A week before the ball was going to drop all over the world people were already posting about how amazing their year was and how much their life had changed, they posted the pictures that they took through out the year and reflected on all the memories, some being bad but most of them being good (because that the only thing people want you to se, right?). As the year was counting down and I started to think back on my year and this year I wouldn't post talking about how amazing the year was and how I can't wait for what the new year has to hold.

This year when the clock hit midnight, going into the new year, there wasn't a celebration. There was a shot of whiskey and just a thought in the back of my mind asking myself "how did I make it to this new year", because if we are being honest here I didn't think I was going to make it out alive and couple of people thought the same thing. With the new year here I still feel like my life is in the 2018 but with almost a month into the new year it's time to close the painful door of 2018.

Here's my 2018 story

As you grow up there is so many times in your life that you never knew that it was you last time. Like the last time you swung on the swing set at your elementary school or the last time you walked off of the school bus and walk home. You never realize these were the last time you would do these thing, you didn't even look back at them and say goodbye.

That's how 2018 was for me, filled with a whole lot of last but this time I knew they were go to be the last. They were the last memories I will ever have with my mom standing by me.

This year was the last year she would brush my hair and braid it down my back. This year was the last year she would paint my nails by favorite color of blue. This year would be the last year she would watch me play my heart out on the tennis court. This year would be the last year we would drive together and talk about boys and the future. This was the last year we would sit on the couch and watch movies until we both fall asleep. This would be the last year I would sit with her at dinner table as a family and tell the stories from our day. (I will miss the three questions she would ask my brother and I, "how was your day, what did you learn, and did you tell anyone about God?"). This year would be the last time I saw her smile light up my world. This year was the first and last time she would watch me walk across a stage at graduation. This is the last year I would hear her say everything will be okay. This year would be the last year I heard her say she loved me. This year would be the last year I would make memories with my mom.

2018 was the year that I thought about all the memories that I wasn't going to have. Starting the moment, I got the call that would make my world fall apart, on February 12^th, 2018, every new memory that I made with my mom I held on to. With every new memory came a foreshadow of what would never come and as the illness took her more and more everyday it took the dreams that I had made for my mom and I with it. Dreams like my mom seeing me start college, seeing me graduate from college and starting my career, seeing me walk down the isle and starting my family. Every thing I had planned for my mom and I was just a dream that would never to come true. From all trips I had planned for us to go on to the song that I had picked out since I was 15 that my mom and I would dace to at my wedding, these were just things that would always stay in my dreams because since July 2, 2018 just a little past 1PM the only way I see her now is in my dreams.

After that day nothing seemed real anymore and it still doesn't, days come and go, the last 5 months of 2018 seem to have gone by without a trace what exactly happened in them. With starting college and moving to a new town sometimes it feels as if I ran away from the grief and some days it catches me and then others I am just out of it's reach, which seems okay even if it just for a day. There was a lot of sleepless nights, nights that I drowned the pillow with tears, mornings that seemed pointless to wake for, and the worst part is this is just the start of it. I'm barely just stepped into the cave of grief and I can already tell it gets darker from here.

2019 won't be a new leaf with big things happen, it won't even be a year of healing. It will be year on learning, learning to life with grief, and learning to live a new life and learning how to live without the person that made my life and taught me my life and learning the learn my life on my own, if that makes sense.

Cheers to the new year.