The Good, the Bad, and the Just Plain Ol' UGLY!

The Good:
Well, I am back from my week long trip. Wow, I was surprised to see all of my new bloggy followers. I cannot believe I am up to 30 now. Welcome everyone, and thank you for following our journey. As most of you know I have been out of town for a week on a school field trip. We went to a very magical place. Can you guess where it is? I'll give you a hint:

If you guessed Alabama Adventures, then I'm sorry you are wrong :) It was Disney World! It was really a great trip. I had never been, and it was truly an amazing experience. Now you do have to know that I am not a rollercoaster kind of gal, but I was trying to be strong for the students. The first rollercoaster that they convinced me to ride was the Rockin' Roller Coaster. I specifically asked if there were any upside down loops, and they proceeded to explain to me that it was just fast and only had three small corkscrews at the beginning. I thought to myself, okay I can handle this. Well, if you have ever been to Disney World and rode the Rockin' Roller Coaster, then you know that they LIED! I strapped myself in next to one of the students, who had also never ridden the ride, and the coaster took off at lighting speed (0-60 in 2.5 seconds). Yeah, I thought I was going to die! The entire time I was holding on for dear life I was saying over and over in my head "Try to be the adult, try to be the adult, try to be the adult!" but of course, the child loved every minute of it. I did not ride another roller coaster until we went to Magic Kingdom and found Thunder Mountain. If you have ever been to Six Flags, then you can compare Thunder Mountain to the Run-Away Mine Train. I called Michael with excitement and told him that I had found my park! Magic Kingdom has all of the kiddy rides :) It was a good trip, and I cannot wait to go back with my family.

The Bad:

Even though it was a nice trip, I was upset that my family wasn't there. I missed them terribly, and I don't think that it was a good idea to be away from them yet. Along with this and a few other issues I had to deal with on the trip, I realized that I was not emotionally stable enough to deal with certain situations. Therefore, bringing us to the down right UGLY part of my story.

The Just Plain Ol' UGLY:

I am not sure if the trip actually triggered alot of these emotions or if it was just time for my next wave of depression, but after my return home, I had what I would consider to be my worst meltdown so far. I am not sure why, but I have kept many of these emotions hidden from just about everyone except Michael. I am sharing them now in hopes of helping others that may be facing the same situation and to maybe help myself as well. For some reason I want everyone to believe that I am okay. I cannot tell you why I do this. I don't know if it is a normal part of grieving or if it is just my personality. Anyway, I have kept alot of emotion inside. As many of you know from prievious post, I have also beat myself up about many of the what ifs... with Allie. Even though I know in my heart that I did everything that I could for my sweet Allie, but I keep going back over all of the dreaded flashbacks and questioning what I could have done differently. I was having a hard time before I left on my trip, but I had gotten better right before I left. I am sorry that I did not post about these feelings, but like I said, for some reason I was scared to share these feelings. I thought that I had too many gloomy posts so I tried to find little highlights to share with everyone instead. Now that you have a little background lets get to the meltdown. My return on Friday was terrific! I don't think I could have gotten bigger squeezes from my boys, and my Little Man was a mommy leech the rest of the day. I could not have been happier! When I woke up Saturday, I felt as though my world was crashing in. I was in a very scary place with my grief. Little did I know that my sweet hubby was also headed downhill from all of the built up stress from the previous week of me being gone. Please know that now tiny things are no longer tiny. Everything is huge and too overwhelming to deal with. Therefore, once he started getting short with me just a little, I lost control. There was so much saddness that needed to get out of my poor little greif-stricken body. I didn't think that I was ever going to be able to gain enough control to stop crying. I wept for two days. All of the flashbacks returned, and I was flooded with memories of watching my poor innocent baby suffer. I went back to beating myself up about every decision that was made, and the horrible realization that I would never ,ever, ever, ever get see or hold my precious Angel again this side of Heaven hit me like a ton of bricks. I was devastated, hurt, depressed, and in need of some help. Thankfully, I have the best husband in the world to come to my rescue. We have always had a great line of communication between us, and even though we still have our small moments of stress, Allie has caused our relationship to grow even stronger. We talked, and cried (well, I cried), and prayed, and I cried some more, and we finally made it through. I feel like a new person today, and I am so thankful that I have a loving husband, a wonderful God, and a great support from family and friends. I hope that this message helps others to know that it is okay to talk about your feelings (even the UGLY ones). Please continue to pray for my family, because even after three months I've realized that we can still have our break down moments. I appreciate all you have done, and please continue to pray for all of the others on my prayer list as well: Jim Murrell, Annabel, Brianna, Stellan, and all of the other T18 babies. Thank you again.