I don't think I ever felt so strong while feeling so incredibly vulnerable. I tried to hold back the tears behind a forced smile. I couldn't allow myself to break down. I had to be strong for him. He needed me. They needed me. I needed to be their rock. Being away from my oldest son tore at my heart, but I knew I was where I needed to be. I knew he was safe with my parents. Seeing my youngest in an incubator cage hooked up to wires and tubes made me sick. I did everything I could to keep him safe. I was supposed to provide him with a warm and safe place to grow without worries for 9 months, but my body wouldn't let me. My body failed me and it almost failed him. I honestly try not to think about it. Whenever I picture it, I get nauseous and start to cry. It took me days before I could really talk about it. The pain. The blood. The lights. Watching the nurses rush to prep themselves and me for surgery. Being strapped down. Doctors and nurses calling out directions in loud and rushed tones. The pain. Wishing they would just put me under. Wishing it was over. Then came the reassurance from a nurse's comforting hand and I was out. The pain was gone. Or, at least I thought it was. Suddenly, I felt everything again. The cold table underneath me. The straps on my arms and legs. The doctor pushing on my stomach. The gas mask against my face. I could hear those rushed conversations and the beeping of the alarms. I could hear and feel everything but I couldn't move. I couldn't talk. They were about to cut me open and I could feel everything and I couldn't let them know. I was told I stayed pretty calm as I told the nurse it was time. I don't remember calm. I remember panic and pain. I could see the fear in my husband's eyes. The worry that he may never see his wife again or meet his son. I could hear the hesitation in his voice when he was clarifying my wish of “baby comes first. If it comes down to it, save the baby first.” I said this during our first pregnancy as well, and he agreed, but being in the situation where he might actually need to make that decision was a different story, one he was having a difficult time wrapping his head around. He tried to stay calm and not let me see him worry. He went through the checklist. “You want to be cremated, right?” “Yes, and the baby comes first.” “And allow family and friends to say goodbye first?” “Yes, and the baby comes first.” “And then planted with a tree?” “Yes, and Milo comes first.” He looked at me in a way I could never put words to. It was as if by agreeing to my request out loud he was damning me to death, that he was closing the book to my life himself. He eyes screamed while his voice calmly agreed, “and Milo comes first.” His green eyes sparkling from the tears he was trying to hold back. Swollen and red around the edges. Stinging. With a sudden jerk, I hear the words “here we go” as the nurses roll my bed out of the room. He walked with me until he was told he couldn't go any further and our hands pulled apart as I was wheeled in for surgery. The meds had seemed to be helping but part of me knew it wouldn't last. “What if as soon as these meds are done, it starts again?” The nurse reassured me that shouldn't be the case, but it was. Within a few hours after that last drop of magnesium, the pain started again in full force. Then came the blood. A lot of blood. The nurses seemed to stay calm, at least in front of us. But I knew. I knew there was no stopping it. I knew it was time. I needed to call my mom.

As someone who struggles with depression, the term one of those days has a whole different meaning to me. Today has been one of those days. It has been one of those days where I call it a win to have gotten out of bed. Where it was a Herculean effort to put one foot in front of the other and stay up and moving. When I wanted nothing more to lay down, pull a blanket up over my head, and not move for like a month. You can't do that in society. You definitely can't do that as a stay at home mom. Being a stay at home mom adds an element to depression I never knew before. On days when you can't even fathom taking care of the basic needs of yourself to keep functioning – you have to keep your kid(s) going. You managed to open your eyes – you deserve a medal. You sat up and considered getting out of bed. You deserve a parade to go with that medal. If you get up and out of bed, you get a party. If you get up and parent those days…you get it all. You won't care of course. All you want is to curl up, rock, maybe hum, under a blanket, listening to headphones, all alone. So you know, when you are feeling a little more up to it – medals, parades, and parties. Now add in a toddler who just wants to run, climb, dance, spin and play outside - then inside - outside - inside…you get the point. You get up and you manage to do all that - making sure your kid eats, dresses plays laughs and learns. You get all the accolades and celebrations in the land. Except here's the thing – you don't. I want to introduce you to the mind of a stay at home parent in the throes of depression and anxiety. There are days I wake up and every inch of me is screaming. Do you know what it's like to have a toddler dump all her blocks off the wagon, and use it for a skateboard? Exhausting. This kid never stops. Don't get me wrong, I'm lucky. I have a healthy, smart child with a love of life. It's awesome - and exhausting. Her mouth also never stops. “Mama Up. Mama shoes, out. In. Snack, please. Mama Doc. You ok?" You know what you want and aren't afraid to make it known. Mama doesn't want to watch Doc McStuffins for the 150th time - if Mama hears time for your checkup again, Mama is going to want to run into a wall. When you're fighting to just function, excessively cheerful kids shows DO NOT help. Outside. Yeah. When you are in the throes of depression, the last thing you generally like is nature. Let alone playing in a sandbox, and then blowing bubbles and let's not forget playing drag baby girl around the yard in her pool because she loves it and you love her, but you don't want to even be out here let alone running in a circle. No baby girl, Mama is feeding you lunch, but on a normal depression episode day she wouldn't be eating so please don't shove that cheese stick in her mouth, please don't no, no and now I am eating a cheese stick. Around this time, anxiety will show its ugly face. You will doubt everything you do, say, act. Are you being a bad mom, are you letting your mood affect your kid? Did you make sure they ate right and enough, as you have no desire to eat? Are you taking them out enough because you hate being out right now - or are you going out too much to compensate? Does she need quiet time right now, or do you? Did you play enough and teach enough and love enough and discipline enough....and...and...and... So it continues into the night. You will inevitably lay awake at night while anxiety reigns, making your mind constantly go from one worry to another, examining everything for what you did wrong. Once you finally go to sleep though, depression will take over and you will start the cycle again the next morning. It is rarely just one day. Depression episodes last a while, often with anxiety. Besties – isn't it sweet. So to other stay at home parents suffering from depression and anxiety you aren't imaging the suckiness we're stuck with. Your kid(s) are the best things in your life, but sometimes, you have to force the behavior whether or not that feeling is there. Take it easy on yourself. You love them, you would do anything for them and sometimes the disease that turns your entire life upside down wants to take that away from you. It won't. You have made it through this disease to have a life, a spouse and kids – which makes you damn strong. So keep opening your eyes every day and making it about that kid. It's important for them and you. There is NOTHING in your life before them that could have gotten you out of bed on a day like today. That is powerful. That is important. That is lifesaving. You are NOT alone. There are many others. Just know whether you get out of bed today, or just sit up – I am proud of you. The episode will eventually end. You won't have to pretend to have fun chasing your kids around and dancing. You will have fun. You will treasure it in a way that parents who don't suffer from depression will never understand. I do. So here is your medal. Whether you're ready for it or not.

