As we head into the end of May and it being mental health awareness month, I felt inspired to write this post. It is no secret that I’ve struggled with depression and have had my fair share of anxiety. I have been very open about what I considered a traumatic childhood. I’d like to just share some thoughts and feelings about a moment I had this past week during a doctor’s visit.

A couple days ago I was scheduled for a colonoscopy and an endoscopy. I wasn’t prepared to walk in the building and room where James was sitting when they told us they found a “suspicious growth”. I wrote about that moment very early on when I started this blog. As I walked in and looked right at that area his bed was, I immediately started to cry. The nurses right away thought I was in pain of some sort. I told them it was just emotional for me to be there.

They took me in a different room, but it didn’t stop the tears flooding down my face. I found my way to the restroom where I locked myself in there for a few minutes to cry and call my brother in law, the man James looked up to so much. He had his fair share of listening to me cry with no words exchanged. Just my luck too that the same GI Doctor that James had was now doing that same procedure on me. Talk about an emotional rollercoaster that I wasn’t prepared for.

All I kept thinking about was the last time I was there and how it didn’t go well and now here I am. I couldn’t help but wonder what James was thinking while he was sitting there in that room. Was he scared, angry, nervous, anxious, or maybe all of it. I briefly put myself in his shoes and couldn’t imagine what he was thinking.

Going back to the beginning of this post and discussing depression, well here I am now struggling with being alone and being without my best friend for the rest of my life. I never thought that one day I would want to go back to the depression that I had before losing James because now, oddly enough, I would give anything to feel that pain again. Why you ask? Well nothing compares to the pain I woke up to feeling this morning. Feeling alone is painful and my heart aches everyday as I miss him so incredibly much.

I can count on my hand the amount of people that have genuinely been there for me. This doesn’t include the Ibarra family, they have all been there for me and unfortunately more than my own family. I sometimes feel I mattered more when James was by my side than I do without him. I learned that my kids and I are a team and all that matters now is that we have each other. For those who know my kids, they are not very touchy feely and rarely talk about feelings. They tuck them away and leave them there.

However, my Andrea told me this past weekend that we only have each other and I hated to hear that, but she was right. The best part of when she said that was she told us to put our hands in together in the middle like a team does and with tears in my eyes, Arianna and I did what she asked and the three of us did our hand-stack. Alex wasn’t with us but I know he would have done it with us with a smile on his face. I’m grateful James gave me this family and as much as I want to quit and succumb to old habits and patterns, I know I have a bigger purpose.