Shanon’s Blog

If this week has been good for nothing else, it’s put a lot of things into perspective for me. Maybe I had a bad weekend. Maybe I’m still feeling the effects from the weekend. But you know what? I’ve got a pretty OK life when you take a look at the big picture.

Tuesday was a great day for the most part, but then I got a phone call from Haley, Jessa, and Amelie for my weekly update on their lives. Normally it’s a happy call with jokes and grade updates and stuff like that…but I ended up crying in the bathroom during this one.

I don’t get close to a lot of people and I’m typically pretty good at the out of sight out of mind theory. So the fact that Haley and her family rank so highly in my brain despite the fact that they live in Mississippi is kind of surprising. But I love these kids and I can’t imagine going a week without hearing from them. This week I had a hard time understanding what Haley was saying to me. Luckily her mom sits and listens to our conversation and repeats anything that I missed the first time around. On Tuesday Haley told me that she was going to have to do another surgery. She is 9 years old and has had a hard life and it’s not getting any easier. When they were moving from New Orleans to Mississippi, they got into a car wreck that made them flip and destroyed Haley’s wheelchair. So she has been without a proper chair for a couple or three months now. With that, her back has curved at a 90 degree angle. So she has to have surgery because her internal organs are being squished in ways they’re not supposed to be. So she’s got to have another surgery. She’s not going to the bathroom the way she is supposed to which could be an indicator of a problem. This breaks my heart. When her mom was telling me about everything that’s been going on, I lost it. I wasn’t at home at the time. I wasn’t even on my phone. All I could do was lock myself in the bathroom and cry. It’s so nice walking around someone else’s house with swollen, puffy eyes and a runny nose. I felt like such a baby and it only got worse yesterday.

I got a text from one of my closest friends telling me that she had lost her Godson. The baby was due on October 30^th and the mother lost the baby on Sunday. My best friend from when I was younger lost a baby when she was 6 months along last November and she’s still not quite over it. So I cannot even imagine almost going full term and then losing the child. To go from getting the nursery ready and planning the rest of your life with your first born child to planning his cremation. Oh my gosh. I cannot even imagine. What can I say to make it better? How could I empathize? The likelihood of my ever having a child is not very good and occasionally that makes me pretty upset. So having the buildup of giving birth to your first child turn into mourning the loss of that child is probably the most devastating feeling ever. I truly cannot even imagine. It’s hard just hearing about it…I can’t fathom the way they feel.

So I take a step back. I cry a lot doing it, but it’s just because I can empathize with others so well. I’m doing better with the eating, if anyone cares. I’ve pretty much had a headache since last Friday, but I can’t complain about that too much. Can I just say how much I do not like Nickelback? Ugh. And I don’t like seafood, either. But I do like my brown Velcro Vans. I’m wearing them today. And I do love my friend who listened to me cry the past two days. It means a ton to me. Anyway, this is long enough now so that’s really all I got.