I Live For...

Just as I go and say that I don't even know if I'm going to continue posting my blog everyday, I have another first and feel the need to write another entry right at this moment.  That would make two in one day - it's an usual day all around.  Today was a bad day in general.  Perhaps it was additional fallout from yesterday, or maybe it was just a bad day.  It won't be the first and it won't be the last - of this, I am sure. 

I had a hard time coming up with words for my earlier entry.  The subject matter stole my usual wordiness from me.  What normally flows so easily was like fighting through a strange writer's block, and I'm not even a writer.  In fact, I had a hard time getting out of bed to do anything today.  Finally after I finished finding some words to say, Doug insisted that we go for a walk with our dogs.  He took me to Pony Pasture so we could walk along the river - it's unusually high right now and we've always enjoyed taking walks on the numerous paths along the river.  Our dogs love it, and watching them with big ol' smiles on their faces usually puts a smile on my face.  But it didn't today - it made me even more sad.  Probably because I couldn't get out of my mind the fact that Ellison would have loved these types of walks.  I was very much looking forward to her joining her big fur brother and fur sister on a nice day as we marveled at the beauty that was all around and listened to the sound of the water as we walked along. 

Halfway through our walk I watched a little girl who was maybe five run along the banks of the river with her family.  At one point she stood on a rock, thrust her arms into the air, and declared "I'm king of the world!"  And despite the fact that she was mimicking a cheesy line from a cheesy movie (i.e. Titanic), it brought a tear to my eye simply because I pictured Ellison doing the same thing one day during a walk just like the one we were currently on.  Everything just snowballed from there.  The walk was no longer a distraction from my sadness, but a magnetic for it.

Back at home, I realized I had not eaten anything all day and 7 pm was fast approaching.  I told Doug we needed to use one of our gift cards that our friends had graciously provided because I wouldn't eat unless we went out and I was forced to.  And don't go thinking it's because I'm starving myself or anything like that.  Most of the time I simply don't think about eating or have no appetite to remind me to eat.  So we went out and Doug did his best to be my constant cheerleader.  I told him I was just feeling darkness all around me, and there was no light to reach towards.   The words just started spewing from my mouth as we waited for our dinner.  I started rambling about how the only thing I could think about was how we were 0 for 2.  Every time I've been pregnant, the outcome has always been negative - we have nothing to show for it.  We have no bundle of joy, and just two times the heartache.  How could I possibly expect to "see the light at the end of the tunnel" or to find the hope and optimism for the future?  And of course he did his best to tell me that we would find our light and we would get our happy ending as long as we believed we would.  Thankfully our dinner came, and my thoughts were temporarily distracted by food.

Then, all of the sudden, seemingly out of the blue, a different train of thought hit me.  I told Doug that I wanted us to start travelling more and going to places we had always wanted to go to but hadn't because life had gotten in the way.  You know how you always have visions of how you want your life to be and dream about all of the things you are going to do when you're like 12 and growing up?  Well, I'd say 9.7 times out of 10, those things never actually happen like you've dreamed them.  When I was a younger teenager, I had visions that I'd be a famous skit actor like Molly Shannon.  I portrayed a pretty good "Mary Catherine Gallagher" in a talent show, and I loved coming up with skits with my friends in my old youth group.  Heck, some people even think I look like Molly Shannon.  But as you can tell, I'm no famous actor and I don't really have any actual acting skills.  I also had dreams about travelling the world and going diving with great white sharks in South Africa.  But then, life gets in the way and you grow up and most of the dreams you had when you were younger are just that - dreams.  You start worrying about grown up things like taking time off from school, and then work, and then you have to worry about finances and logistics, and those childhood dreams just fall to the wayside as pipe dreams.  Well, I told Doug I wanted us to revisit some of those pipe dreams..

I started telling him about all the places I had dreamed about going at various times in my life.  I wanted to go to Boston and do a pub crawl and see the historic sites, and to Philadelphia to eat an authentic cheesesteak.  And I wanted to go to the Baltimore aquarium, because I've never actually been.  And I wanted to take him to NY city because even though I've been several times, there's still plenty of things I want him to see since he's never been, and there's always something new to do there.  And I want to go to Los Angeles and Hollywood and dip my feet in the Pacific Ocean.  And I want to go back to the Grand Canyon and actually get to hike a trail and white water raft through the Colorado River.  And I want to go to Yosemite National Park.  And I want to go to Hawaii and walk through volcanoes and hike through its beautiful landscape.  And I want to go to Harry Potter World in Disney and drink a butter beer (don't judge).  And I want to backpack through England, Ireland, and Scotland, and explore the castles and the countryside and drink a pint in an actual pub.  And I want to do a safari in Africa and see a great white shark (preferably from the safety of a boat).  And I want to go on a cruise to Alaska and see a whale up close and go on a sledding adventure.  And I want to do a National Geographic exploration trip to Iceland and Greenland - just because.  And I'd love to go to Australia and New Zealand - they're both so beautiful in pictures.  And I'd love to go to Fiji or Bora Bora and stare at the pristine water and beaches.  And I want to swim with dolphins somewhere in the tropics.  And I want to see Peyton Manning in action at a live football game (and maybe even get to meet him and get something signed) - heck, I'd love to see Peyton play the Pittsburgh Steelers live just so I could see him and Heath Miller at the same time.  I could go on and on, but I'll stop there...

And then it hit me after rattling all of this off - I wanted to start going to some of these places I've never been to and dedicate it to Ellison.  A friend of mine recently told me about an organization she participates in called "I Run 4."  It's an organization that was started so that people could gain inspiration from children who are disabled, and then use that inspiration to start running for those children who simply cannot because of the hand they've been dealt.  She told me there was a spin off called "I Run For...Remembrance" that is dedicated to those who run in remembrance of a lost loved one.  I haven't been able to find much about this spin-off during my internet searches thus far, but it might be something I look into more when I'm actually able to start running again.  But nonetheless this did spark something more immediate in me - another idea.  Something I'd like to call "I live for..."

Now, in addition to all the bad luck I seemed to have been handed, I was also given a lack of creativity.  I can't draw for anything, and I'm not artistic whatsoever.  I have no special skills (musically, artistically, etc.) or hidden hobbies.  I do get some creative thoughts in my head every once in awhile, but they never go far beyond that. Well tonight, the vision that popped into my head was that of a t-shirt.  A t-shirt that would incorporate some design based off of the "I carry your heart" poem by E.E. Cummings (like a heart inside of a heart) on the front and then on the back it would say something like "I live for my guardian angel" and it would have Ellison's name on it.  Don't ask me about the artistic nuances because those just don't exist in me.  But, anyways, I'd wear this shirt whenever I went to a new place and I'd take a picture and I'd make a photo book and I'd post the photos on Facebook.  That way, I would know I was living for Ellison - even though she's not here, I'd be living for her.  And everyone else would know that whatever I was experiencing for the first time, so was she. 

So if any of my artistic folk out there actually read this and can visualize what I'm talking about, let me know.  But since I doubt it will go beyond my imagination, I'll just have to know that I live for her.  And even though I know I probably will never get to Bora Bora or some of those exotic places I've dreamed of, I will make more of an effort to travel to some of the places I can get to that are new.  And I'll take a picture of each new place for Ellison.  Maybe that will take some of the darkness away, and won't make me as sad as I was today when I was at the river.  Maybe it would be at least a flash of light in this seemingly dark world I find myself in...