missing you.

im missing you so much. i miss the way you checked the bank everyday and would tell me to STOP spending money. or the way you would tell me when i asked if i should cut my hair or leave it long or dye it or not dye it you would say," babe you will look gorgeous no matter what you do to it" the way you would surprise me with a panera dr pepper cause you know its my favorite. or the way you would put your hand on my leg when i was driving or even when you were driving. how if i wanted something bad enough you would MAKE it fit into the budget. how when i layed with you you would rub my back and every time i left you i smelled just like you. i love that smell. i love you. & i miss you. the fireworks are coming up and they remind me directly of you. you LOVE the labor day fireworks. and i will not be attending alone. i miss your handsome face, and the way you raised your eyebrows at me and grinned. the way you would always tell alexis to say dada and not mama. LAME. haha. if you havent caught my drift, i miss you baby. more and more everyday. i hope you like it in heaven, but remember your home will always be here with me. & you better be waiting for me. heaven girlfriends WILL make me jealous. i love you boo. always. forever & ever babe.

i went to a grief group last night with kathy. it was interesting. i was the youngest person, with the most recent loss. there are people who lost their family member 10+ years ago and still sob like a baby when its brought up,  that isnt helpful. or promising. or making me feel any better. i cant be like this in 10 years. i wont make it. but i look forward to going again. i am thinking about getting a tattoo this weekend, we will see!

tomorrow i start my music challenge and i am excited to remember my man in a way he would love.

baby, i love you. you better be watching over me.

one whole month?!

This day one month ago is a day that haunts me everyday. the day i put the man i love in the ground. How do i feel about that? people have been asking me that all day/month. answer: It sucks. Its been one month since i saw his face. one month since i have touched his body, even though it was ice cold it was still his body. one month since my world stopped spinning. how have i made it this far? honestly i dont know. the pain is overwhelming. the sadness is unlike anything i have ever felt. the emptiness well it sucks. not having my other half is excruciating. I never realized how much i relied on him everyday for simple stuff. like when people at work are annoying me, id call him and just vent and he would say "babe dont worry about them, they are stupid." and yes i know anyone can say that but no one can say it like my joe. blah. i just wish this wasnt happening. this wasnt supposed to happen. its not supposed to be like this. he promised me forever & i want it. he told me id never be alone. forever & ever. that was his promise. and now, well. yeah. blah. life sucks.

missing you is an understatement.

tired

im tired of being sad. im tired of living without the person i love. im tired of feeling like this. im tired of talking to the sky instead of talking to his handsome face. im tired of the aching inside of me. im tired of being a single mom. im tired of people looking at me like im a nut or a bomb waiting to explode.

basically im just tired of it all. i want to go back to june 18th and stay there forever, the last day i was not in a hospital room but i was sitting in our apt with the man i love celebrating his first, and only, fathers day.

this just isnt right. screw you universe.

inside my head

the inside of my head is insanity. all day all i can do is play the same days over and over again. I play the day we went on our first date, the day he asked me OFFICIALLY to be his girlfriend, the day he told me he loved me for the first time, the day he gave me my first piece of jewlery, the day we moved in together, the nights we just layed together and cuddled, the day we found out we were pregnant, the day he felt her kick for the first time, the days he gave the best foot rubs in the world,the day she was born, the minute he first held her, the day we came home, the days we spent just cuddled on the couch as a family, my first mothers day, his first fathers day, alexis's first trip to the aquarium, our first post baby date, then the day he got sick, the day he went into the coma, the day he woke up, the first time i saw the words i love you in over a month, the first time he squeezed my hand back, then of course the nightmare of the day he died. UGH. i miss him so much. everything about him. stuff like this shouldnt happen. it should be illegal. because the pain inside of me, is killing me. i want what is in my head to be real so badly its not even funny. where is my prince charming when i need him. my voice of reason. my best friend. he is the only thing that can bring me back to earth and he isnt even on earth anymore.

i miss you babyboo.

on another note, starting sept 1st i am going to pick a different song EVERY day and connect it to a memory I have of joe. For those who know Joe, you know that music was such a huge part of his life and he passed  that on to me and i want to pass it on to alexis and I think a good way to remember him and try to focus on the positive is for me to make myself a joe playlist. so choose to read and listen or not, this isnt really for anyone but me and my man :) love you angel.

the day that plays over and over again in my head.

