Headrush

It's been a while since I last posted.

I could offer a lot of excuses to you. 

I could tell you that I've been busy with work.

I could tell you that I've been busy reading Game of Thrones.

I could tell you that life in general has just gotten in the way.

I could tell you that the words have stopped coming.

And while all of those would be true, the last one is truer than most. I guess since I got out of school for the summer, I haven't had many things to write about, if anything at all. Sometimes there are days when I want to sit down and blog about what's happening in my life, but then I think back to what I'm only going to refer to as the incident, and I'm scared to write on this blog.

It's been almost a month and I'm still scared to write about my life and how I'm doing.

Which is why I'm writing now. 

I'm going to be starting this thing called 100 Happy Days on Instagram, hopefully very soon. Maybe around the first of the month, so that I can start on an even number. Basically, it's a challenge to find one happy thing a day, for one hundred straight days. In this busy world, can you even find one happy thing a day? Considering how down in the dumps my life has been lately (I'll see if I can get over my fear at some later point to talk about those things), I'm going to try and use this as the motivation that I need to get back into the world of blogging.

I may not do a blog post every single day, but I'll certainly try to at least do them once a week, with all the pictures that I've taken from that week. If people who have been around since my last blog remember my weekly updates, that's kinda what this is going to be. A weekly update of the happy pictures that I've taken and what made me so happy. That's a series that I'm going to start in July.

I've been going through some things lately, and these things have been hard. Sometimes all I do at the end of the day is cry into my pillow. I need to turn things around. I need to get some things straight in my life. And I need to show people that I'm not afraid.

I can't tell you if I'll be back with blog posts before my 100 Happy Days project starts in July, but I'm certainly going to try my hardest.

Thanks for still being out there, guys :) Thanks for believing in me. You're the greatest.

Undetermined Hospital Stay!

My mother called me when I got out of Coms this afternoon to give me an update on Hunter. She talked to his dad today. And it's not good.

They went in and did surgery yesterday, as you probably remember. Well, they found some sort of blockage (I believe), and they found an abscess in his hip/hips, so they went in and removed those. They also cleaned out infection, and removed MORE of his intestine. (Ouch.) He hasn't been able to keep his pain pills down, which is why he's in so much pain right now. 

He's got his drainage tube back in (ew), his nutrition (food) IV, and probably his morphine drip as well. It's like he never left the hospital.

This time, I think they're gonna keep him in until they're SURE he can keep food down. They'll wean him off everything again, but instead of sending him straight home, they'll keep him for a few more days and make sure he can eat. I'm pretty sure they just released him too early last time. (Maybe they thought that if they sent him home, he'd eat, because he'd be away from the stress of the hospital and whatnot. But who knows?)

It's still going to be a long ride.

***

And as far as I know, Marina's still unconscious. I haven't heard anything about her yet, but I'm sure that now Hunter's back in the hospital, we'll be getting regular updates on her again.

This is absolutely insane. I don't know how to take this any more.

I'm hoping Hunter's going to recover, mentally and physically. I don't want to lose my brother to this. (I know he's not gonna die, but I hope he's going to be the happy LOOK-AT-ME-I'M-ON-THE-ROOF-BECAUSE-I-CAN-BE person he once was.)

Is it bad that I'm absolutely furious at Jake for this? I'm still so pissed.

And upset.

And sad.

I have so many emotions running through me that I don't know what to think.

He not only killed himself by not listening to his friends, but he almost killed two of them. (Bailey's only injury, really, was the fact that he sprained his ankle really bad by kicking the door open to get out.) Marina's still got a ton of surgeries (not to mention physical therapy) to go through, and Hunter may end up hooked up to machines the rest of his life.

I hate this.

Mid-Week Updates

It's been a few days since I've written, but now that I've gone back to school for the week, it's kinda hard to stay in-the-know, because I keep forgetting to text Cassidy and ask her about her brother.

SO. To recap the last few days...

The visitation was on Monday. I went to school in the morning, then drove back home after my Coms class so that I could attend that. The line for seeing the family/viewing the casket was so long, we had to weave through the chairs in the sanctuary. My dad said he'd never seen anything like it.

I met his brother, Hunter (not the same Hunter that's in the hospital). You see, Blake & Jake were adopted, so I think Hunter's their half-brother, but I'm not sure.

