Day 39: From The Beginning...

After losing my husband and my baby to death, I was praying to God daily, even though I was disappointed in God.
Playing the blame game is also one of the things you do while grieving.
Every day I was working on myself and healing myself by reading the bible and  lots of different books and listening to podcasts.
While hiking/walking daily for hours on end.
I was renting out my studio while crashing at friends homes.
I was also back to the drawing board with dating.
I am a horrible dater.
Kind of like the lady out of the movie Fatal Attraction (Glenn Close was the actress her name i think).
Remember when she boiled a bunny alive to get the attention of her lover?
I am very intense with dating and pretty much anything in life for that matter.
When I meet a guy, I immediately wonder if he's The One.
I want to move in with him the next day and I really got no patience.
Instant gratification is a big one in my book.
I want it all or nothing.
Dating became a full time job for me.
I did not want to be alone anymore.
I knew there was a special guy for me out there.
Gosh I went on morning breakfast dates, coffee dates, lunch dates, dinner dates etc.
I was gonna weed them out and quick.
Finally I started looking a bit further from my zip code 90210.
I started looking in San Diego on POF the dating website.
I stumbled upon this handsome looking guy, with the most gorgeous blue eyes.
His profession said Pilot.
He was tall, skinny, 3 years younger than me and a typical all American guy.
I favorited him.
He favorited me.
.....To Be Continued......

Day 38: From The Beginning....

Before I met my now amazing husband, I had to go through one more nightmare.

I had met him on a dating site and he was super duper religious.

I was born and raised Protestant, so yes I believe and I had no problem with him being so religious.

But of course like everything in life, to much of anything is never a good thing.

He was very judgmental and yes we all are to a certain extend.

I mean, lets be real, we all judge ourselves the minute we wake up and look at ourselves in the mirror,  saying; "oh gosh my hair looks horrible today, or I really look fat today etc etc.

So yes we judge ourselves and others because we are still human and we all have flaws.

He took his religion to a whole other level.

Waking up daily, starting of reading the bible and praying, listening to religious music and pretty much all day carrying the bible with him wherever he went.

He was a pilot and lived in Vegas.

I lived in Beverly Hills.

I pretty much moved in with him, even though that was against his beliefs.

We got pregnant and of course we were planning for eventually marriage etc.

He had a hard time making his own decisions.

Typical mommy's boy.

And oh my Lord, his family was overly judgmental.

I know, I know, they say that religious people usually are the biggest sinners.

Yes I am stereo typing, but stereo types are based on facts and who doesn't believe in facts?

One day he came back home from a flying trip and he had gotten a stomach bug from another pilot from the road.

He was so sick and crying like a little baby.

One night he had actually pooped in the bed.

Unfortunately he had given me that same stomach virus and for me that was dangerous because I was pregnant.

Needless to say, I lost my baby.

After this horrible experience we broke up.

To Be Continued.......

Day 37: From The Beginning....

Of course I had to do something to make money and be able to live my life the way I wanted to live my life.

I gotta say that after everything I had been through, material things didn't impress me that much anymore.

I just wanted to live a simple life.

Yes, believe it or not that is possible in Beverly Hills 90210.

As I mentioned earlier in my story, I had moved to a studio on the same street Oakhurst Drive.

1 block away from The Four Seasons Hotel on Doheny Drive in Beverly Hills.

I really enjoyed my studio and just walked a lot during the day and read books.

I decided to AirBnB my studio as a host.

This means that I started to rent out my studio on a website called AirBnB, this is like a bed and breakfast site for all over the world.

The only dilemma was that I obviously needed to leave my studio whenever guests came over to stay in my studio.

The money was great and I had a lot of friends who were letting me crash on their couch or use their guest bedroom.

I was hoping and praying that eventually I would meet my 2nd soulmate and I would live with him while I was renting out my studio.

This is exactly what happened.

Before I met my 2nd soulmate I had to weed out a lot of bad guys, or how I like to say, I had to kiss some frogs to meet my Prince Charming.

But nothing good in life comes easy.

I really didn't want to live my life alone as a widow, so eventually I signed up for online dating sites.

And gosh, it wasn't an easy road.

I met some weird, weird ducks.

One guy, who didn't look like his pictures at all.

Another guy had a glass eye, and I didn't know where or how to look him in the eye because his one eye was just staring at me the whole time.

There was a guy who liked to play mental games.

Looking back now I know, that he was the one with the mental issues.

Every time when I got my hopes up, I found out that nobody was and would ever be like Erik.

Until one day.

To Be Continued........

Day 36: From The Beginning....

Yes I started reading books on Death because I had so many questions.

Where did Erik go? Did he feel any pain?

Where is he now? Does he have any emotions?

Can he see/hear me?

Of course, now I do have some of the answers.

But Death is like religion and politics, there are no answers.

I had to eventually just let it go.

Erik used to say: "It is what it is"

That's exactly what I started to use as my life moto.

Some things in life you can talk about till you're blue in the face but that won't change anything.

As you probably remember from earlier in my story I mentioned that I had a full time job at a gorgeous salon in Beverly Hills as a Front Desk Manager.

I did like my job but because I couldn't forget that I found out about Erik's death over there I had a very hard time going back there.

I did try several times but it always ended up in a cry fest.

Everyone there of course knew what had happened and they treated me so sweet and nice but I always felt like a victim over there and kind of like they were looking at me like: 'awww poor Anna"

It wasn't their fault, it was just all in my head.

Mentally and physically I just felt disabled to work.

I know this sounds so weak.

