Random - that's how I feel

It's been just over a year since my Mom died. Just over a year of sadness and depression that I'm still experiencing. I wonder if I'll ever get over this sometimes.

I have good days and bad days, like everyone else in the world, but when the days are so bad that I just want to crawl under the blankets and hide, I still get up and go to work and do the things I have to do to keep my life going. Isn't that the way we all live? I feel like a mechanical toy some days. I get up. I have coffee. I watch the news. I brush my teeth and take a shower and dry my hair. I figure out what I'm wearing. I drive to work and on the way to work I put on my "normal" face so no one knows the pain I carry with me every day. I don't have a lot of close friends; I do have a lot of people I like and some I love, but only one that I can talk to without feeling like I will be judged: my husband. We've been together since 1987 because we can talk to each other.

I know people who've had friends since grade school, since high school, since college. Not me. For some reason, I never had friends like that. I don't know why. It's just the way I've been my whole life. My quote at the top of the page is really something I found online; I don't have any old friends like that and never really did. Growing up, I hung out with my sister and her friends, but they were her friends, never mine. I didn't get close to anyone in school - I was always a loner. When I was being punished for something and got sent to my room, I was never upset. Being sent to my room meant I didn't have to do anything but read and maybe take a nap. That wasn't punishment; it was wonderful. Being sent to your room was torture to my sister and brother; they always had something to do and someone to do it with. Not me. I was always the fifth wheel; at least that's how I always felt.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I think it may be just a random rant because I was thinking about Mom a lot this week and missing her terribly. I was depressed before she died but that was nothing compared to how I feel since she died. I've gotten so bad that I have a panic attack when I go near her house and I can't even talk on the phone to my sister because I always end up crying. She doesn't do it on purpose, I know, but I always end up crying and I always end up even more depressed for days afterward so I just text for now until I can deal with it better. On Mom's anniversary, August 21, I was a mess. I went to Mass - I've been going to Mass for a while now - and I just thought about Mom. She would have been happy that I was at Mass. I sat in the car afterwards and cried for a bit because I missed her so much. Mom thought she was never going to die. She kept smoking and she still thought she was never going to die. And I watched her die, gasping for air, because she smoked.

Enough. I'm crying and I need to stop. I miss my Mom more than anyone will ever know and more than I can ever say.