I met Mrs. Martha's parents, and her mother didn't want to let me go.

I hugged Blake again.

I hugged Mrs. Martha, and she said she was so grateful I was there. 

I also hugged Mr. Greg, and he just seemed...out of it.

Then I waited for my sister, and I held her hand as we walked to the casket.

I shouldn't have looked. It didn't look anything like Jake. There was so much makeup on his face, and he looked...just wrong. I'm sure they had to do a lot of reconstruction on him. They should've just had a closed-casket. But I know he's not really in that casket; he's in heaven. That's just his body.

Then we walked away from the casket and I absolutely lost it. I hugged Sarah and she told me, "DON'T YOU EVER MAKE ME DO THIS." And I promised I wouldn't. And I made her promise she wouldn't make me do that. 

I talked to a few of my friends and we shared stories. Then my friend Corey's dad got a call saying that Bailey had been released from the hospital. So Bailey's home now. (Hunter's still going to be in until at /least/ Friday, but probably longer than that. Mirana hasn't woken up yet.)

Then I drove back home.

***

On Tuesday, the funeral was at 11:00 in the morning. I didn't go. My sister and mother went, however, and my mom said it was really hard. Especially hard. I can't even imagine.

The Oak Mountain football and wrestling teams arrived in school buses. If they hadn't, there wouldn't have been any parking for anyone else; there was not an empty space in the parking lot. Which is amazing. Jake really will be missed by a ton of people.

All of the teenagers went to Zaxby's afterwards.

***

I called my mom this morning and asked about Hunter and Mirana.

Mirana had her surgery on Monday, and the surgeons reattached her spine and her pelvis. She's resting, but she's still heavily sedated. I'm hoping there's no brain damage, but my friend Jason said that she had lost oxygen at some point in time, and it might not be good.

Hunter's still not eating. He's been taking off the nutrition IV, but he just won't eat. He can eat, but he's "not hungry." It's going to hurt going through his intestines, so I suppose that's why he's not eating.

***

I'm going to go see Hunter on Friday, when I get back home from school. So hopefully everything's going to be okay.

Mirana's next surgery is scheduled for today, and then another surgery on Friday or Saturday, depending on how she does today.

Just keep these complete strangers in your prayers, please. It's going to be really rough for our youth group, to know that when we walk in, it won't be Jake and Blake keeping everybody in line. (Well, Jake keeping Blake in line.)

I'm just hoping nobody will be drastically changed by this (Blake and Hunter, especially). We need their personalities now more than anything.

What Happened This Morning?

I got a call from my friend Katie this morning. At first, I'm a little rude, asking her, "WHY THE HECK ARE YOU CALLING ME FIFTEEN MINUTES BEFORE MY ALARM GOES OFF?!" (It was 7:12. I get up at 7:30.) 

She goes, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, just cranky. Why are you calling?"

"Hunter Moss was in a really, really bad car accident last night."

I sit up. "Oh my God. Is he okay?!"

"He's not dead. Calm down, hun. He's in critical condition. But Lauren - Jake Miller was in that car, too. I don't know him, but Charlie Mercier [who told Katie all this] knows him, and you know him."

"WHAT HAPPENED."

"Lauren, Jake's dead."

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't get air. "No. That's not possible."

"They were out late last night... They had a car accident. Jake's girlfriend was in the car; she's the one that texted Charlie about all this. Charlie said that Hunter should be fine, though!" Katie kept trying to calm me down, because I was about to lose it.

"HOW LATE?! WHAT HAPPENED?! WHAT HOSPITAL IS HUNTER IN?!" 

"I don't know. Charlie didn't know all that. He just told me about Hunter and Jake. Apparently, at least two other people were in the car, and they're okay. Do you need to call your parents?"

"Y-yeah."

"Okay. I'll let you do that. See if they know anything. I'll talk to you in a bit, okay? Just keep praying. Charlie said Hunter should be fine. So calm down, hun."

"O-okay." I hang up, then immediately call my mom. "MOM. DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT."

She's confused. "No, I don't."

"MOM. DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT?!"

She kept repeating, "No." 