I have never been strong mentally.

I have never been able to control my emotions.

Kind of like a little kid, who gives into any feeling she gets and acts on it.

That's why I really needed to work on myself and be alone and find myself and read.

This is exactly what I did.

I hiked daily for exercise and to just get the endorphins going.

I didn't have a car because I sold Erik's work van.

I needed the money and couldn't drive that big van anyways.

So, daily I just stepped out of my studio in Beverly Hills and started walking.

Sometimes 2 hrs, sometimes more but at least 1 hr a day.

The walks really helped me clear my head.

I listened to free podcasts or music depending on my mood.

......To Be Continued.....

Day 35: From The Beginning....

So I never told you guys & gals what I did with the ashes of my late hubby.
I had bought a beautiful urn and kept the urn near me in my home.
The other half of the ashes as promised I sent to his daughters in NY and I split my share with Erik's sister.
Yeah death doesn't sound like a bed of roses.
It was such a horrible experience.
People always talk about Karma but I don't know if I believe in that because please explain to me, how bad of a human must I have been to deserve a dead husband so young in life?
Or you think it was his Karma?
But that doesn't make sense either because he doesn't feel anything anymore so what punishment is that?
I don't know, there are so many questions surrounding death, but obviously as we all know, nobody has come back from the dead and told us just yet.
And no I am not talking about people who have been clinically dead because you can not dismiss the fact that hallucinations were not a big part of that.
You know there was a guy once who studied religion and he had so many questions.
Would you like to know where that guy is today?
In a mental institute.
Because sometimes there are no answers.
It is all about what you believe personally and this is all partly based on your life experiences.
And what you have trained your brain to believe.
As we all know, your brain is like a muscle and you gotta train it daily.

So here I am, a young widow living in Beverly Hills.
Back to the drawing board.
What did I want with my life?
Where did I see myself?
Problem is that my biggest dream in life was to be madly in love and married.
So, now that was over, my question to myself was: "Is this it?" "Am I gonna die a widow?"
"Am I gonna be a spinster?"
Okay first off, I had to get to know me all over again.
I started my journey to self discovery by reading books on death (what, you thought I moved on that fast???)
.......To Be Continued......

Day 34: From The Beginning....

The five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with our loss.
Not everyone goes through all of them in a prescribed order.
Grief is as unique as we all are separately.
I vividly remember not wanting to wake up in the mornings because while I was sleeping I felt safe but when I was awake reality set in and it was all so hard to believe.
My landlord said one morning to me, while I was just roaming around crying in the yard: "Anna you can't continue crying and staying away from reality, because you won't make any friends like this being bitchy and miserable all the time, people don't know what has happened to you, it's not written on your forehead."
"So you better move on and put a smile on your face"
Also she said; "you can't bring him back"
She was so right, and I guess that's exactly what I needed.
I had to face some logistics as well.
I had a tiny bit of savings left and I had to move out of our place because I couldn't afford staying there by myself.
I did not want a roommate, I just needed to be by myself and working on myself.
I moved like 3 houses down into a studio.
Way cheaper and I loved it.
Let me let you in on another minor reality check.
Erik's ex-wife got a cool million dollars and I got zero but just lots of medical bills.
Erik and his ex-wife hated each other and that's an understatement.
But I never fought for money or over money.
I don't like confrontation and I really felt that it was fair for all of that to go to his kids.
Erik tried to switch his life insurance to me partly and the kids the other part.
But the account holder was his ex-wife.
She fought him for a lot of money throughout his lifetime and I really believe that added to his stress and you know what they say: "stress kills".
He used to be obese and he tried every diet in the book, and diet pills and personal trainers but to no avail.
I still believe his gastric bypass surgery and lap band and some plastic surgery was all a part of his health problems.
Would you believe that all the patients who were part of that same study/surgery he was a part of in NY Presbyterian hospital passed away?
......To Be Continued.....

Day 33: From The Beginning.....

Yes looking back I still can not believe that I actually went through this and still came out alive & kicking.
What I mean by this is that it was very very hard and I somehow managed to get through this dark time without meds and/or a shrink.
I did take some over the counter sleeping pills from Holland but stopped very quickly with that because I am just not a fan of any meds for that matter.
Also I did see a shrink for a tiny bit but wasn't really seeing any results.
I remember she was a very pretty blonde lady and I always asked her about her day/life because it just feels selfish to only talk about me, but of course she couldn't disclose anything about herself because thats her job.
I'm always looking to make friends.

Okay here we go lets get back to the story.
I got my dead husband's ashes handed to me in a see through plastic bag and it was heavy.
Of course I had to stick my hand in the bag and it just felt weird, with hard pieces in there like burned ashes.
I remember crying like a baby.
Things were getting so real and definite.
I know, I know...Duh Death is real but in my naive mind now there was no body for Erik anymore.
Which of course is reality but I secretly hoped that he would come back.
We left the funeral home and Miranda drove my mom and I and Erik's ashes to Malibu to walk on the beach and just cry and maybe spread the ashes in the ocean.
I wasn't ready to let go of my ashes.
We walked and I cried and cried and cried.
Those tears did not end for a long time.
You would think I'm out of tears by now. But no such luck. Now I just cry over silly stuff because honestly I have nothing to cry about in my life right now.
Oh how much I just want to talk about my life right now at this very moment because its so much easier and happier to talk about but I gotta finish the story first.
So after our long walk on the beach, Miranda dropped my mom and I off at home in Beverly Hills.
That night of course I slept with my dead husband's ashes and plenty nights after.
......To Be Continued......