Wow 6 years

If you came for the layouts or the blog train, you need to scroll down, this post is only going to be about one thing, today is Leo's anniversary. It's 6 years today since my world changed forever, and my heart shattered into millions of tiny little pieces. Every year his anniversary is hard, I sink deeper and deeper into depression from August 24th (his birthday) until at least today, although to be fair the dark cloud always hangs around through Christmas and the New Year, neither passes without tears. Every year it's different, I never quite know what I am going to get as far as emotions go. There is always sadness and lots and lots of tears. There have been years where I have spent the whole day in bed alternating between crying and sleeping from the exhaustion of crying so much. Last year was unique, we had a new baby and I was so confused and messed up. I needed to escape the house filled with dark memories and sorrow, I booked a hotel room and we ran away from it all. This year is kind of unique to, we have a new house somewhere he hasn't ever really been except in our hearts, even his ashes are still at Nan's. He's too precious to put just anywhere and we don't have any shelves or anything up yet. This year I am struggling, the fog of grief isn't quite so dense when I am not being faced with memories of him everywhere I look. But the problem with that is that when the hurt comes back, and it always comes back, it hurts worse. It's like being punched in the chest with emotion. Before I was sad all the time, I missed him all the time, I remembered all the time. Now there are moments however brief when I forget, or other thoughts take up centre stage in my head. When you don't really remember what it felt like before the grief and the sadness, you get used to feeling like that and become a little desensitized to how much pain is actually there. But when you are reminded it's like the first time all over again only multiplied by infinity. I don't need to retreat from anyone here, because there's no-one to retreat from. But there is someone to hide from, Logan is too little to know about Leo, but he's not too little to understand when Mummy's sad. If he sees me crying, he rushes over and throws his arms around me. It's incredibly difficult to separate my desire to be sad about Leo and my desire to not make Logan sad. I have to admit that before Logan was born it was very simple to just drown in sorrow. I justified it to myself by saying that Lukas understood why I was so sad, he often started crying about Leo out of nowhere too. But Logan, he just sees the tears. His only understanding is that the photo by the tv in the teddy bear frame, makes mummy cry and it's not too be touched or played with. He picks it up and brings it to me, he's gentle and sweet with it. I sit him on my lap and I show him other photos on the computer of the big brother he doesn't get to play with. I haven't stopped loving Leo, I don't love Logan more but sometimes it's too hard for words to keep the divides from blurring together, it makes my whole life a balancing act between missing him too much and not missing him enough. I feel guilty that I don't miss him more, feel guilty that I miss him enough for Logan to notice. It's confusing. Sometimes I feel like I have to punish myself for getting on with my life without him, I caught myself smiling at something Logan did earlier and felt like I was betraying Leo by not being devastated all the time, today of all days. Logan's asleep now and I can let the tears flow freely, only I don't feel like crying right now. I used to think if I had a time machine I would go back, do things differently to try and avoid the pain, but now I wonder if I had got to keep Leo would I even have Logan. Sometimes he feels a bit like my reward for enduring all the pain of losing Leo, he was exactly what I needed even though I didn't know it. He's like a constant ray of sunshine kicking all the shadows and dark thoughts in the corner and forcing them to stay there. It's impossible to stay miserable when you are around him, he's so cheeky and full of fun. The love I had for Leo was so different, in ways a lot more intense but the love came with pain. The only one thing I know for sure is that it takes all 3 of my boys to make me complete. It takes all of them to make me the person I was, the person I am and even the person I am going to be in the future. Tonight I am going to light a candle for Leo, just like we always do only we don't need to walk to a park tonight, we can just use our garden. We will stand outside and probably freeze our butts off so we can sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to him. Maybe I will allow myself a few minutes to grieve and play one of his songs or scrap a page for him, today is not really the kind of day to make plans for. It's too hard to know how I am going to feel from one moment to the next. The one thing I know for sure, tomorrow I will be exhausted from the rollercoaster of emotions, and I will still miss him. I will miss him everyday until I get to be with him again, and when I do I will probably hurt just as bad missing the other two. I love you Leo, always.