It'll come. I know it will. It always does, but for now....for now it seems impossible.

Dear Nathan,
From the very start of this horror, I have said that there would be good that came from this.  That beauty would come from the ashes because you deserve that, I deserve that, and most of all our children deserve that.   And so after the initial fog lifted and I made it past the first two weeks of the nightmare that had somehow become my life, I started talking.    After the realization that even if you're living in a nightmare, you simply can't wake up from your life finally set in, I started telling our story and I haven't stopped.  I have been candid in both my pain and with exactly what you did.  I have no secrets.  I will answer just about any question that someone asks me, and I have had my share of inappropriate questions, suggestions, and comments.  They've made me angry, they've made me sad, and they've flat out mind boggled me,  but I have handled them with as much kindness and dignity that I could possibly muster because this isn't about those people or even about me.  It's about the fact that if I am not speaking out, if I am not advocating, then  I am doing a disservice not only to the great man that you were but to the love that we shared, to your pain, to my pain, and to a great many others who may carry around this type of pain.

I am becoming a part of the problem if I am hiding my pain, the kind of pain that is all consuming.  The kind that swallows you whole as you lay in bed trying to will yourself to fall asleep.   The kind of pain, that finally helps you to understand why they say that sleep is a cousin of death.

I speak out because we need to be aware.  People need to know that suicide is real.  Traumatic brain injury is real.  Mental illness is REAL and no matter how you hide from it or try to push it to the darkest recesses of your mind, it is real and it will continue to be real and ugly and awful until we stop hiding.  Until we pull it out to the middle of the room and push our thumb into the huge gaping wound that it is, it will be real and we are failing the people around us.  I refuse to be a part of the problem.  I refuse to be part of the stigma and the shame.  I couldn't save you, but if your story, our story can save someone else than I have somehow in some small way righted a wrong that can't really be righted at all.

That said, I need prayer.  As I am sure you recall,  our church, just before the sermon launches, shares a life story.  They're beautiful stories about good coming from the ashes, light shining in the darkness, and the ugly becoming beautiful.   They are stories that need to be heard and I have been asked to begin the process of sharing ours. 

The first stop on the journey is to type out the story.

Seems easy enough for someone who has used writing both on facebook, in a blog, and various media outlets on the world wide web as her platform for sharing.  Should be easy for someone who has begun the process of writing a book, right? You would think so, but you would be wrong.  I have sat down to write it out several times in the last two weeks and have deleted what I manage to get out and given up.   I start to write and I suddenly feel as though there isn't really a story to be told here.  There isn't anything to say that anyone should or would want to here.   There is only a dull ache in my heart and the reminder that my children are growing up without the daddy that loved them so much and I am going to bed by myself again.

I can literally feel every ounce of hope draining from my body,  every ounce of hope that I usually try to give to others suddenly seems to be running for cover. 

I know that there is a story and I have hope and I know that I need to share that hope, but something in me just shuts down.

It'll come.  I know it will.  It always does, but for now....for now it seems impossible.

As always I wish you were here to help me battle this, but I guess if you were here I wouldn't be battling it.  It's a catch 22, if there ever was one.

Whatever.

I love you.  I miss you.  Forever.