This painting says it all!

this is a copy of an album cover to which i was commissioned to paint last year...i will say it was one that i truly enjoyed doing and i realized that the reason i enjoyed it so much was.. first it was just a cool piece with neat colors but the second reason was that this so vividly showed how i had been feeling for the past 14 years just after your diagnosis. i have to say though that as the years went by my fears accelerated and felt more desperate. after you went away this was what was left...this feeling.....it just visually explains it so well. in case anyone is wondering it is "King Krimson".......

Sometime in 1996 when we both worked at Saddler's Row, I can remember all of the people who used to come into the shop and we would talk about mostly horses, the people who owned those horses or anything relating to the "horsey world". I believe it was right after you had come back from working for one of the trainers in Florida. You had so looked forward to being a part of the caravan going to learn, groom, have the time of your life....just what i thought would have been a good experience. Just before you went to Florida we had taken you to the doctor at the recommendation of a friend who thought you may be on the verge of an eating disorder. When we went to see a specialist at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, IL he had said that you didn't necessarily have an eating disorder, but you were definitely "at risk". Okay, so you ended up going and the plan was to be gone a total of 6 weeks. I remember how once you got there you were terribly unhappy....you hated everything about being there...i remember being puzzled as to why, but in any event after 3 weeks into it, chel, dale and i packed up and came to visit you....you were so ecstatic to see us and so happy to be with chel,(which was very out of character) but we just went with it and had a good time just being with you.....you had lost some weight in the few weeks that i hadn't seen you... i remember the time we went to the grocery store to buy you some food for your trailer and we were both walking through the aisle with the frozen things, there was a mirror and i happened to look into it, I said to you,"monica, you look like one of those anorexic girls"...you just looked so thin to me. i had no clue what was in store for all of us... i was kind of in a daze and also in a state of...denial. it lasted longer than it should have, but i just couldn't wrap my brain around any of it.

the morning before we were to leave the trainer you were working for had a secret meeting with dad and i pleading with us to take you home, that she thought you were in big trouble....and boy was she right! she explained to us that she had a friend who had suffered from an eating disorder and she was in really bad shape.

We did take you home with us that day. I remember feeling so happy that we were able to take you home to protect you and get you some help. I wish it could have been that easy.......when i took you back to the same doctor in PR, he then told us that indeed you did have an eating disorder. i remember thinking, "that's odd it all happened in 3 weeks????

so when i had gone back to work the following week i was at saddlers row and was walking down the hall to the back room where i worked at receiving merchandise. The accountant at the time yelled to me from her office and said, "oh, i saw monica the other day riding and she looked awfully thin to me". well this was a trigger for me and i just broke down at that point. i couldn't stop crying, it was terrible, because the store got busy and they needed me to help some customers, but it was so difficult to compose myself. i have only had this happen to me a few time in my life....i am more of a silent griever, sad person, crier......i hate to cry in front of people....just hate it. I don't remember if i ever told you that story....i really don't remember a lot of the past, that's why i really want to write all of these memories down to document them. it's funny too when i write these things it spurs other memories and stories...anyways, going to the barn now with chelsey to ride greta....im so glad that chel has that outlet...you would be so proud of her.......................

miss you......m

Just some ramblings....

just in case you are wondering in my last post why the random pictures of Monica's diamond with the crystal horse are at the top of the blog....it's because i couldn't figure out how to make them appear on the bottom of the page. it would have made much more sense for them to be at the bottom...i will have to ask someone or just keep playing with it. i wish i had the know how, i have so many questions about this blogging business....i just feel so "out there" not sure how to let people know i'm here....since it has been almost 2 years since Monica wrote on this blog, i know she had so many people interested in her food stuff and she had so many blogs she followed, i wonder sometimes what those bloggers thought when she never returned to write more...did they wonder what happened to her or did they figure it out. I look at her Facebook periodically to see if anyone has written to her (and they do on occasion) and one person said that they had found out about her death and without knowing the details had "suspected" that her eating disorder had something to do with her demise.

As I continue to write my book, I am going to continue writing here on her blog, writing about different experiences we have lived through. I am going to jump around back and forth and write about whatever i feel at the moment. There are 14 years of experience, ups and downs, happy times and horrible times....i think about memories every day of my crazy life, they just keep playing in my head over and over again. I say my crazy life not because i myself consider myself crazy, but i have so many hobbies, friends, busy schedule, working 5 days a week, it's overwhelming sometimes.

