs to my kids before bed.  The logical part of me knows that this is all a process and that it;s not going to heal itself overnight and on and on it goes. However the irrational side of me is like OK damnit. I am done. with this. I don't want to hurt or cry. I just want to act like a normal mother. Well.. I know in my case Normal is stretching it a bit. Nonetheless I really don't want to hurt like this. Like a sore muscle that never gets better. If I could just walk it out and put all my weight on it. But I can't . It hurts too much.
  I miss so many things about my old life. Thats what it was my old life. I miss being able to just sing to Pete whenever I wanted. I miss the way he used to look at me. I miss heaven forbid cooking dinner for him. I miss fighting with him. It's not jut him the man that I miss I miss the things we used to do together. Sometimes it feels too hard to do them without him. We used to go garage sailing just for the heck of it. Get everyone loaded up into the car and drive around to see what there was to see. Sometimes we would just do a "drive by" only if it was a really good one, was it worth getting out of the car for.  Or even the way he would get so frustrated with me for not making up my mind about something. Where then we would end up arguing over lunch and he would just get so mad that he would say forget it and we would drive home and have left overs. It seemed on those days the left overs were actually really bad and we would have been better off going somewhere. But it's these kinds of things that I miss too.   Now that Halloween is getting closer it was Pete who always carved the pumpkins. Of course all sorts of cool things. Forget your traditional pumpkin. He carved Tigger and Strawberry Shortcake. I know the kids are going to want to get pumpkins but really I don't. I don't want to do it with out him. For one, mine won't be as cool as his were. For another it just seems wrong. He is supposed to be here. No take that back. because weather he was supposed to or not and in this case not. I want him here to do it. Thats the bottom line. I want him here now. Aryanna, Petey, and Chase Leo want him here.
   Chase Leo is starting to talk and he is big into Da Da. It breaks my heart. I wish he didn't know that one. I know he is just talking and it is part of the development but it hurts my heart. By the end of the day my insides are done and I want to shut my ears off. How horrible is that. I love his baby babble but I can't take it anymore. I try to get him to say something else like Ma Ma or La La or hey even Ba Ba anything but Da Da. And I can't tell him Please Chase Leo just stop..  Another milestone with out him.  I was watching Aryanna play the other day in one of those pedal cars. Pete and her put it together and at first she couldn't do it very well But now she is all over the place. And I thought to myself as I was putting it back into the garage. Too bad Pete isn't here to see her tear it up. I mean he is on a spiritual level he sees her. But I want him to see it with his physical eyes. To laugh with her and chase her around the cul-de-sac. To have him watch Petey hit the crap out of the T-ball. To see how much Petey talks now. Just how big they are since he last saw them. They are so big. And he is missing it. His physical body is missing it. His laugh, his smile. I want him here to see it.
   I feel the pain of his loss like it was yesterday. You know when babies are teething you can put origel on their teeth. Well I want some origel for my heart. Can I just sit these next few months out?  All the pain and the emotional rollercoaster. The lack of sleep. Goodness I haven't really slept in more than a year. You know that good sleep that all is well. I know parents of little ones don't sleep until they are older. But even then. Having lack of sleep because your baby kept you up all night is a different kind of sleep compared to the love of my life is gone. To no longer be able to climb into bed beside him. Now it's just empty cold sheets. Yet in a few hours A and P will wake up and wander into my bed and then it will be all of us in one room all sleeping and dreaming about the good ol days.
  Not saying that these days are bad. It's just from my tennis shoes these days are hard and these last 4 days have been really hard. I try to paste on a smile and act like the world is my oyster. But in reality I feel the ground has slipped again. And we are tilted on it's axis. Aryanna told me again that I missed for the second week in a row Show and tell day. Her day is on Monday. And I forgot again. Not that in my old life I was much better about remembering things. It just seems like a bigger deal now. I know, I am crazy.  It comes back to me thinking of my "old life". That moment when I realize that my old life is gone. Like way gone! Will it ever come back? Maybe parts of it.  Or m, maybe I feel that I am tired of being Crazy. a little crazy I am fine with but this over the top whirlwind crazy is just exhausting.  I can't have my old life back. But I want Pete. So I guess that leaves me with wearing my Bright orange shirt and running around in circles trying to figure out the " new Me" or The new Barajas family" and yet still constantly running late. So I guess some of my old life is still in there.  Which is what? Strong and not to be messed with? Yes. And yet all this figuring it out just keeps going. I want a break but I don't/ Because I know where that gets me.
       If I try and look at the whole picture I can see things about this "new life" that have been for the better. Which seems hard to say. How is being without Pete for the better? That part is still horrid. It's the other part that gets me wondering. I have learned a lot about myself and what I am made of. I now know what my family and friends will do for us in serous times of need. I think of all the people that I have met and become friends with it's these people who have changed my life.   As I sit here and think it through, it's not just the loss of Pete it's the loss of the life we had. I can say that that "life is over" And now it's the trying to make a  new life.
   This new life, is trying to maybe embrace and incorporate the old life and combine it with the new. I guess just another part of recovery. So as all of these new thought and ideas consume me. I realize there is lots of recovery involved.I cant go back, and in some aspects why would I want to. I mean I don't want to constantly re live his death. Pete and I were a team. And now that my half is not here why go back? It's that whole thing about moving forward. I guess I just thought it was moving forward without him but ti;s also moving forward and leaving that "life behind". Like the shutting of a door. Or how cliche' Closing the book on that part of my life. While it was wonderful and great. Its is not now. And I have to focus on the now. To save my sanity and my kids. I feel the light-bulb has gone off. Now I will just have to sit on my new realizations and think about the new crazy direction I am headed. Not that it will be bad, I am not saying that. Its the seeing myself in a new crazy life. Full of adventure, love, and remembering it was the old life that built the foundation for this new one that I am moving forward into.