Thoughts on leaving 2009 behind....

I've been trying to figure out for quite a while what the end of this year means to me. I go back and forth between being happy that time is pushing onward and being hopeful that 2010 will be a less hurtful year, to sheer panic that time IS moving forward and the realization of how long it's been since I held Freja in my arms. The realization that I can never go back. I can never go back to those days in March and April when she was living and breathing, in my arms. Fear that as time goes on, I will forget the freshness of her life, and even the pain of the early time following her death. Of course, it's still pretty clear to me now, but watching the calendar pages flip month by month and year by year, how will it all be one, two, three years down the road?

And not only am I leaving behind a year that holds so many of the most extreme mixed emotions that you could ever experience, but it is also the end of a decade. A decade that I never could have imagined would begin with my graduation from high school, and end with the burial of my daughter. I think back to the night of our graduation party, my friends and I hugging each other fiercely and bawling while we vowed to stay in touch even though we were facing this new, huge transition in our lives. And now I'm ending this decade under another huge transition, still feeling like that frantic, lost eighteen-year-old and still trying to redefine the meaning of my life, day by day.

So here's to tomorrow. The next day of the rest of my life. On my ongoing quest to make sense of what I was certain would destroy me. On my quest for ongoing healing, and the endless tossing of jumbled thoughts around in my mind, in desperation to find answers and some sort of peace.

Bittersweet. Very bittersweet.