9 years

9 Years. How life can change in that amount of time. Well life changes every day and things change from moment to moment but to look back over the last 9 years and see how much has changed is amazing. 9 years ago yesterday someone was taken from this world who shouldn't have been. That event changed a lot of things for me. I was 20 yrs old at the time, I liked to party with my friends, do stupid and crazy things, and just wanted to have fun. But the events of July 26 will forever be with me. It took me awhile to even talk about them due to the fact that so many other things were going on. I wanted to be strong for those around me and felt that I would deal with it in my own time. But little did I know that another great loss was heading right for me less than a month later. I grew up that summer. I learned that there was more to life that partying all the time and being dumb. Don't get me wrong, I still like to have fun, but I think that at times I much more cautious than I use to be. Going through the loss of someone so young for reasons that you can't understand takes a lot out of you. I remember sitting on the front steps of my friends house with a few of my friends. We were waiting for Pat to come. His gf Jen was getting anxious and now I wish that we would have driven to find him. I was sitting there drinking milk and eating cookies with my friends talking about a new cd that I just bought and making plans for our upcoming beach trip that would be right around the time of my birthday. My mom had told me a few days earlier that I need to come and spend at least one night at home and not at my friends house. I chose that nite to go home. My mother probably quite possibly saved my life by that request. I left at 11 pm, and Pat arrived shortly after I left. The events that happened after I left will never leave me. Pat was walking Jen home and got into a fight with the neighbor across the street (which I didn't even know anyone lived there until a few weeks prior, and earlier that afternoon I saw that man, he stared at me and freaked me out) who then pulled a gun and was planning on shooting my friend Jen, but Pat stepped in front of her and saved her life with his own. Kevin, the man, had planned on shooting some more, but his gun locked up. So he sat on his porch and waited for the police to arrive. The next day I found out what happened. Going over to the house was so hard for me. Looking at the pavement where there was still blood still freaked me out. Trying to get rid of the blood with bleach, which didn't work will something I will never forget. The days that followed were a blur for the most part, the funeral, the candlelight vigil. We all looked like zombies walking around I'm sure, just going through the motions for the sake of it. But looking back, as hard as that time was for me, I learned so much from it. I became a better friend, a better listener, a more compassionate person. But with those came the fact that I did not have time to deal with it myself. I was concerned with everyone else that I forgot that I needed to grieve, that I needed to deal. And when it finally came time for my turn, I didn't have any time because my Grandmother died a few weeks later, and the whole process started over again. I felt like I couldn't breathe. I was so lost and couldn't even begin to deal with the loss of her. Being there in the hospital when she passed was something I will also never forget. At least having the chance to say I love you helped to ease the pain somewhat, but not enough at that time. My Grams, as I called her, had been an important person in my life. She took care of me a lot while my mother worked two jobs as a single mother to support myself and my brother. She was the one who introduced me to her church, the church that I grew up in, and that everyone knew me and my family. She was the one who helped to increase my love for God and for family. While all of this was going on, all of the loss that I was dealing with, my mother was the one who gave me some comforting words. She reminded me that God never gives you more than you can handle. At that time I was stunned. I didn't think I could do it, I wasn't dealing well at all with things. and felt like everything in my life was falling apart. My mom bought me my first cross necklace, one that I stll have today, even though she upgraded it a few years ago, as a reminder that He is always with me and that when ever I need to figure out how to get through it, just to ask Him for help. Wow this was a lot to get out, and there is so much more than I want to get out, but for now this is all. More will come, since I've been reflecting a lot more, while dealing with my husband's deployment and the upcoming birth of my child.