I am sad. I am having trouble with coming home to reality. It makes it worse that my kids are gone until Saturday morning.

I was sad and lonely enough, that I went and picked up the dog. If you know me, you may find that funny, since I am not a huge fan of my dog.

I miss my friends. I miss feeling that supported. Four days just wasn’t kong enough to hold me over. Maybe it was. I don’t know. Maybe I just need a few more days and I will be okay. Maybe I just need my kids. Possibly I need to start planning my next weekend getaway.

The thing is, I met all of my closest friends online, so it’s not as if I’m not good at this way of friendship. Normally it works out okay. Normally I deal with it just fine.

Four days straight of hugs and conversations in person, though,  reminds me what I am missing. When I come home and don’t get invited to see a new baby in the family. Because its not my family anymore. When I go pick up my dog from a friend watching her, and my friend doesn’t even care enough to ask how my trip was. Because I’m not really her friend anymore.

It all reminds me that I have the greatest support system and the greatest friends in the world, they just don’t happen to live anywhere near me.

It’s hard, that’s all. It’s hard to be home. I had a blast, an absolute blast, but tonight?  I’m sad and I miss my friends.

I woke up this morning in a fog. Part of it is that I’ve not been sleeping. Last night I actually slept all night. For possibly the first time in weeks. I’m not sure why it means I woke up more tired, but I did. I’ve had coffee and it’s 10:30am and I still could just sleep. For a week. Please and thank you.

Part of it is me. My head. I’m just in a funk today. I haven’t managed to shake it yet. I’m not depressed. Not really. Maybe not yet. But it’s there. I feel it. Hanging out. Trying to get cozy and comfy. I’m trying to shake it off, but so far no go. I feel uber-sensitive. I feel like I shouldn’t even talk to my best friends, because I’m likely to say something stupid. Likely to be too needy and god knows none of them need that right now. That nothing I say is going to be worthwhile. See: questioning everything.

It’s been a few decent weeks. A few weeks of sun. Of weekend trips out of town. Of mini-golf with Morgan, kite flying with Bailey and finding polly-pollys with Harrison. Weeks of watermelon and ice cream. Weeks of my head being less crazy.

The depression though? Sucks. I wish I could turn it off. I wish it wasn’t here, as a constant reminder that I’m not strong enough. Sometimes I think it’s just me. That I’m too much of a drama queen. That I’m getting caught up in the crazy in my own head. But hey, that’s part of it too.

I get up every single day and do everything I need to do. Without fail. I work. I take care of my kids. I play Frisbee with my dog. My house is mostly clean. My bills get paid on time. Laundry gets done. Maybe not put away, but whatever. It’s there and clean and folded.

It never goes away though. Never fully. I have great days, great hours, great moments. Then it’s back. Making me sad and lonely and wanting to curl up in a ball and sleep. Of course, when I’m like this, I stop being able to sleep, which makes it worse.

When I feel like this, I question everything I say. Or do. For fear of seeming crazy. Or unstable. Which you all may think, I have no idea. I’m not, I promise. I’m just a person whose life has changed drastically. I’m still flailing around in the water, so to speak. I haven’t learned to swim yet. Maybe I need floaties?

I start apologizing for everything. I said in someones comments this morning, that I apologize for apologizing for something that I only thought. My friend Liz is constantly telling me that I don’t need to say I’m sorry for things I NEVER EVEN SAID. That no one can read my thoughts.

I’m a really awesome friend, I assure you.

My best friends. Man they are amazing. They won’t let me go. They hold me up, let me cry, hold my hand and let me say everything that is in my head no matter how crazy it is.  They make jokes, help me remember to breath and distract me. Then one of them carefully re-applies the duct tape that had slipped off.

I try. I try so dam hard. But it comes back. No matter what I do, it always comes back. It’s never enough.

Maybe if you weren’t so depressed and negative all the time you’d have “real life” friends. She didn’t need to add the quotes in there for me to get that, I know she meant it by the way she said it. Real life, not Internet people. Words full of anger. Words full of hurt. More meaning behind them, then anything she has said to me in a year. This friend of mine. Supposed friend, I should say. This person who is supposed to know me. Supposed to be my friend for life. This woman who I’ve known since pre-school, isn’t really my friend anymore.

