Black

Dear readers,

Usually I sit down to write my next blog and the words flow easily.  I am writing what happened in my life, so it's easy to keep going as I am writing things I have lived and remember.  However, this time I am at a loss.  I have been looking at a blank page for a few days now. I don't know how to write this one. I don't know where to start. I have had years of processing and healing but writing my last blog has sent me spinning.  I miss my daughter.  I miss her so deeply and I don't know what to do. I can't have her back.  I will never see her again...I will never hear her sweet little voice again.  That panic has come back to me.  I am having night terrors again.  I knew there would be times of struggle while writing my story, but I am grieving again.  I can't stop picturing things I don't want to picture.   This is nothing easy for my girls either.  This is a very difficult process for all 3 of us.  I can only continue to hope that this pain is worth it.  That I can reach someone and give them enough encouragement that they are inspired to change their situation.  This is literally life or death.  My little girl is dead.  She never got the chance to grow up, to experience friendship, her first day of school, her first boyfriend, prom, nothing.  She is gone.  No one last hug....one last "mommy loves you". No one last snuggle early in the morning.  Nothing.  Her life is gone because I couldn't leave my abuser.  What do you do after something like this?  I mean really......wtf do you do.....when your child dies.  Go on? Kill yourself? Go crazy? I tried all three.   The answer is nothing.  Nothing works, nothing helps, nothing makes it better. If you are reading this and you are stuck in an abusive relationship.....leave......now. There isn't one memory that I have of my abuser that made this all worth while.   Not all of the "good" times mixed into one.......not one second of it. I was stuck.....like you.  Maybe it will get better.   If I just love him enough. He just needs someone to stay. He's sad.   He needs me.  BULLSHIT!  I got my ass beat for 7 years just to have it end with my daughters life being taken. Now I live with it. I get to live the rest of my life knowing that had I not gone back to him that last time my daughter would be ten years old right now.  Had I not put her in the car and driven back to that house to "make up" with him, she would be alive.

*******
My counselor set up a day for me to go visit my daughters grave.   I had never been there sober.  I went there when they lowered her tiny casket into the ground.  I went there when I did a big enough load that I thought I could bear it. Only a handful of times. And even those times, when I was so high on heroin that I couldn't even open my eyes or close my mouth to keep drool from dripping out, I still lost my shit. The small, shattered pieces of my heart, broke into a million smaller pieces each time I visited her. At some point in the last couple of years after she died, when I went to visit her, I could no longer picture her laying there in her little white eyelet sundress with the pale yellow ribbon tied around her waste.  Or the pretty little barrette my sister Kara and Collette had placed in her hair at the funeral home, or the little diamond earrings I had placed in her ears.  At some point that vision had faded and all I could picture, sitting at her grave, was a tiny skeleton in a dark box.  I couldn't believe I agreed to do this.  How can I face her sober?  All the real emotions and pain werected present.  It's part of the healing process, she tells me.   It's something I need to get through before I leave rehab.   If I experience it for the first time on my own and free, relapse is almost guaranteed.  I'd worked so hard and come so far.  I was afraid of myself at this point.  The guilt and pain were so heavy.  It felt like I was being choked and grasping for air every second of every day.   Like there wasn't enough air for me to breath properly.  I had softened towards the other clients kids over time but now I was back to hating them all.  They all complained about not getting to see their kids enough, or not getting long enough visitation.  I really hated everyone.  Like complain to me bitch when your visitation is at a graveyard.  Ya, that's what I thought......shut the fuck up.
The day came to go visit her.  My mom picked me and a friend up. (Another client living with me in rehab)  It was a 20 minute drive to the graveyard.  We laughed and talked on the way there.  What else were we gonna do?  I felt like I had my emotions in check.   If I kept them all inside I could probably handle this right? We stopped and bought some flowers on the way.   When we pulled up and I felt nothing.   She was buried in a beautiful old cemetery.  We had picked a plot by a tree because Poppy loved nature and trees.  I have a plot right next to her.  I figured it would have been occupied by me by now.....but I never succeeded in suicide.  I was a failure in that department as well.  I gathered my flowers and walked up to her.  I sat down in the grass and looked at her headstone.  I didn't cry.   I cleaned it off and placed my flowers.   People had been visiting her I could tell.  There were balloons and wind chimes and fresh flowers.  Everything the girls and I had ever placed there was still there.  Anger started filling my heart.  Rage. Then tears.  I layed  down beside her and cried my heart out for my baby girl.  I can't remember the scene exactly in that hour but it completely wrecked me.  I screamed and yelled on my knees.....I sobbed til I couldn't anymore.   I felt out of my head....I felt almost like I was there putting her in the ground all over again.  My baby was dead.  Forever.  I fought in my mind to picture her as she was and not as her little bones rotting in the ground. I tried to tell myself that she wasn't there anymore.  That she was in heaven and happy.  I would almost accomplish it and then a picture of her with her head bashed in would flash into my mind. I can't fucking do this.  This is a reality I cannot bear. I want my baby back!!! Please...just please!  Please god.......fuck!  There's no pleading here....I don't want to be here.  But I don't want to leave her.  I layed back down beside her and quietly sang her a lullaby with a hoarse cracking shaky voice and closed my eyes.   I just wanted to wrap my arms around her.   My arms ached.  They had felt empty since that day.  When I think about it still, my arms physically hurt with longing.  She didn't deserve this.   How could I do this to her?  She was so happy that morning....Running around playing with her sisters. A gift from God.......that he took back away. A beautiful angel that was too perfect for this ugly world.....especially for my ugliness.  I had to go.   It was leave now or take off and not go back to rehab.  I feel like I made it by seconds.   I was ready to feel the stab of the needle piercing my skin and the fluid injecting into my veins.  Shoulders down, head back......the rush......omg......please.  Heroin.....come back to me.  You were always there for me, I need you now.