Love; a connection between two souls who were destined to meet. This is the short story about two certain souls who met at dark times in their life but slowly transitioned from lovers to best friends. Brittney a newly 18 year old girl had just left an abusive relationship. She was constantly in fear and her mental health had gone down the drain. She decided to download a dating app just to try her luck not realizing she would make the connection of a lifetime. Brandon a young adult of just 20 years old had too also come out of an abusive relationship but had it slightly worse. He was mislabeled as an abuser by his ex and was wrongfully accused. He was living in fear of what this girl would do. So he too used this dating app not realizing he would also make the connection of a lifetime. Brittney and Brandon both connected with each other and soon met up in person and the connection between them was as powerful as the magic that spewed out of Harry Potter's wand in the battle between Harry and Voldemort. Brittney and Brandon talked and talk and they kept gaining new knowledge of the other person to the point where Brandon finally gained the courage to ask Brittney to be his girlfriend. Their love story blossomed and they slowly became each other's best friend. They laughed together and cried together. They pranked each other and tickled each other. They had good days and bad days but in the end they knew it was them against the problems that arrived and not them against each other. Love works in mysterious ways, there was no way that Brittney nor Brandon would have known they were going to find their soulmate but they did. They found light in each other in their darkest times. In the famous words of our favourite HeadMaster Albus Dumbledore; “Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, only if one remembers to turn on the light.” Love; the strong connection between two souls destined to meet.

Found an eighth grade and neighbourhood friend that I haven't meet in a long time. Ranoldie Love Morty that was her name and still is. She she was the only one who understood me and had the same interests (obsessions). She at the time was a homely red head at the time and had facial scarring about the left. My parents stopped me from seeing her because she was the problem. when she found me on imvu she asked for my Facebook. We fell in love. She kept her promise that she would be a medical examiner. I have to do the same with pleasure. Here she is on the left and I am on the right In an imvu pic. She stayed true to her looks I lie about my looks on imvu. Some friends come and go but she obviously stayed.(came back)

What if I start telling you a story about a family that had not laughed for two generations? Do you imagine them living in a place as bleak and gloomy as if from the pages of King's books? The father of the family is a good Catholic who eats no meat on Fridays and marries enamoured couples on rare Sundays beneath a silver moon. His wife is a woman of honesty and reputation who eats bananas with fork and knife each morning and does her best to grow the plum-shaped tomatoes in the garden. Don't be funny! Jokes are such nonsense! Just a flow of words that makes senseless noise. A joke is a mere uproar of rushing water, confessing once again to being simply a tribute to our ego, an exercise of ignorance and overstatement in a constant run for attention. What I am looking for, though, is not attention, but the best beginning of the perfect joke. What should it be about? A married couple doing household chores and monkeying around? God's twitter account? A guy who walks into a bar? The images that could be listed in this connection are legion. I like good jokes: jokes that puzzle you to brain numbness; jokes that bring blush on your cheeks with coarse allusions; spontaneous, impromptu expressions that make everyone laugh, and unique wordplays that so often lose their beauty in translation. Hardly will you be lucky enough to meet a serious office worker in a well-tailored black suit with an umbrella heading for a 6.30 train wearing different socks. What is even less possible, is that this seemingly mundane story through a fine art of narrating will be made into a joke about many bodies being crammed like sardines on the way to work. Jokes and laughter return us to the springtime of our lives, the very nature of them lying deeper than I could ever imagine. Now, in my adulthood, I think of my father more often – a good Catholic who loved his simple wife, whose biggest ambition and pride was her small and cozy garden. Now I clearly see things that were invisible to me before: a real-life hell of poverty, injustice and hard life is out there, and there is another hell we are told about by the church doctrine. The perception of humour as a gateway and release from the former and as a means to make good friends in the latter fascinates me. The privileges people have in low life are so few, and necessity has no pity whatsoever for the poor. In my story, humour and life's drama are mingled together so closely! You have never imagined God as a funny man, right? In the wake of current proneness to atheism, you are probably right in believing in his non-existence. I, in my turn, know by heart from my father how the opening chapter goes: In the beginning was a Word, and the Word was with God. This Word of his was not just one. It was muttering under his nose, sighing, laughing loudly – he was looking for the perfect beginning, the same way I am now. Forget about the story I told in the beginning, as there is no man in the world who never laughed. What I take great pride in is that I can, and definitely will, pass on to the future generations the jokes my father used to tell so often. I now find it the right time to share the one I like most; it goes as follows: How do you make holy water? – Boil the hell out of it! I am fully confident now that all that is kind in the world, as well as true friendship and good intentions, starts exactly with this simplicity. Boil the hell out of everything and joke!