I said, "I'm going to tell you. Hunter and Jake were in a car accident late last night. Hunter is in critical condition at some hospital; Charlie didnt know which. He told Katie all this. Jake... Mom, Jake's dead."

She starts denying it. "No, no. He couldn't be. Sarah [my sister] was texting Cassidy [Hunter's sister] last night. She didn't say anything."

"It must've happened later than that. I don't know when it happened. But Mom...Jake's dead."

"I'm going to call Cherene [our youth pastor] and see what she knows. I'll call you back." And she hangs up.

So I start texting Katie.

Mom calls about ten minutes later. "Oh my God, it's true. I just talked to Deanna [Hunter's mom]. She said they were out at 2:00 a.m., driving on Highway 41. Jake was speeding, and he lost control of the car and hit a tree. She wasn't sure whether he died at the scene or in the ambulance, but he didn't make it to the hospital. It took them TWO HOURS to cut somebody out of the car. Two. Hours, Lauren. And Hunter's about to go into surgery right now. His intestines were sliced and spilled into his abdomen, so he's going into surgery to get that cleaned up and make sure there's no infection. His dad drove in from Atlanta to be here this morning. They think he should be okay. Deanna said the others in the car are okay."

"Mom, Jake's girlfriend was in that car."

"Just think about how they're going to tell Blake."

Blake is Jake's brother. They're not twins, but they're close enough in age to be, and they're extremely funny to be around. Jake always took his ADHD meds, but Blake never did, so Blake was always in-your-face LOOK AT ME I'M AWESOME while Jake was the more subltle I WILL CUT YOU.

"I don't want to."

"I'm going to call the school and see if they know. See if I can talk to a counselor there." (Mom was crying when she called me. They lost Mrs. Carolyn a few months ago; now Jake Miller's gone. This is absolutely devastating. Jake just graduated from high school back in May, too.)

"Okay."

"How am I going to tell Sarah?"

"I don't know. She might hear at school today. Charlie's the one that texted Katie."

"I'm going to call the school, and I'll call you later. Are you going to come home?"

"Yeah. I'm going to take a shower. I don't think I'd be able to hold myself together through these classes. I'll send messages to my teachers."

"Okay. Just pull yourself together and be careful coming home, okay?"

"Okay."

And then we hung up. I texted Katie what my mother had told me, and she and I went back and forth.

I sent messages to my teachers.

Mom called again. "Hunter's out of surgery. He was walking around last night, and said that his stomach hurt, so they hospitalized him immediately. They went in, presurgery, found the infection, then took him into surgery to clean him up and get everything back in place. He's going to be fine. It wasn't Jake's girlfriend; it was Bailey and Bailey's girlfriend in the car. They're both fine; they have several broken bones. It was the girlfriend that took two hours to cut out. I called the school and talked to them. Most people from the church are at the hospital (the preacher, the puppet teachers, most people) and several are at Jake's house. It's going to be difficult. Take a shower. Come home. I talked to the people at the school, and they said they're going to handle it. I didn't mention names."

So now I'm about to take a shower and head home. I'm still going to go to the football game tonight, but I'm still unsure as to what's going to happen. I may go to the hospital. 

I'm just... Oh my God. I thought if one of the Miller boys would die, it would be Blake, as horrible as that sounds. He's just insane, off-the-wall. Hilarious. He'd be the ADHD one that would take his eyes off the road and crash. I never...I never would've thought that it'd be Jake. He was so calm and collected.

I hope Blake's going to be okay. Oh my God, I hope he's going to be okay. (They were telling him around 7:40ish.)

It's going to be a bad couple of days.

I Cannot be Replaced Because...

A lot of you may have seen the link to The Bloggess in my sidebar. I love reading her posts, because they're always funny. (Normally, I'm crying with laughter by the end.)

Sometimes, though, her posts are serious. Like yesterday's, Something about September. She talked about how September is National Suicide Prevention Month, and she linked to the To Write Love on her Arms site.

TWLOHA's mission is to prevent suicide. They want to let you know that you are loved.

So they've come up with a way to get that message across:

YOU CANNOT BE REPLACED.

If any of you are struggling with this right now, I want you to take a look at this page. It's blank, at the moment, but you're supposed to fill it out with reasons that YOU, personally, cannot be replaced.