I used to feel overwhemed when Monica was here too, but in a different way. I always felt anxious, always felt worry, always felt so much the intense desire for her to be "okay". To this day i feel that same intense desire for her to be here and to be "okay".....it's so hard to describe in words......

the innocense of a child is so precious and sweet...this is how both my girls were for so many years as young children. we lived in a bubble of a world, happy, successful, lived in warm, loving homes next to one another...i always felt lucky that my family was healthy and we were able to do things that others might not have been able to. Im talking mainly about the ability to enter into the horsey world. Riding was the girls life for so many years beginning at the ages of 11 and to this day is still a huge part of chelsey's life. the bond between horse and girl is so strong....we used to horse show many weekends out of the year and it became so much a part of our lives...we met so many very wonderful people, who we actually still keep in contact with, thanks to Facebook, of course.
to be continued...i am struggling to stay awake...this kind of feels like when i used to journal...i think this is going to be a really good thing!

i miss you so much.....m

Now I get what you mean, Monica......

i think i get it, the obsession about what to write in the blog, I think about it while commuting back and forth from work, or in the bath. I think about it before I fall asleep at night. Of course when I get to the computer I forget half the really clever stuff that sounded so good in my head but to start with I was reading over and over again portions of the blog you started almost 2 years ago and thought it would be cool to follow up with throwing a photo of that famous diary from second grade. you said you were going to post a photo of and never got the opportunity, unfortunately..... and you described it so well too. I even took a pic of what you wrote on the inside of the first page and then i found where you actually wrote "i love mike t." but then you crossed it out, not sure why and probably will never know why. so here i go i will attempt my first photo post

okay so i needed a little help from Chelsey....i don't know what i'd do without her and her knowledge of computers. I still remember when we lived in Park Ridge in the early 80's and we would call the library to make 1/2 hour appointments for you and chelsey to play on their computers. nobody had home computers then. it's no wonder that you both were such naturals. those were such happy times in my life, when things were so wonderful. we were one big happy family! anyways, so much life has happened since then, so much i want to remember and share with everyone. sometimes i feel like i want to go back and relive those days again. to write my memories down it feels like i do go back and it gives me a comforting feeling. it's really all i have left....





I do want to share one more photo for today.....remember when you gave me the information about LifeGem, you said you found it on line and wanted to be made into a diamond when you die. I looked at it online and thought it was really cool, but really didn't want to think about something so morbid. no mother wants to think about their child dying. so the process of taking the carbon of someones ashes and creating a beautiful diamond was intriguing to me. the process took a long 9 months while we anxiously awaited the day to come and get it. then, of course, what to do with it after it was created took almost a year to decide, and actually make happen. i had the diamond (yellow) mounted on a pendant and put it on a small chain. i found a crystal company online who sold me a beautiful crystal base engraved to my specifications. dad had given us a swarovski rearing horse many years ago, so i had it mounted on top of the base and then hung the diamond from it's neck. it is beyond stunning.......i love it and want to show everyone.....it's a part of you i will treasure forever....

It's Mom taking over from here, with all due respect

okay i hardly know where to start, but i guess the beginning would be a reasonable place. The beginning starting when though...maybe i will start with the end and then the beginning. The end of monica, which was the very next day after she wrote her last entry in this blog of hers. Anorexia would take her down, finally destroy her, and go on to it's next victim. The end of the physical being and body of her......march 18, 2010...dooms day.....the worse day of my life.....one year....8 months.....1 week.......9 days ago...

So I decided almost immediately that i would write a book about monica and our journey together ever since anorexia came into our lives. i wanted to show the world who she was without the disease, the real monica inside the shell, the part that never went away, except a few times when anorexia reared it's ugly head and made such disgusting language come out of her mouth when it was being forced to do something it didn't want to do. so i attempted to write this book starting at the very beginning of her creation...i spoke to so many people who knew people who had written books or looked on line at publishing information, and did research and basically just started writing....it was suggested to me by a very wise woman that i should start a blog to write my thoughts at the same time as the book ....well i wouldn't consider myself saavy when it comes to technology so the thought was a bit overwhelming....oh i should warn you all too that as monica mentioned in her one of her entries she overuses commas....well i am the same way with .dot...dot...dots....i love them to pieces so i hope they don't annoy too much. so this blog business is intriging to me so i thought i would try it, then i got this brilliant idea, which every once in a while that happens. i decided to try and go into monicas blog and use it instead of starting my own.

she was so ecstatic and exited to proceed with her blog, she couldn't hardly sleep she would think all night long what whe would want to enter the following day. she had been stalking some other blogs and longed to have her own, which she finally did. it was hysterical, funny, witty, entertaining, sad, but mostly funny and showed her personality and how easily she made fun of herself. i don't want anyone to think that this blog is going to be anything remotely like monica's, because it has very little to do with food, exercise, vegan, cooking, spices, utensils, etc. I wouldn't even dream that it would be as witty or fantastic as she would have made hers...i think i just feel very connected to her and this is my way of continuing my writings in her realm, you might say. as she said in one of her entries, she loves the shit out of me....well, i miss the shit out of her!!! every single day!! both my daughters are my life and i would have given up mine in a minute for her to still be here living a healthy normal life. okay enough....i just wanted my first post to give some explanation what the hell i am doing here. I don't intend to depress anyone or want to make this a downer blog......i'm thinking too that from now on i am going to write this blog in a letter form to...guess who?