A Year Ago Today

People change a lot in a single year. For me, every year I have changed an extraordinary amount. Each year my relationships with friends are a little or even a lot different. Usually I lose and gain friends over the course of a year. I stop hanging out with some and lose touch while others I become 10 times closer to.

Today is Lance's 23rd birthday.
A year ago today, Lance was just turning 22.

You want to know what we did?
We went up to Huhot with his family, then he drove me back to my apartment so that we could spend the rest of the day packing. That's exactly what we did. We stayed up talking and packing up my apartment and driving thing to the storage shed and to my mothers all day and night until the wee hours of the morning because I had to be out by February 1st.

I made Lancelot pack all day on his birthday.
So what did I come up with this year, you ask?
Well, today I made him be my personal crutch and help me walk around Wal-Mart and Save-a-lot.
I told him that he can only imagine what I'm going to think up for him to have to do next year on his birthday.

In any case, he is an absolute doll. He's always taking care of me and helping me out on his birthday.
I did make him some cinnamon rolls today, though. :)


This was the closest picture I could find. It's actually from Christmas of 2011, but I took next to no pictures January of 2012.

Then, here's Lance and I on New Years Day This Year. <3



_________________________

On the beginning note, a lot changes in a year.
A year ago today, I would have never suspected I'd be where I am.

That was part of my extremely tough ten months of my life.
Here is where I thought I would be in January 2013 in January 2012.

I thought I would still be working at Hunts.
I thought I would still be dating Charles.
I thought we might even be engaged.
I thought that I may be pregnant since we had originally planned to try for another child.
I thought that I would be in another apartment and maybe going to college.
I thought I would still be an only child.


None of those things are true.


My Mother told me a few months after January 2012 that she was in fact having the child that I thought I would be carrying that year. Charles and I broke up a month and  a half after he got out of jail. I am not pregnant. I am not in college and I'm now working at Accent.

You know what I have to say about that?
I am so perfectly happy. I have such a wonderful life.

Although I miss Hunts very much some days, I'm happier at Accent. I loved the people there, but some of the rules got a little bogus. I mostly quit because we weren't allowed to have our cell phones and I needed mine to keep my sanity. Plus, walking home from work every night since I don't have a car really gave me the heebie jeebies. Plus, I really enjoy working with Lancelot.

Lance makes me a very happy lady. Really, he does. Even when he screws up, it takes him less than five minutes to apologize. We sleep on the floor because it reminds us of old times. He introduces me to all sorts of new TV shows, gave me that extra push to learn guitar, and is extremely patient with me. He makes me a better person. That's what I really want in someone is just for us to be happy and to make each other better people.

I may not have the child that I believed I so wanted, but that's okay too. As much as my female hormones keep screaming "baby! baby! baby!" in my head, I know better. I don't want a baby right now. I'm 20 years old. I've got another 3 or 4 years minimum before I even really want to consider it. I'll only be this young once. I want to be able to stay up until 3 am and decide to go to wal-mart because I really want some goldfish crackers. I want to be able to spend money on yarn to crochet things. I want to have the free time to crochet. I don't want to have to find a babysitter anytime I want to go out of my friends. Most of all, I don't want to deny my child of having a full-time committed mother because I'm too busy caught up in my own life feeling like I never got the chance to be young.

I'm really happy for my mother. I now have a beautiful baby sister and she is the most precious little girl in the world. My mom gets the chance to raise a daughter the way she would have wanted. A full-time mother who already learned from the mistakes of her first daughter. Being the second kid is like being the second pancake. The first one, you just try your best and hope it turns out alright. By time you get to the second one you realize what you did wrong with the first one and take this opportunity to fix it and do it right the second time around.


I lost a lot of friends through my break-up with Charles and I gained a lot of new ones both through Lance and the experiences I had during those 10 mysterious months.

My world is nowhere I thought it would be, but I think I'd much prefer this one.
I can only imagine where I'll be a year from now.
I'll be in a new place and my sister will be 16 months old.
God knows what else will be different.

Candlelight Memorial

Tonight, I am holding a candlelight memorial for my child lost.
As I said in my previous post, I will burn my candle for one hour.
I plan to do this from 11 pm tonight until midnight.
This will mark the end of my child's birthday.


Also, tonight, I plan to write my baby a letter of all the things I would like to say to him.

In the next few days, I plan on making a memorial box. I'm looking for a fairly large shoe box, preferably one that hasn't had used shoes in it for the last year. If you can provide this, I would be oh, so thankful. I don't have any lying around and I don't intend on buying new shoes anytime. I plan on making a memorial box for my child with these things in it.

