Five years ago, life sorta sucked.  Okay, that’s probably an understatement.  I can remember long stretches of time that I didn’t feel anything other than soul crushing sadness.  Motions were gone through, the minimum was achieved.

Those were dark days.  And it wasn’t long before I pretty much wrote off the entirety of 2004.  Because as a year?  It was dead to me.  It sucked.  I had no hope for any improvement whatsoever until the year was behind us.

Still, I knew things had to get better.  I didn’t think things would get better in 2004 (as I said, the year was dead to me).  But I knew the future would hold good for us.  Simply because it HAD TO.  Where I was sitting felt like rock bottom.  And there’s only one direction to go from rock bottom.  UP.

Things didn’t get better right away.  In fact, one could argue that 2005 was just as harsh for us.  I broke my ankle that winter, an injury that kept me laid up and isolated for weeks on end.  I got pregnant again, only to suffer a fairly late miscarriage that summer.  These are not good things.  But in the midst of it all, I had hope that I didn’t have in 2004.

Because I’d already been to rock bottom, remember?  As bad as it was, it couldn’t be any worse than losing Jackson was.  I had that faith.  Which isn’t to say that I was upbeat all the time in the midst of our struggles.  Because I definitely wasn’t.  But I did feel that good times were just around the bend.  We only had to be patient and they would come.

And come they did.  In spades.

I know that right now, some very good people are enduring a year like 2004 was for me.  I hate that anyone else has to sit at rock bottom, waiting to go up.   But at the same time, I know they will go up.  I went up.  Good times will come again.  And they will be all the more sweet for all the pain.