Dark Days.

Well really not so dark, not dark for the other people in my life anyway. It's beautiful outside. Big puffy white clouds. Clear cerulean blue skies. I wish that beaming sun could find a way to brighten my mood.

The last week has been pretty typical. But typical sucks for me right now. Typical is depressing. Typical is black.

Our big two events this week were a family dinner at my mom's house on July 4th (as it rained there was barbecue eaten around the kitchen table. It was a good time. I guess that's what's good about me and depression, you get a nice big distraction going and I can be in a fine mood for hours. And we had quite the group. So that was really nice and we got to make plans to go out for my brother's birthday with him and his friends (I'm going to feel so old;BF is reaally going to feel it). I hate that every conversation comes back to my diseases though; how I'm doing; what the doctors are doing; what the treatments are; what the future looks like now.

My very generous mother had helped my aunt move earlier that day, into a duplex that my uncle built for next to nothing. So now my mom wants him to build us one, as in her and her boyfriend, my brother, me, BF, and the little man. She's...she's amazing. I wish I could be happy about that instead of getting all teary as I write it. She wants to be close enough by that she could help me with kids, laundry, dishes, etc., but also far enough away that we could all have the space that we need. She's awesome. I don't know that it'll happen, or when it will happen, so many ideas are being thrown around as ways to help me out right now it's hard to keep track of them sometimes.

Our second big night was just a night at the pool with my dad and his/our/my new family. My very pregnant stepmom, A, and I sat in the pool; her trying to wrangle her five year old into the shallow end; me trying to coax my three year old out of it. We had fun and I actually did get little man out to the middle of the four foot depth. Very big stride for him. So as the pool closing neared, the kids cleared the pool and went to get dried off with the help of our men while A andn I sat on the steps of the shallow end, stealing away a little girl time for ourselves. We talked about all of the different tests I'm having this week and how my father and BF just can't understand why my intrinsic need to become a mother is such a driving force (that'll have to be another post) and then she started talking about how she and my father have been looking into umbilical cord blood banking when the baby is born. It was an almost surreal moment for me because it hadn't even occurred to me. Me, who had watched specials where women have gotten pregnant with the hope that the stem cells in the umbilicus will save their dying child. Me, who has been following the progress of stem cells saving lupus patients since I was diagnosed. Me, who cursed that mother^*%#*@ Bush when he stopped the public funding of stem cell research. And now I have a fresh source of stem cells, that while not being 100% biologically from my sibling, are 50%. It had never occurred to me when they got pregnant that this could happen and they are awesome to have thought of it and researched it and are getting ready to do it - and it's not cheap and they're not rich.

So that threw me for a loop. A good loop. A distracted loop. A loop that had me googling all night. Distractions are really nice. The Darkness always manages to creep right back in though.

We went to T@rget on Sunday, just for something to do, to get the little man out of the house as it was pouring outside and we were all miserable. It was your normal come for two things leave with two hundred dollars worth of stuff you figured out you reaaallly needed shopping trip. Except the toddler boys clothes are terribly close to the infant section and as we browsed through 3T tee shirts BF made an off hand joke about how we wouldn't need to deal with any of that crap again because we couldn't have any more.

I just stopped. And then the tears began to flow. He realized instantly how wrong what he said had been and wrapped me up in his big wonderful arms, holding me close and whispering comforting words in my ear. We stayed that way for a good five or six minutes until I managed to compose myself. It killed the rest of the night though. Somehow I can keep it together when I look at A's big pregnant belly, maybe its that I know that that's my little sister or brother in there; I love it already and I want it. But goddamn! The pregnant mannequins at 0ld N@vy tonight made me tear up...and then I wanted to punch them.

I have too many awful emotions flying around me and I'm paralyzed by them. While physically my joints are okay and the fatigue and SOB are getting better, mentally, I don't see any improvement. Things aren't getting simpler, they're getting more complicated and I am just not pleasant to be around. I can't believe how blessed I am to have found BF when I did though. He has been such a rock. He has reminded me everytime I apologize for being depressed that he love me and loves to be with me any way he can get me.

So these will be my Dark Days, but I know that they will end. That these wonderful people who re all rushing in and doing everything they can to make my life better will hold me up until I don't crumple on my own.