The Kids….

When Trenton died all I could think was “How the hell are the girls going to survive this?” After a few months I thought the same of myself. Now two years and four months later I wonder how we will ever lead a normal, or even semi normal life again. Everything that was, is now not….. everything that was going to be, is now not going to be anymore. You would think that after being given the shittiest hand life could deal you, that you might be given a break in other aspects of your life…… well, I’m still waiting. And it’s not to say that wonderful things have not occurred in our lives since that devastating night, (they certainly have) it’s just that the things we keep hoping to fix, seem unfixable. I have tried so hard to soften the blow for those girls, and I think that for nearly two years while I held my shit together I did… but instead now, my own pain has ended up making their lives worse. This holiday has shown me, in all it’s rawness, just how fucked up we all are. I know it was not intended to, but throw us out of our comfort zone, onto the other side of the planet, and then put us on show from the crack of dawn until almost midnight every night trying to battle the queues and craziness of a bunch of theme parks, and you will see us fully crack open. It may ultimately be a good thing to see, but right now the tears are pouring down my face at the sheer desperation I feel at helping those girls. The topic has come up a lot…. being somewhere that Trenton would have adored to be is a constant reminder that he is not with us anymore. Poppy has been very angry during this trip, because she feels that all the help seems to come to me. Even though it’s in the way of friends and family trying to explain to her and Ruby that I need support to raise them…. and a break once a week by way of my Dad coming to stay….. What she see’s are people constantly telling her to let me go, to let me out…. and all she wants is for me to be there for her 100%. In her biggest time of need. Ruby has been anxiety ridden the entire time since we left Melbourne… (yes, she is also anxiety ridden when we are in Melbourne.) But this trip has amplified her fears ten fold, and she is a blithering mess. She (without meaning to) has consumed my every bit of energy from the beginning of the holiday until now with her anxiety ruling every single decision that she has had to make. Before every ride she questions if she will vomit, have a panic attack or have a heart attack and die. But she loves rides more than anything, and in her life pre Trenton’s death she would have questioned it, but then gotten on and sucked in every moment. Now she spends two thirds of her day panicking and dry retching over it. It’s the saddest thing to see. I have trained up the chaperone for this trip on how to answer her three thousand questions a day, just the right way so that we can share the load. Then last night she had a full blown anxiety attack in the queue for a ride at ten thirty pm thinking she was going to have a heart attack and die, and demanded that I drag her shaky, near on fainting body through the entire theme park to the entrance where the other million people were trying to get to as well…… only to fall into my arms outside the lockers crying like a baby asking me why Daddy had died, why I didn’t tell her he was going to die (I had re assured both girls that he’d be fine when I dropped them at their Nana’s at two am the night he’d passed away…) and how could I tell her that she wasn’t having a heart attack right at that very moment if I’d got it wrong with Dad? Fuck….. Like seriously….. Just fuck. How can people go through this crap forever?? I keep watching the same kinds of shit happen to my support group of Widow’s and Widower’s, and I wonder what the breaking point is? I think I’ve hit it twelve times already…… Sure, we can get a free trip to Disneyland…. I’ll take it, those kids deserve it! But it’s not long before our situation reminds us that although good things can happen to good people, our lives will never be the same again for us to enjoy it like normal people can. I can see now that we have progressed through time, but not life. Time is passing, we are still breathing, but more in a treading water kind of way… just to survive. I only wish that five years had passed already and that we might be coping a little better. I wish Ruby wasn’t about to graduate primary school without her adoring Dad watching on. I wish Poppy didn’t have to at the age of eight have to assume the role of an adult to comfort me when things are getting too much to bare….. and I wish the two of them only had the issue of choosing an outfit, picking a boy to like or deciding on which mate to visit on the weekend…… like normal kids do. It just isn’t the case I’m afraid…… Such is this bloody life. xxxx