I don't sleep well these days, actually I haven't slept well since pregnancy. When Kaleb was born I was working as a detective in child abuse and had been involved in numerous SIDS deaths - so I was even more paranoid than I was when I had Christopher, I didn't know the things then that I do now. But, since diagnosis day, Kaleb has been sleeping with us, he has too, and I wake up several times during the night to roll him over. Then I lay there for what feels like an eternity trying to get back to sleep and my mind just plays over and over what I know is yet to come. Instead of thinking about summer vacation, I'm thinking about what songs, and pictures we'll play at his funeral. When we went to the cemetary to pick the perfect spot for his final resting place, I just kept thinking about how wrong all of this is, he's supposed to bury us. Living out each day in fear, knowing what's going to happen and not knowing when is exhausting. I feel like a little girl again, afraid of the dark and the monster in the closet, I know it's there, I can see it's eyes every now and then taunting me and reminding me that it's there, waiting, waiting to take whats left of my heart.
When I get up in the mornring, I don't put on make-up and do my hair, I put on my "strong" face, put up this facade so that people will not see what a mess I really am. I try to ready myself for whatever the day may bring me. People think I'm strong and I get a lot of "I don't know how you do it", and the answer is simple, I do it because I have too, because I love Kaleb and he needs me. What I don't know is, how am I going to "do it", when he's gone. When I no longer have a reason to be strong and to fight, what happens then? Christopher doesn't need his mom anymore, so then what? Will I continue to appear strong, or will I fall apart? I know that no matter how hard I try, my life will never be the same. I will never feel the way I did prior to diagnosis day - I am a different person and only time will tell what that really means. People always talk about the light at the end of the tunnel, and that's supposed to be a good thing - but I fear that the light at the end of my tunnel is the freight train that is going to flatten me.