Lets hope I can get through this.

Thursday July 21st started like any normal day..well normal for the last month. Got up, got a good report from the nurse, went to work. Found out I was able to take a 2 hr lunch break instead of 1 and I was pumped! I got to go spend 2 hours with my love in the middle of the day! The morning sped past and finally it was noon. I darted out of work and to the hospital. I got there and Joe was awake. He was looking good, his numbers were strong. He had a slight fever and was sweating a little but the nurse said it wasnt something they were concerned about and Joe was a natural sweater. We had an amazing visit. I had ordered a blanket made especially for him and we had been talking about it all week. It had finally came in and I told him and he smiled. I planned to go home after work and pick it up and bring it to him. We watched a video of our princess crawling all over and he smiled again. He held my hand and actually squeezed it so hard that it hurt. He was moving his legs and mouthing words. He was telling me he wanted to go home and I said "dont worry baby were going home soon" and he smiled. He told me he loved me several times and when i would say it back he would just smile. He gave me the eyebrow raise which was something only we did to each other. I dont know where it came from but it was our thing. Then it was time for me to leave :( So I told him to take a nap and I would be back! He of course said no but I think he listened to me anyway. This is 1:15pm when I leave. I go back to work GLOWING. I was so happy that my world was coming back together.

3:30 comes around. I get this phone call at work. Its Joes mom. She tells me something is wrong and I need to get to the hospital right away. So of course my work puts up a mini issue with this and finally by about 3:50 I get outta there. I am to the hospital by about 4:10pm. I get there and Joes dad who had been with him that afternoon says he had an episode and they didnt know what effect it would have. He started to get restless this afternoon and couldnt get his breathing rate down. He was breathing about 60 breaths a minute, which is way too many. This caused him to turn a slight shade of purple and his heart rate went up to 200. His o2 percent was droppping and his temp was sitting at about 105.5. He couldnt get any of it down. They put him back under sedation and paralyzed him again and turned the respirator up all the way. The temp was just not coming down and his heart rate was having a hard time slowing. He was having a hard time keeping his body oxygenated even with the machine doing all the work. I couldnt stop crying. I was not ready to loose him and I was not settling for that answer. So, we met with the drs and they told us his chances were not good. He was not making enough improvement and staying at those improvement levels to be considered stable and he was going backwards. They didnt think he would ever live off of a vent or out of assisted living. This is not something Joe would have wanted. It would have killed him to be like  that. They couldnt guarentee that he would live on the machine through the night, and if he did they couldnt promise his brain wouldnt be damaged from this episode. This is about 5:30pm. They left us alone( me his parents and his brother & his wife and his sister) and we had to make a decision. I dont remember much of the conversation except tears. Somehow the decision was made to turn the vent off and let joe go naturally. I didnt, and still dont, know how I was going to live without him and didnt know how to say goodbye. So we all went in individually to say our goodbyes. I went in and he was already starting to turn a shade of blue and he looked miserable. That wasnt my Joe anymore. The nurses had gotten really close to us on this journey and one of my fav nurses was in there and she just held me while I cried. Then it was just me and the body of the man I love. I talked to him, told him he absolutely had to be around for every minute of mine and alexis's life and he needed to let me know that this was what was best and he was in a better place. His heart rate slowed just a little, and it hadnt since the episode, this was him telling me he was at peace and he was going to be okay I just know it. The family came back in and we sat with Joe for hours. We never left his side. 10:00pm came and it was time to start the process. By this point, the Joe I knew and loved I strongly believe was watching from up above. He was gone. His skin was blue and he was freezing while his temp was in the upper 101 area. He was completely unresponsive when the nurse suctioned his mouth. At this point I am sobbing and have somehow ended up in his lap on the bed. I just wanted to get right next to him and pretend this wasnt happening. She turned the machine off around 10:29 and his heart stopped beating around 10:32. The sound that I remember so well from laying on his chest, the sound that made my life complete was gone and so was the love of my life. I really couldnt accept it. A doctor came in and pronounced him dead and those words were enough to kill me too. My baby was gone. The only person Ive ever loved, my best friend, my other half was no longer on the same planet as me.

