2011.

with 2011 coming to an end, I'm feeling very anxious about it.

2011 was a huge year for me. good and bad.

in 2011 i was blessed with the most important thing in my world, Alexis Grace Rose on January 10th at 7:44pm. she changed my world in so many ways. she brought me to a better place with my parents, my job, my relationship with joe and myself. i was forced to grow up and stop depending on everyone else. it also fixed a relationship that was struggling. we were still in love but we were struggling on an epic level. life living on our own was rough and we were working so much we were blind to our love and just emotionally and physically exhausted. alexis changed the perspective on things and i fell in love with joe as a man, father, and boyfriend all over again. she is the gift that keeps on giving, and without her i don't know where i would be right now. probably in a darker place than i already am.

in april joe and i finally talked about really settling down. marriage was discussed for the first time on a serious level and i was ready to grow up and face that life. i wanted(and still want) to be a mom, wife, and have a family life. for the first time in my life i was ready to accept the grown up life and i was excited for it. the words like marriage, wedding, wife, house, family didn't scare me anymore, they were what i wanted.

thats when life threw me a curveball.

end of may, june. joe gets sick. no big deal. we can handle this. its just pneumonia. yeah right. pneumonia thats 2 months old that we can't get rid of. the doctors are still hopeful in june and things are still going to be okay. joe and i are still making it work and still madly in love, just being in love at bethesda north hospital.

july. the month that ended my world. july 4th 5:13 am. Joe goes under to have the ventilator placed in his lungs. Joe is supposed to be asleep for 10 days. Joe ends up being asleep for 15 days only to wake up in a daze. he is put in this INSANE rotation bed that flips him all over and the drs swear he's going to be okay.  July 16th, 17th 18th, 19th, 20th 21st Joe is doing AWESOME. making awesome improvements and looking like he's going to heal. July 21st. starts out like a normal thursday. i spend  the morning with him and he is okay. he tells me he loves me. holds my hand. smiles at me. tells me he wants to go home. i look into those brown eyes for the very last time and i didn't even know it. 330 i get a call at work and by the time i get to the ICU things are too far beyond i could have ever imagined. 1032 pm i laid in bed with the love of my life as he took his last breath. The sound that my world revolved around stopped and from that moment on my world has not been the same. So Wednesday the 27th I dressed the man i love in his finest black on black suit and a bright red tie and i laid him to rest. I hugged all our family and friends as they all came to say goodbye to the man we all loved. July 28th i closed the lid on the box that held my whole world and put it in the ground. a day i will never forget. a day that plays in my head just as much as the day i said goodbye. i have never felt a pain like the pain the month of july 2011 brought to my life. and i continue to feel it on a much smaller level every day. lets just say july was a rough month.

august didn't get any easier. august i struggled to adjust to my life on my own and find myself all over again. it wasn't easy. i spent a lot of august in my bed crying for the things i had lost.

september. happy 20th birthday to me. joes friends took awesome care of me and well, got me really really wasted. illegal? yep. very needed? absolutely. for one night i couldn't feel the pain and everything was okay. i could breathe. it was all fake but i could breath for 24 hours.

october, november. the holidays are beginning and i am alone. not a good feeling. hello anxiety once again.

december. merry christmas..alone. merry 1st christmas baby girl. no daddy here to celebrate. such a bittersweet day. and now were here. December 28th. and I am reflecting on the year I've faced.

im not ready to let 2011 go but at the same time its all i want to do. i want to put this AWFUL experience behind me. but in reality it will never go away. but i don't want it to be 2012 because at no point in 2012 will i have joe. at least for 6 months 21 days of 2011 i had the man i love. 2012 brings lots of things I'm not ready for. our baby is turning 1. i have to face 6, 9, and 12 months without him. another set of holidays alone. and another year wishing he was here. its not okay. so lets go back to january 2011 and pause time. cause i know i will be a lot more appreciative of the life i had at that point. i would do so many things different and i could have 6 months 21 more days with my best friend.

so 2011, im not sure how i feel about you leaving. you have been filled with such happy moments as well as some of the hardest most heartbreaking things i will ever go through. but no matter how i feel, in 3 days you will be gone and i will be forced to face 2012..

alone.