Yes, this is my life

I've spoken often of our next door neighbors. The couple is very old. He is a Marine who served along side Chesty Puller in Korea. She is a devoted wife of many years but slipping away due to dementia. We talk often through the fence and we are probably the only company they have these days. Last week we were told the family has finally decided to put them in a home. They are worse off than they thought. They will sell the home and they will retire to a facility they can be cared for 24 hours. It made me so sad. Fast forward to today. A fire alarm/ co2 alarm was going off over there. I couldn't get them to answer the door. I know both are losing their hearing so I wasn't sure if anyone was even there but a vehicle was in the drive. My thoughts were spinning. What if he did not want to go to the home. What if he turned on the gas? What if they have fallen or one doesn't even know the other is hurt...I don't smell smoke or see it. But the alarm.. So I called the fir...

It's 2017 and that means it's the 4th Calendar year since Mike died. For the most part my life has gone on. Whether I like it or not. And I can't complain terribly much. My kids are healthy, we have a great home, I have a job and volunteer work and a really devoted partner now. There are some things though that will never be the same. I am learning to accept them. One of the odd little things is I started watching NCIS again on Netflix. It's a show that Mike and I watched daily. Some moments it makes me sad and others remind me of snapshots in time when we sat together in unassuming, uneventful evenings watching together. I accept that he's gone and I will not see him again on this earth. I hold on to the memories. I cherish all those moments that seemed insignificant at the time. I understand now just how significant they were. One thing I have noticed is I still can't see a military funeral without losing it. It doesn't matter if it's on TV or a mov...

My husband's suicide is not the reason I'm a damaged person. That began long before his death. Statistically I was more likely to end up in an abusive relationship because of my childhood. It's not something you consciously go out and look for either. It just happens. Like attracts like. I thought back then in my 20s if I got far enough away from the chaos and addiction and bad environment I could have a chance at "normal". I didn't realize then that what I was running from already lived inside of me. The damage was already done. I just went from one unhealthy environment to another. Neither better or worse, just different. It wasn't until after Mike died and I began working on myself that I learned I will always be this way until I address the issues inside me. It doesn't matter where I go. Just being away from a bad situation won't fix it. I would always end up with the same or similar outcome because it's me that's broken. I'm not ...

I've been asked how a friend can help someone who makes suicidal suggestions, threats or promises on social media...especially friends who are not close in proximity. Even friends you don't know location. How can you get them help if you don't know where to start? The first and easiest is to send me the persons name and what you know about the situation. If I'm friends with them especially and this method happens most often. I've now prevented suicides from happening in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Indiana and Colorado from my home in San Diego. I've also stopped them here and in my home town but those were easy to hunt down. Everyone who posts on social media give a plethora of information about their life whether they realize it or not. If you are actually paying attention to what your friends say you pick up bits and pieces of their lives. If your friend posts something concerning or uncharacteristic you feel it in your stomach. It just drops to your knees....

I'm going to do my best to express what happened today and how I feel right now and I hope it makes some sort of sense. I'm shaking, so wound up. My head is spinning and I doubt I will sleep tonight. I was told I saved another life today. I've done it before...stopped a suicide. Up until now it's always been a stranger or a friend of a friend. This time was too close to home. This time it was a childhood friend. We went to school together. His brother and I were pretty close in middle school. I remember having a huge crush on him back then. He was tall and dreamy and had perfect hair. We grew up and moved to opposite parts of the country. Me in California and they in Indiana. We still kept in touch through Facebook. His brother later took his life. A few years later my husband did the same. We became very close in that shared pain. Today was the anniversary of the brothers suicide. He posted a "good bye" on his Facebook page and a mutual friend saw it and to...

Sometimes when the house is very quiet and I'm alone I ask Mike to appear or give me a sign he's around. It never happens and I am completely aware it sounds crazy. I used to feel him around me. I dreamed about him. I could swear I smelled him randomly here and there. Now it is as if he's gone for good. Not that he wasn't gone for good in 2013. Maybe it means he's found peace and crossed over to heaven or maybe he was never around at all. Maybe that was just my grief-stricken imagination. Maybe it was a way to deny his absence. To fool myself into thinking he isn't REALLY   gone. I don't know.

Yesterday I got a notification from twitter that one of my "contacts" joined twitter. The name made my stomach drop. He's not a contact anywhere I can find. He's a mistake I made and just seeing his name makes me feel bad. He's a boy I dated for a couple of years when I was a teenager. We had a very dramatic relationship. He would probably say it was our magnetic chemistry but in hindsight it was because he was a raging alcoholic and when drunk did incredibly stupid things. I was his designated driver before I even had a drivers license... Although we dated for a few short years he's always managed to randomly show back up every so often in the 20+ years since. When I was first married to Mike and Mike was in Iraq he showed up at my apartment drunk around 2AM, pushed through my door and tried to put his hand up my shirt. He was a bit too eager though because I stepped slightly sideways and he fell on his dumbass face. I asked him if he had someone to pick h...