I am too negative for her. I am too depressed for her. She, like my soon to be ex-husband, wishes I could be that woman who I was before. Before miscarriages. Before depression. Before separation. Before.

The people who were supposed to be there for me forever, just want me to be someone I’m not. They want me to fake it. To pretend I am okay.

I can’t. It hurts to think that I am not enough for anyone. That I am too much to deal with. That I’m very much alone. That the people, the friends I’ve known forever, the ones I considered family, don’t really want to know me anymore. If I think about it too long, it hurts to breath. It’s more than I can comprehend.

I’m not that girl anymore, the girl she wants me to be. She no longer exists. That girl I once was is gone. In her place is a woman who is stronger than she believes she is. (Or so my best friends keep telling me. ahem.) A woman who does everything for anyone. A woman who continues to get out of bed, no matter how much she doesn’t want too. That woman is me. That girl? Isn’t.

The truth is, it’s not just her. I’ve lost most of my supposed friends in the past year. I feel like I’ve lost some readers/some friends because of what I post. I get it, I’m depressing. I’m no fun to read. It’s okay. I’ve pushed some people away I think, because I don’t have enough in me to give most day. I’m doing the best I can. My best just may not be good enough.

Real life friends. Shit. My real life friends don’t actually want to know me. Real life. Like the friends I’ve made online aren’t real. Whatever.

I don’t have to see people every day, for them to be true friends. If I’ve learned anything in the past year, it would be that. True friends don’t fit in some tiny little box. At least not in my world.

In her world? I guess they do. I guess I’ve fallen out of that box. It’s killing me. But I can’t change it. I don’t even want to change it. However, it does make me unbelievably sad.

Want to know the truth? Without the friends I’ve made online, I’d have no friends. None. In some ways, that terrifies me. In other ways, I’m comforted by the fact that I do have the greatest friends known to man. The greatest, most caring, most amazing friends I could ever hope for. Some of them…some of you are better friends than I’ve ever had. Truly.

Is it different? Yes. Is different always bad? No.

I have friends who I can text/email/IM/call any time of day. I have friends who check in on me if they haven’t seen me around. I have two of the best friends in the world.Friends who have held me together the past few months. I don’t know that I could ever repay them for it.

What I know is this: tomorrow morning I’m flying to visit friends. Amazing friends. Friends that I met online. Friends who are okay with me, as I am. Friends who love me and support me and hold my hand whenever I need it.

This is what true friendship is.

I sit around a lot. I play a ton of Bejeweled. I watch a ton of TV. I turned back on my Netflix account, just to have new movies to watch. Basically, I don’t know what to do without them. I don’t know what to do with myself when my kids are with their dad. I don’t know who I am without them.

I’ve spent my entire life with someone. First my parents and siblings. With two little brothers, I was never alone as a child. My mom’s best friend was a single mom, with kids the same age as us. James and Meredith practically lived with us half the time. Everything we did as kids, they and their mother were invited. Vacations, BBQs, dinners out, trips to the park. Everything was done by committee. Everything was fairly split between five children. I was never alone. Even though I’m the only girl in my family, I had two beds in my room. One for me and one for Meredith. That’s how much time we spent together.

I went to the college that Logan and my friends went too. Part of me wanted to go away, to go to Santa Cruz. I had applied and I did get in. But the reality was, it seemed too scary. I didn’t know what I wanted to study and I knew I’d possibly not make it a semester alone before coming home. So I didn’t even bother.

I married young. I have spent the last 11 years in a give and take relationship. Decisions were made together. Mostly at least. We had kids young. It was just the thing that came naturally for us. Everything since has been as a family.

Movie nights, game nights, vacations, shopping for birthday gifts, sharing cleaning and child wrangling, fighting over who has to freaking pick already which restaurant we are going to. You know, life. Life as a family.