The rest of the night, all i remember is tears. lots and lots of tears. I will never be the same.

the week leading up.

Friday August 15th, Joe came outta his rotation bed and into a normal bed and things started to look up. That afternoon he started to wake up. It was incredible. The first time he opened his eyes I was sitting next to him and it honestly scared me. I didnt know he was allowed to wake up yet but it was so incredible to see those big brown eyes. He moved his head and his legs which was a huge step. He mouthed the words I love you to me and his mom which were hard to see since he had a tube but we saw them. Saturday came around and things still looked awesome. His numbers were climbing in the direction we needed and he was more alert. He squeezed my hand and that was a huge step for us. I told him to sleep and he shook his head no at me. I told him I was going to leave and he got the saddest look on his face and he started to cry. :( it was so hard to see, but I was so happy he was making progress. Sunday was not as good of a day. He had a slight fever and was a little restless. His respirator was up that day and he was having a little bit of a hard time breathing on is own. The nurse said that was normal with him coming out of the sedation.

The next couple days seem like a blur to me. He was making big steps! His numbers were looking awesome and he was making huge physical improvements. One day he reached for my cell phone when I told him he needed to teach me how to use it, he mouthed he loved me over and over again. Tuesday he had surgery and had a trache put in his throat which was a HUGE step. A. It meant he was strong enough for surgery, B. it meant he was producing enough pressure to inflate his lungs on his own. Surgery went awesome, things were looking great. He was awake that day still alert and responding to commands. Wednesday he voluntarily moved his hand to touch me which was the first time he had moved without being asked. That day he was also all about moving his arms and legs without being asked. I think he was trying to show us he was strong enough and he wanted to go home. haha.

Then Thursday came. the day that knocked my world off its axis.

our story part 3

Joe Alexis and I were making it work. We were both working full time which sucked but we were still finding time for each other and our princess. Not as much time as we wanted to spend together but we made it work, the bills still had to be payed. April 9th we celebrated our anniversary and our little munchkins 3 month birthday. We went to the aquarium and dinner. It was the perfect day, it poured down rain but it was so nice. I got a bracelet and a ring with and "A" engraved for Alexis on it. I had wanted it for so long. I got another present too, but it was on back order so I didnt get it that day. Alexis got an adorable photo frame with our pictures in it that still hangs in her room to this day.

I would say the end of April Joe started to get sick, he would say it was allergies and didnt think much of it. Well, the allergies were not going away, there were just getting worse. I pestered him to go to the dr but he was so against it. He finally went in the beginning of June and they said it was his asthma kicked up due to the weather. Gave him some meds and sent him on his way.We went to dinner for fathers day on June 18th. We went kinda early like 4 ish and Joe was so sick that day. He was winded just walking from the car to the door and was coughing like there was no tomorrow. I got a call around 10:30 pm after I had been talking to and texting Joe all night while we were at the festival in our town from him saying his roomate was taking him to the ER he couldnt do it anymore. I didnt think anything of it, I figured he would get the meds he needed and be on his way. Well, they told him he had pneumonia and would be in there for a couple days. No big deal. His o2 percentage was in the 70-80s and it needs to be above 90. Anything below is life threatening. They started treating him and they hoped he would heal on his own.

