The past few weeks have been a pretty down time for me, with last night and today being the worst.   Jason and I were talking about Eli and the last few weeks of his life after we went to bed and we both ended up a bit melancholy before sleep took over.   That time can be a bit of a blur for me, but every now and then I'll remember some details and it breaks my heart all over again.  I see other friends who had babies around the same time as Eli posting pictures of their now 18 or 19-month olds and I can't even begin to imagine Eli at that age.   It makes me sad to think about what he'd be doing right now.

Today has just been one of those days where everything seems to go wrong.   I don't handle those days well on a good day, but the lingering sadness of last night has amplified the effect today.  I don't think I've had a major pity party for a while, but the celebration is in full force today.

Sometimes when my pain is so great that I'm not sure I can survive another minute, I think about all the women on Facebook who feel the same hurt every day of their lives too.   One day I'll do a count, but I know I've met so many families who are struggling to live with a big piece of their family missing.

I was trying to come up with words to describe those dark days and I can't because they are all so different.   One day it almost feels like a physical hurt, like the pain has built up so much inside that my skin can't hold it all.  It takes all my energy not to claw my skin open to find some relief.   Another day, the pain is emotional, cutting almost.   Those days I want to go to outside and just run down the street screaming.   The worst day is the one where all hope is lost and getting out of bed seems like too much of an effort.   The physical and emotional pain are a picnic compared to hopelessness.    The only days worse than those are the ones where I have to go in the nursery to make sure he wasn't just a dream.

Thankfully the bad days aren't every day now and we find days where we laugh and almost enjoy the day.   Even on those days, it always feels like something, someone is missing.  I guess that feeling will never go away.   We'll always be missing a part of our family.

We were watching Criminal Minds last night and it was about child kidnapping.   It was a crazy, sad episode, but they showed parents who still held out hope that their children were alive.  When asked how they could deal with that, especially for so many years, one mom said something that really spoke volumes for me.   I don't remember her exact words, but it was basically that when she first woke up, for a few seconds, all was well and normal.   I still have moments like that myself where I wake up thinking Wow, that was an awful dream.   It never lasts long before reality comes crashing back down, but for those few seconds...