My baby,

The past few days I’ve been thinking about how much has changed and how much I have changed since losing you.

Before losing you, I needed someone else to make me feel like I was worth something. After everything that happened, I needed someone to fill in this gap that I thought needed to be filled in by someone else.

I don’t know how or why it changed, but losing you has taught me to hold myself at a higher importance. I can’t get something from someone that I can’t even give myself. My whole life had been chasing validation from other people. I needed others opinions to make my own decision, I thought I needed to do more, I thought I needed to be more. I can’t even describe it, but it’s one small positive thing I’ve gained from losing you.

Before losing you, I used to stress about every single thing, including those things that are out of my control. I stressed about being late because of traffic, I stressed about not texting people back in a timely manner, I really stressed about anything out of place in the house. I would get so stressed that I would just shut down and do nothing. I’d be so overwhelmed that I had so much to do that I just decided it was easier not to do anything.

I don’t stress about people or things as much as I did before losing you. Your loss made me realize that a lot of these things are nothing compared to what I’ve dealt with. Since they’re so much less important, they are not worth the limited energy that I have. I would plead my case with people and try and change what was happening, but now I just walk away.

It’s turning into a rough day and I’m not sure why. I’ve been keeping myself busy with trying to do all the yard work that I don’t have a lot of time to sit in things. Today I decided that while Elijah was in Pre-K, I was going to do no yard work for that hour and forty-five minutes. It’s all just uncomfortable now.

I will finish this tonight, hopefully things start to go a little more smoothly as the day goes on. If not, I will just chalk it up to another hard day of missing you.

The universe always has a way of knocking you back into reality. I was talking about the small things that I’ve improved and then I lost the car keys. We still don’t have our van and are driving pap’s car. Unlike the van, which only needs the keys in the car, I actually need to put Pap’s in the ignition every time. Due to this change, I have lost the keys no less than a hundred times since we have been here.

I was about to leave to go pickup Elijah from Pre-K and realized I couldn’t find the keys. As I said, this has happened so many times so I just started looking around. After about ten minutes of looking, I started to stress and called Gma to see if she could pick Elijah up. Luckily, she left the gym and went to get him.

Poor Elijah was so distraught. He had to go to the office to wait to be picked up. When I didn’t show up at my usual time he started to panic that something had happened and I had died. Once I got over to Gma’s house I gave him huge hugs and told him that I was so sorry. He let me hold him, kept touching my face, and telling me he loved me. You guys are the most important parts of my life.

Uncle Brandon came over today to help put up the new trampoline. It took us a while because the kids couldn’t contain their excitement, I lost one of the tools, and we did things backwards a few times. It’s up now and they were already playing “dead man” with Honora and Lorelei. Thank goodness for uncle Brandon, building that myself would have just ruined three of my days.

Keep an eye on Apollo for me. He was so excited to see Uncle Brandon that he sprinted into the front yard, leapt off the retaining wall, and landed on the driveway six feet below. I have no idea what the heck happened. I would be worried about a younger dog, but Apollo is twelve. If he really messes something up, that could be it for him. I cannot handle losing Apollo now, so keep him strong.

I love you, sweetie. My roller coaster of a day is over and I’m exhausted. Goodnight and sweet dreams.