* A letter to my baby of all the things I'd like to say to him. I think every year on December 21st, I will do this and add it to the box.
*The baby blanket my grandmother got me when she found out I was pregnant, if it will fit. It not, I will find somewhere else to put that.
*My ultrasounds pictures
*The baby book I filled out while I was pregnant about my first couple of hospital visits
*a home-made birth certificate
*a photo of the tattoo I got on Baby Cay's due date.
*the poem I found shortly I lost my baby that I read time and time again and still manages to bring me to tears every time.

___________________________________

I bought my candle and watched as it burned away. At first new, shining bright.

My initial plan was to burn the candle for one full hour and take a picture every ten minutes, then print those photographs out and put them in my box. The candle didn't quite last that long. As I thought about it, I realized that the fact the candle didn't do as I had originally intended was quite appropriate. Much like my pregnancy, It started out strong and stable, appeared as though it had a lot of hope and was in it for the long run. As time went buy, the candle grew smaller and smaller. 40 minutes in, my little candle had come a long way. I looked forward to sitting there for the next twenty minutes thinking of how I would be celebrating my child's birthday, today. Just a minute or two later, I looked over and the candle had took a turn for the worse. It had melted all the way down the middle in just a moment's notice. The candle's journey would not last the expected hour as my child would not last the full 40 weeks. It's light grew dimmer and dimmer until it was just a tiny glimmer of hope. It took me back to the last time I saw my baby, the day I was worried something was terribly wrong. The doctor told me he saw the heartbeat, that nothing seemed wrong. That gave me the very same glimmer of hope. Then suddenly, that glimmer of hope was snuffed out.

December 21st, 2012

For everyone, December 21, 2012 is supposed to be "the day the world ends." The day the rapture happens, or the zombie outbreak starts, or a shit ton of natural disasters just hit all at once.

I plan on celebrating the end of the world by sitting in my warm, cozy apartment watching the movie 2012 and I am Legend.

The day holds alot more for me, though.

When I found out I got my pregnancy with Baby Cay confirmed, I learned that my due date would be December 21st, 2011. Whether I would have actually had my baby on that day is a whole different story, but as things happened, this is the day I will celebrate the memory of my child.

Last year, this was an incredibly tough day on me. Since there would be no grave for my child, no memorial service, no way to remember him but in my heart itself, I wanted to have something. So I got a tattoo in remembrance. I figured a teddy bear would be best. I wanted something to represent that I called him my Christmas baby, so I got a Santa hat. I put flowers in the teddy bear's hands. Pink and blue since we didn't actually know the sex and a black one in the middle for his death. I also wanted to incorporate the day we lost him.

For those of you who didn't read the previous post, I call my baby Cay because we had already chosen names. Kayden James for a boy or Cadence Alexis for a girl. Cay incorporated both of those.

I will never forget my child. I plan on trying to have children again someday. Someday when I'm settled down, happily married, with a stable home. Although I will hold those children tightly and love them deeply, they will not erase the memory of my first child.

Some days, when I think of the child I have lost, I wish I was religious so that I could actually believe that I will go to Heaven and someday I will meet that first child of mine and we could catch up on things and talk of what could have been. 

December 21 is in 6 days now. Since I am broke, I will not be able to do anything in memorial for my dead child. I will not be able to have a cake that I would have had for him turning one year old. I will not be able to plant a tree. I will not have anyone to talk to about my sorrows on that day. Most importantly of all, I will not have the child in my arms that should have been on this earth a full year now.

I did find a support website with one brilliant idea that I do plan on doing for my child this year. I plan on creating a memory box. I'm still working on the details of where I'm going to get the box. I need an old shoe box, so if anyone has one that they would like to donate, that would be greatly appreciated. I plan on painting it and putting some very special things inside.

-a letter to my baby telling him how much I love him and anything else I'd like to say to him

-the blanket that my grandma gave me that i planned on swaddling my little one in. The blanket i slept with every night for weeks after my miscarriage.

-a small journal detailing my feelings

-a home made death certificate

-a poem I read that helped ease the pain

-my ultrasound pictures

-my baby book as far as I filled it out into the pregnancy

-a pink and blue ribbon like the one below

I recently, actually just today, found out that there is a support month and ribbon for mother's who have lost a child. It can be all of the month of October, but is particularly targeted for October 15th.

So for all of those who have lost a child or know anyone who has lost a child, take at least this one time of the year to maybe talk to them about it. Let them know that although you may not understand to the full extent how this feels, that you are there to talk to them if they need it. Offer to be that shoulder to cry on.