Everyday he told me to not worry about coming up to the hospital because he was leaving soon and he didnt want A there. So we only went to visit a couple times because he swore he was coming home to us so soon. He began to  get frustrated and depressed that he was still there. On July 3rd they said he would most likely need to go under for a respirator if his o2 levels dropped lower than 80 again. He would be sedated for 2-10 days while his lungs healed. July 4th at 5:30 am I got a text from him saying he was going under for the tubes. He was so worried about having a feeding tube haha, nothing else. The last message I got from him that morning said, " They are getting ready to start. I will talk to you asap. I love you both so much." broke my heart that I didnt get to talk to him since it was so early and I wasnt awake yet. :( He was out for a week before I heard any news. I then got a call from his mom saying we needed to talk. She explained to me he was now in ICU he was in a coma and they didnt know if he was going to make it. He had developed something called ARDS ( Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) and it was a fatal condition. They were going to put him on a bed that roatated every 15 min to try and move the fluid and have gravity work naturally. He went into this bed on the 11th of July. We were fighting the clock because he could only be on the respirator for 14 days before it had to come out.
The first few days on the bed were unsuccessful. That Wednesday was the first time they let me see him since he went into that bed. It was so hard to see the person I loved more than myself in that condition. I sobbed into his mom and his sister like it was  the end of the world. Once I stopped crying I looked at him, he was still unconscious, and I told him this had to end. I was done with him being sick and it was no longer funny. He needed to wake up because I needed him. and I needed him NOW. We had been a week and a half with no improvement and that was unacceptable to me. The next day his number had improved and he was making a turn. Friday he had an eval with the dr. He decided in the past 2 days Joe had made enough improvement to come off that bed and be put in a normal bed which was a huge step! YAY. We were moving in the right direction, he had heard my voice and knew it was time to get better. They also were going to start waking him from his coma to see how he responded. We were making progress and I was glowing..

our story part 2

So while I was pregnant, Joe and I spent all kinds of time together. We both worked full time jobs so we had a hard time spending enough time together but we always made time. I remember the first time he felt Alexis kick he was so freaked out, but then couldnt get enough of it! haha! Up until about 3 weeks before my due date Alexis had NO name. I could not decide on a name. I would come up with random names and we both couldnt agree on just one. So one day I am driving to work at 630am and I was on the phone with Joe for some reason and he randomly says Alexis. and I said who is Alexis? and he said thats our baby's name. She is Alexis, and the name stuck ever since. So after months of our doctor saying Alexis would be early, on January 6th there was still NO baby and no signs she was coming. So we scheduled my induction for January 10th ( the day before my due date of 1-11-11) at 7am! Thats when reality hit!

The morning of January 10th was hectic. Joe went ahead and went to work since the doctor said it would take a while and he got off around 1pm anyway. By 1 pm we had little progress. They broke my water around 930 am and I was slowly progressing. Joe got there and of course I was miserable. Finally around 5pm I was 10cm! YAY. I started pushing and the doctor told me she was face up, so he decided to go in and turn her and let me keep trying. so after 2 hours of UNSUCCESSFUL pushing, he told me I needed a c-section. To the OR we go. At 7:44pm our sweet princess was born at last! 7lbs 14.6 oz and 21 in long! Full head of black hair and perfect color. The first time I saw her, my heart tripled in size.  Suddenly I had enough room in my heart to love her and Joe with everything I had. When he saw her for the first time, all I remember is smiles. He couldnt stop smiling and he teared up. He never cried full out but he was overwhelmed. and the first thing he did was take her picture and post it to facebook! haha :) I got a kiss on the forehead and that was it! haha! We were a family and so in love. Joe took the following day off and spent it with us at the hospital. We stayed for 4 whole days and he was there every day spending time with us.

