I wish I could say that I am okay. I'm not. I'm just way better at hiding it and keeping myself occupied. It doesn't affect me the same day-to-day but I will never fully be okay. I've just gotten better at living with it. But today, I can't fake it. Today sucks. The week leading up to today sucked. I've cried myself to work and back home again every day this past week. I've tortured myself by looking at her pictures and watching the one, sad, three minute video I have of her. I am beating myself up over the fact that I only have this one video. Her two month life condensed down to 3 minutes. Why didn't I have the foresight to realize that I might want to see more of her, to have further proof of her existence? Instead, I was stupid and naive and thought I didn't want proof of her illness. I thought I had plenty of time left to take happy videos. I thought I had the rest of her life and by the time I realized that wasn't the case, she was so sick. I just couldn't bring myself to capture those moments.
She was so sick, guys. Like the sickest you could ever imagine a human. She looked dead before she was gone. And then she died. It still kills me to relive that day, when they gave her to me to hold in my arms and say goodbye. How they turned off all the machines and shut her ventilator off. How I screamed as they did it and screamed as the doctor listened for a heartbeat and pronounced her dead. I still can't believe this is my reality. That this is her reality. That her life had been reduced to a 3 minute video, some pictures, and a cemetery plot. Thinking about it takes me to a deep, painful place that I wish didn't exist and, today, I have to confront it. This day is never going to go away. September 14 will always be the day that my daughter died.