Here's mine, so far:

• I haven't finished my books yet, and I told my fourth grade teacher that I would send him a copy.
• It would let him know that I gave up, and he would win. He can't win.
• Nobody can communicate in movie quotes like I can.
• Nobody can tell my story.
• There are still so many things that I want to do in this life, and if my life ends, then they will forever be unaccomplished. (Who knows? Maybe I'll find the cure for cancer.)

I'm not good at this, but I just want everyone out there to know that you are not alone. It will always get better. Suicide is a permanent solution to an otherwise temporary problem (even if it doesn't seem like it at the time). Please, please talk to someone (there are outlines out there, or find an adult/friend that you trust). 

You don't have to do this alone.

You never have to be alone.

If you need help, here's a suicide hotline. You don't have to be at the end of your rope before calling; they'll help when you are alone and when you are having anxiety attacks, too. (That's a little-known thing that I found out in the comments the other day, from a lady who travels a lot and uses them.)

If you think one of your friends needs help, try one of these social media help lines. It tells you how to report their statuses/tweets/whatever and get them help, which is useful if y'all don't live anywhere near each other.

Here's the Canadian Mental Health Association, and the Befrienders Worldwide website.

Remember, you are not alone.

If you really need someone to talk to, talk to me! You can email me at laurenmroland@gmail.com, connect with me on Twitter, or find me on DeviantArt. I'm not sure if there are any other ways to contact me, but those three are the top.

Please, don't ever give up without talking to someone.

You are worth it. 

Doctor Who & Animal Crossing

You all are probably wondering why I haven't been posting a lot lately.

It's not because I've been busy. (I haven't been. I sit around all day on the internet or at work, bored out of my mind.)

It's not because I've found more productive things to do. (The one corner of my room is still messy as all get-out, and I haven't found "time" to clean it yet.)

It's not because I've figured out what I want to do with my life. (Wait - I have to decide?!)

No, there are two little explanations as to why I've been neglecting my blog:

Doctor Who & Animal Crossing.

I mean, I'm sorry, but I think I might be a bit obsessed.

I stay up until 3:00 or 4:00 a.m., watching Doctor Who every night. (I'm trying to finish the seasons before the Fiftieth Anniversary in November, you see.) I'm exhausted come the next morning, but it's worth it.

I'm absolutely in love with David Tennant - he's a brilliantly fantastic actor, and the world would be a much poorer place without him. (Plus, shipping Ten & Rose just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.)

Doctor Who lets me get away from the real world for a few hours. It chases away the dreams of Charlie so that I can actually sleep. 

I'm waiting for a mad man in a blue box to come and rescue me from my sad little life. I've become obsessed. I am officially a Whovian. And I am not in the least bit sorry.

As for Animal Crossing, I spend more time running around on there than I do running around the real world. (Not that I do a lot of running, that is. I don't run. Ugh. Probably haven't actually run since last October, when I ran from the auditorium to my dorm room to catch up on the Vice Presidential Debate.)

I'm trying to make my town perfect. At the moment, it is perfect; I just have to have it perfect for fourteen more days so that I can get the Golden Watering Can. (Woo!) I'm Mayor Mira of Mysidia, you see, and I'm attempting to get my town in beautiful condition.

The current Public Works Project? Remodeling the Town Hall into a Zen Town Hall. It's going to be absolutely fantastic. Then I'm going to work on my room. (I'm looking for Rococo Furniture for my basement - if you have any, please contact me at once!)

***

Anyways.

I'm spending all my time in my little fantasy worlds. I'm thinking about David Tennant and how much time I'm going to spend on Tortimer's Isle in Animal Crossing instead of sleeping. I'm getting maybe five hours of sleep a night, if that, and I'm terrified of thinking during the day. If I think, I'll start daydreaming about Charlie.

I've got something wrong with me.

And it's probably very serious.

I move into my dorm again on Saturday. I'm going to have a new room mate, one that doesn't know my past (and I'm never going to tell her about Charlie, not if I can help it). I don't want to have a complete nervous breakdown in front of her. They seem to happen in the shower, so I really need to keep myself together. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it. It's going to be really, really difficult. 

The fact that the world is moving on and I'm not is something that I just can't tolerate. It's been a week since my nineteenth birthday. It's been six days since Charlie called and talked to me for maybe three minutes. Probably more like two. He said he'd call back, but he hasn't.