Back at rehab that evening I had a bad melt down. I went upstairs to tell an RA that I needed medicated.  (That wasn't an option there) I freaked out when told there was nothing I could take, even though I allready knew that.  My counselor wasn't on site....she had gone home for the night. The RA suggested I called her.  They set me in an office with a phone and I lost my shit. I threw the phone against the wall and started screaming , "I want my baby back!" Over and over. I was in a full blown panic attack.  "TAKE ME TO THE FUCKING HOSPITAL!" I demanded.  They finally talked me into calling my counselor who walked me through some grounding techniques. I listened but I couldn't hear what she was saying. I couldn't breath. I can't remember for sure but I think I did go to the hospital that night and received some sort of tranquilizer. Ya, I am almost positive that's what happened.  It was horrible.  I was grieving so deeply and all the stages at once....shock, anger, disbelief, denial...rage.  I had no strength anymore.  I just wanted to die.  

**** September 13th.   My daughter Colette's birthday.  Holly's birthday is September 9th.  They were born just a couple days apart.  I had taken my three girls and left Damion a week before.  We went to my parents house.  We had so much fun. I was free.  We were free.   He started calling me and apologizing for the last violent episode   I believed him.  He was sorry this time.  I took my  girls and went back. Two days before this day.  On September 13th we were up celebrating the girls birthdays.   Now I have to explain something to you before I begin.  This day and the days following I have no solid memory of.  The only way I can think of to describe it is a flash of something we were doing then a loud sound and a flash of black.  Then another flash of something else we were doing....then another flash of black.  I can't remember many sounds....and the girls and I remember things differently.  I remember presents.  I had gotten them a play station.  It was slim and silver.  I was in the kitchen making birthday breakfast and I looked into the living room and Poppy was standing on the play station.  It was only about an inch tall but she was smiling and thinking she was standing on a tall platform.  The girls were laughing.  Black. I'm cooking at the stove and Damion comes up behind me....harassing me about something.  I beg him to not do this on my daughter's birthday.  Black. Damion is mad.  He is leaving.  The girls are laughing and playing in the back ground.  Black.  I'm cooking.  Black. I hear Damion yelling outside.  I run out and he's running across the lawn with something in his arms.  It's Poppy.  She's not moving.  Slow motion.....running towards me.  He lays her down in the grass in our front yard.  The kids come out.  She's gasping for air.  I am screaming call 911.  Her head flips over and blood is coming out of her mouth.  And pieces.....of.....brain......her head is completely bashed in on the side.  Damion slaps me across the face ...hard.  black.  He ran over her.  How did she get outside.  There was no time for her to get out the front door and behind his truck. But there was because she did?  Damion is giving her CPR....or I am. I don't know. I'm screaming. Neighbors are coming out to see what's happening. I think I screamed for the girls to go in the house.  Black.  What's happening. She's not moving.  Omg!  This isn't happening. WHAT HAPPENED?  Ambulance and firemen come. Start CPR.  Is she alive?  Yes but no.  Put her in ambulance we can't follow because truck is evidence.   Damion and I get into a neighbor's car...neighbor driving....following the ambulance.   Damion throws a pill bottle at me and says if they find it he's going to prison.  I throw it back at him and say "my daughter is dying fuck you!" I don't know what's happening.  We get to the hospital and they put her on life support.  We go to the chapel....a ton of people are there.  We are praying. Black.  I'm in her hospital room.  She's hooked on a machine that's breathing for her. My soul is dying. Black.  We are told she will not make it.  I'm on my knees. I think I'm screaming.  Black.  Decision to take her off machine and let her be in peace and out of pain is made.  Black.  I'm in the hospital room alone.  Someone wraps her up in a blanket and I sit down in a rocking chair and they hand my baby to me.  She is dead.  I start rocking and singing her a lullaby. I don't know how long.  I stared at her beautiful little lifeless face and she was gone.  This is the last time I will ever hold my daughter.  Please don't....please don't take her away from me.  Please just a little longer.  Please.  Please.  Goodbye my beautiful sweetheart.  Omfg goodbye. She's taken out of my arms. I walk out of the hospital and look up and my whole family is out there.  My mom my dad...my girls...my x-husband....his parents.  I fall to the ground.  Black. 

I can't write anymore about this.  I can't breath and I need to go to bed.  That's the only form I can get it out in.  I will write my next one soon.