Guilt, by Annie Whitcomb

Isabel started her blog because she wanted to bring awareness to mental health and let others know that they aren’t alone. She was open and honest and I always found her bravery so inspiring. She wasn’t scared to talk about her worst thoughts and now, I want to carry on that tradition. My last blog post from July 2017 was more positive, talking about how things do get better. While I tell this to other people all the time, my mind often stops me from believing it for myself.

Depression can make you believe things that aren’t actually true. I decided to write a poem about my feelings right now. I know it’s dark but writing these thoughts out and then looking at them, imagining that someone else wrote them, makes the line between what my mind tells me is true and what is really not true, a little clearer. These words are my depression speaking, but that’s not me and hopefully as I continue to work on things, I’ll be able to see this a lot more clearly. Everyone stay strong.

I’m sorry

I should’ve done more, it eats me up at night

staying up so late, in my mind there’s a fight

This guilt is telling me I don’t deserve to see the light

Why should I ever when I treated you so wrong,

not showing enough love, making you feel like you didn’t belong

didn’t do my part to help you stay strong

I’m sorry

Everyone’s telling me you wouldn’t want me to think this way

I want to believe it but these thoughts won’t go away

I know you were hurting so bad but I wish you could’ve stayed

I’m sorry

There’s nothing I can do to change the past now

people saying just focus on the future but I don’t know how

I’m so stuck in my head thinking about what I could’ve done

Mom starting to worry about who I’ve become

self love, motivation, I have none

I’m sorry

Moving and a Frozen Orange

Since late October, I have spent most of my free time cleaning out my house. I had always said that I would move to a smaller house once all my children finished high school. When Isabel died, that plan was delayed. Cleaning out a house full of memories as well as a lot of “stuff” requires emotional energy that I just didn’t have.

Several months ago I decided to take it slowly, realizing that I would sell the house when it was ready, as long as that may take. And it was finally ready in late February and has already been sold to a new family who will create their own memories here.

Cleaning out was hard and progress was often slow because I would become absorbed with memories. Philip’s letter of apology when he was sent to the principal’s office in first grade. Genevieve’s hilarious little notes - to me, the tooth fairy, Santa, etc. Awesome photos of Annie with the first fish she ever caught. We found a sketch pad full of Isabel’s cartoon drawings. Little pieces of paper with Stay Strong written on them. Isabel’s pledge to never ever ask for another pet if I would just let her get a beta fish (after that fish came two hamsters and a rabbit). Close friends, family and neighbors came over and helped me get through everything. I couldn’t have done it without them.

You know what is especially hard? Moving to a new house feels like moving on. And I’m not sure I want to move on since it feels like leaving Isabel behind. We will be leaving the house where she grew up, where we have our most vivid memories of her. I am still grappling with these thoughts so will have to let you know later how I come to terms with this dialectic – I am excited about what comes next AND reluctant to let go of a physical space where I have memories of my beautiful daughter.

Last weekend, Genevieve and Annie were home and I asked them to help me clean out a couple of things. One of the chores was to empty out the kitchen freezer. Later, after they had already left to drive back to school, I opened the freezer and saw a lone orange sitting on a shelf. That orange was put in the freezer a few years ago by Isabel, and seeing it there made me smile.

Why a frozen orange? This was a distress tolerance skill that Isabel had learned while in one of her treatment programs, sort of an extreme version of splashing cold water on your face. Learning distress tolerance skills is part of DBT therapy, which Isabel wrote about frequently in her blog and which I continue to think about all the time in my everyday life.

Genevieve had been unable to throw away the orange because it felt like an important part of her sister that we needed to hold onto. I don’t know how long an orange can stay in a freezer but I am certain that we will find out. That orange is going to move with us to our next home as Isabel’s continued reminder to us to Stay Strong.