My life is falling apart. I'm letting myself fall apart. And I don't know what to do.

So I'm sorry, everyone. I'm sorry I haven't been posting. I haven't felt like posting. I don't want to post misery and depression, but that's all that's been in my life lately. Maybe once I start back to college, I'll have different stories to tell: stories of the people that I saw on campus, or what I did with my life that week. (Although I doubt that.)

I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry.

I feel...so empty.

I suppose I need to stop being depressed. But I can't help it.

For whatever reason, my old blog got thirty-seven page views yesterday. I haven't written on it in nearly three months, and yet it still gets more daily views than this blog does.

I went back and read through the comments on my last post on there. And I started crying again. Because everything came back to me, how awful that day was.

How awful every day still is.

I know I've got to "pick myself up" and "get over this," but how do I do that when I can't get any closure? My mind works in only one way: logic. And there was nothing logical about this.

I don't know how I'm going to survive at college. What happens if I wake up with a screaming nightmare while I'm there? (Here's what happens: I dream about Charlie, and something in the dream is so real, so vivid, that it seems like it's happening all over again, only from a much closer perspective, e.g., us in bed together and he spills the news. And then I wake up screaming, and I start sobbing, and I can't stop for about an hour or two.) What will my room mate think? What will the rest of the hall think? (Heck, I might even reach the third floor with this. [I live on the fourth.])

I've spent so much money attempting to get away from this. I've worked myself half to death to keep from thinking about him (it doesn't work). I've tried writing. I've tried reading. I've tried burning every single stupid picture of him that I own (that doesn't work, either). I've tried forgetting (that certainly doesn't work). I keep myself up so late at night that I fall asleep utterly exhausted, and I'm unable to dream. 

I don't dream about anything good any more, and if I somehow manage to, it's very rare and far-between. Usually, it's "nightmares" about Charlie. Oh, they're wonderful while I'm dreaming them, but when I wake up, they become nightmares that twist in my heart and make me feel sick.

When I wake up in the morning, I see the little "I'm Happy!" note that my friend Hunter wrote for me. I've stuck it on the footboard of my bed. I see it whenever I sit up in the morning. But I'm never happy.

I'm rarely happy.

I know it's bad to be this miserable. I know I shouldn't have placed all my love on this one guy, who swore up and down that he loved me, and he showed me. He told me that he wanted me near him, that he didn't want to lose me, that "you are the only thing keeping me sane during this." He was proud that I was standing near him. He told me that I was worth waiting for, and I told him I'd wait for him. And then that letter came and literally went back on everything he ever told me.

So yeah. 

No wonder I'm screwed up.

It's getting harder to put on a brave face and go to work (where I have to smile at customers, even if they're being dumb). It's getting harder to keep my feelings from my family. Hunter already knows that I'm quickly sinking into a deep pool of depression. And sometimes I don't know if I'll be able to float. Sometimes I don't want to float.

My birthday is on Monday. And all I'm going to be doing on that day is thinking about him, and how he made my last birthday beyond wonderful. (He gave me an out-of-this-world, absolutely knock-your-socks-off, beyond-passionate kiss on the bridge, under the meteor shower, on my birthday last year. It was the most amazing thing I've ever experienced. And now look at me. I barely have the strength to get out of bed in the morning.)

And now I'm sobbing again.

I suppose I need to get some sleep. (I'm scared of sleeping. Is that a bad thing? I'm terrified of my dreams. If I even start dreaming, no matter which way it's going, I try and force myself to wake up. I don't want to dream at all, because I know most of them will turn out to be about him.)

This has been another sleepless, depressed rant. And I truly apologize for that. I know this isn't what you guys want to hear from me. You want to hear funny stories about the idiots at my work, and you want to read about my packing-for-college series. Instead, all I'm doing is creating long and depressing posts about how black my life is. (And I don't even have the right to do this. My life isn't all that bad, all things considered. Sure, my heart's been shattered beyond repair, but hey - at least I'm not dying of cancer or watching a close friend die...Oh, wait. I've seen that last one happen recently, to a friend of my parents'.)

I'll try to make happier posts.
I'll try.

No promises.