A little background

I plan to use this blog as a way to get my feelings out as I struggle to deal with the cards life has dealt me recently.

It has been 3 weeks since the day that changed my life forever. I still am in denial about the whole situation. I cannot believe that my sister is gone. I have had a really difficult time at night. I am not tired, I cannot sleep, and I lay here and all I do is think about all the things that I want to say to my sister, but never will. I am the only one in my family who has not been back to visit her since the funeral. I want so badly to have the strength to go, but I cannot find it within me. I have started to return to my "normal" life, although nothing will ever feel normal again. I have lost my sister and there is nothing right with the world. I am surrounded with people who love and care about me, but I still feel all alone. I sit here and think about what a beautiful person Tami was and I struggle to understand why her time was cut short. I know logically and medically why, but spiritually I struggle to see the reasoning behind taking such a beautiful and energetic girl.

Tami was my younger sister, but in many ways I will spend the rest of my life looking up to her. Growing up, I was always the cautious, concerned, play-it-safe daughter. I spent a lot of high school trying to fit in, and worried about what people thought. If there were anybody any more opposite than that it was Tami. I was always jealous at how quickly she was able to make friends, and how she lived life how she wanted and for herself. Tami switched high schools after her sophomore year and she was not only able to make a huge group of new friends, but also able to stay close with her old friends. She was infectious; it was impossible to meet her and not smile. She had such a big heart and she was so caring. She was always the type of person to laugh so hard she would cry and not care a single bit about who was around or what they thought. She always had a fearless attitude to her as well, and again, I envy that. I am a typical 1st born, a worrier and not much of a risk taker. Tami was the girl who would be the first one to dive in head first, or the one to try something new without hesitation.

Tami, like myself, cared immensely for family. She was very protective, but in a secretive kind of way. She would be the first in the family to rip on you for doing something stupid, or wrong, but if somebody who was not family tried to do the same to one of us, she would be right there to stick up for us. In a way, she was sort of like an older sister in that sense. I will never forget the story that my mom tells about Tami as a little girl running home for lunch with all of her toys wrapped up in her arms. She was running from the end of the cul-de-sac to our house and when she tripped over uneven sidewalk and it looked like her toys would be flung out onto the pavement to suffer the wrath of her juvenile lack of balance Tami had another plan in mind. She would cling tight to her toys saving them from a rocky demise, and instead face the fall, literally. She fell right on her nose, and for weeks had a huge scab from where she skinned her nose. Metaphorically, each of us were like those toys to her. She would rather herself get hurt than have any one of us feel any kind of pain. She was such a wonderful and loving person.

I am hoping that through this blog I can find a way to get through this difficult time in my life. I know that nothing will ever change this, and I cannot go back and do things differently, but I still wish that I could. I go to sleep every night praying that when I wake up in the morning that it will all be over and she will be there smiling. I want so badly for her to be here again...I miss her so much every single minute of every single day.