Now, it’s just me. I do not know how to be alone. I am nearly thirty years old and I’ve never been alone. Now I am. Half of the time. It sucks. I hate it. I’m past the point of it making me completely panicked, which is a good thing. I take myself to movies on the weekends when I don’t have the kids. I clean the house. I do the laundry. I run as many errands as I can handle. I don’t sit at home and cry all weekend. I am improving. On the weekends and nights I have them, I give in too easily. I try to make it as fun as possible. I’m working on it, but it’s hard not too, because I don’t have them all the time. I know that Logan is fighting with the same thing. We luckily keep them on the exact same schedule, so that’s something at least.

But it’s hard. Hard to know who I am without them. I am not sure I want to know who I am without them. In fact, I know at this moment, that I don’t. I know that sounds bad. I’m sure it’s not very progressive or whatever.

I don’t care though. Not yet. Right now, I just wait. I wait for my heart, my three little loves to come home to me.

Say you meet a great guy in high school. He quickly becomes one of your best friends and your boyfriend, all at once. You have fun together, you can tell him anything. A few years go by. Mostly fun times, some crappy ones. But your constant is each other. Always, you have each other. You get engaged and get married all in your first year of college. You lose a friend to suicide, gain a spouse and a condo, all in one very crazy year.

A few years after that, you have your first baby; a ridiculously adorable little girl. You work your ass off. Nine, ten, sometimes twelve or fourteen hour days. To make a better life for your family. You finish college, go on vacations. You celebrate holidays, watch your baby girl grow. You do this together.

Everything is better because you have that person. The person you joke with in tense times. The person who makes you happy. The person who lets you cry and stress out. You have inside jokes, you play air hockey, you stay up after your daughter goes to bed, just laughing and watching TV. You start to plan farther ahead in life. You dream out your life together.

One day, a couple years later, you have another, ridiculously adorable little girl. You’re happy; happy with your life, happy with your spouse, happy with your crazy baby girls. You upgrade your life a bit: sell your condo and buy a house, buy new cars. Nothing you can’t handle. None of that really matters though. What matters are that man and little girls you come home too every night. Everything you do, is to make a better life for them.

You start to get burned out on the hours of work. You see your husband and girls very little and you literally can watch them age before your eyes. You miss out on the small things. Things like your baby’s first steps. The first time your oldest rides a tricycle without training wheels. The first time your four year old uses crap correctly in a sentence. The time your baby “warshes” your camera in the toilet. (What? It’s not all good stuff.) You start to live for your vacation time.

One day, your husband comes to you and says that he has a dream of something better. A better life. A great career for him, less of one for you. A move halfway across the country. You look at this man, this man you adore, your best friend and you say hell no. You see the hurt in his eyes. You look around and you think about the life you are living. The crazy schedules, the hours spent in an office of a high rise, the outrageous amount of money you are about to plop down for private kindergarten, what you are missing out on and you say yes. Let’s do it. You move.

Then life gets a little tricky. Bad things happen. Loss, depression, crappy times. You tell yourself it will get better. You will get better. Things will be okay, because you have him, your love, your best friend, your constant. You get a unexpected surprise in the form an amazing baby boy. Unexpected, but none the less, adored. You start to think, hey maybe somehow this will work; this move, this dream, this new life.

One day you wake up to find that you lost everything while you weren’t looking. That you are loosing your husband and it’s too late to change it. That you maybe lost him years ago, even though he’s been next to you that whole time. Somehow you blinked and missed it. The sad part is, you are not just loosing a spouse. You are loosing your very best friend in this world. You have lost that life you thought you had. The happy home, the happy family, the dream. In one fell swoop, your life, the one you helped build? Is gone. Pieces of it are still there, but it’s different. Broken. Shattered even. You then start to pick up the pieces, because in reality, life moves on. It’s the only thing that can be done.

But inside? You are still shattered. You’ve lost. The promise of forever is gone. The dreams of one more baby, watching your kids grow together, vacations around the world, renewing vows at twenty years, buying an RV and traveling the US after the kids go to college? Dreams that no longer exist.

That life is gone. What’s left now is heartache. Pain. Shattered dreams. Unknowing. And three little kids who still have to be raised.

On March 3rd, 11 years ago, we said forever. We stood together in front of our friends and family and together, we promised forever. 11 years. That was our forever.

Forever? I suppose it’s just something that people say. Just a word we throw out there. Something we think we mean, until we don’t.

Forever.