Now, I have to say, my relationship with Joe was far from perfect. We fought. A lot. Over stupid stuff. Bills, Time spent together, our future plans, work. You name it, we fought about it. Some of you who know Joe know why this happened. He was so hard headed. When he thought he was right, that was that. He was not giving in. So we argued. And I wont lie, I went through the whole im 19 years old, do I want to be with this person for the rest of my life phase. I had a touch of post partum and we struggled to make it work but Joe didnt give up. He saw both of us every other day at least, helped me with what he could with Alexis, and was always there to listen or just hold me when I was crying. In  the end, Joe is my best friend, the love of my life, my biggest supporter, my whole world. We made it through the rough times and we were headed in the right direction. <3 Me, Joe and Alexis. Our family was going to make it work!

our story part 1

I met Joe in high school. We first met in 2005, my freshman year and his senior year. We hung out a couple times but in the end, he just wanted nothing to do with me. haha. Of course, I was persistent and didnt give up, and border line stalked him through college. LOL. Then early 2009 I found him on facebook after not talking to him for prob more than a year or 2. At this point he was no longer too good to talk to me. So we started talking and texting and it turns out that he was coming home that weekend to visit his family so we decided to hang out. Instantly I knew he was what i wanted. I came home on cloud 9 to my friends and he was all I could talk about. That weekend was the beginning of it all. He went back to school for the last months of  the quarter and I remember thinking my life was OVER. I didnt know what to do with him so far away but we survived! He was finally home for the summer and I couldnt have been happier. We spent EVERY DAY together. I would go to school, since I was still in high school and as soon as I got home it was straight to his house or he was waiting at  mine. My parents got so irritated with this eventually but I didnt care. I was in love with this boy. He made me feel something that I read about in books. Things were going awesome. I graduated from high school, got a full time job, and had an awesome boyfriend. We did all kinds of fun things together from date night, movie nights, trips to the zoo and aquarium or just being together. We were ridiculously stupid together, but all that mattered was we were together and in love.

In October of 2009 we decided to move in together. We moved in with a roommate and it was great, at first. I loved being with him all the time. I missed my family but I was happy. :) Joe was what I wanted. We made it through our first christmas and new year together and then the bills started racking up, the stress of having a full time job, and being away from my family all became too much. The blissfulness was gone. We went through this phase where I wanted to go home, I didnt want to be on my own anymore and all we did was fight. Now I hear that this is normal but I was still frustrated. I expressed my frustration to him and he was also so frustrated that he wasnt in any mood to cooperate and solve the problem. Joe is a very hard headed person and when he makes up his mind, thats how its going to be and he refused to work it out. So in April of 2010 we got into our biggest fight ever and I went to stay with my parents. I stayed for about a week and then I was back with Joe, but we were staying with a friend while we were in between apartments. This became WAY too much for me and I ended up back at my parents house. After all this settled I realized I was almost 2 months late on my period...

I went back to live with my parents on a Thursday and the following Sunday(Memorial Day weekend) I took a test and found out I was in deed pregnant. Oh great was my first thought. So I called Joe and he started freaking out of course. I went to the doctor and had some blood work done and it was true. I was pregnant. So I finally went to the OB and found out I was 10 weeks already! I had been pregnant for quite some time! No wonder my emotions were all over the place!  So of course I knew I was going to keep the baby and I just needed to figure out how I was going to do it. At first I thought I was going to be a single mom doing it on my own, and was honestly surprised to see my 23 year old boyfriend stay around for this. We were figuring it out slowly but surely. I decided and later Joe agreed that staying with my parents was the best choice for all 3 of us for the time being. Although I was with my parents, I still loved Joe and we were making it work. No one else knew it but Joe and I knew that I was falling more in love with him as his little baby was growing inside of me, and he was falling deeper in love as well.



This is far from the end of our story but emotionally, its too much for one night and I am exhausted. starting a new job tomorrow and need rest! will finish tomorrow :)

hopeful

So I dont know who will read this, nor do I really care. This is for me and I am using it as a way to express my emotions on my loss and my life as a newly single mama! As soon as my little one goes to sleep I hope to get my whole story typed up! Stay tuned!