complicated grief

My oldest daughter died this month..She died in my mind, because she acts as though we were dead to her. I don’t wish her harm. I’ll still pray for her..but I don’t like living with the deep hurt.

“She died,”might be easier to accept? She has Stage 4 Metastatic Cancer and is now on year 4 and in a NED for a year. I tried to reconcile with her, but apparently there is no give with her and she can not meet me halfway. She never said why she alienated us. We were friends, we were her parents.

I know that she isn’t good for my mental health. It will take some time to move on from this figurative death. I’ve been grieving for sometime at the thought of losing her to actual death..To an anticipatory death, instead of an ambiguous loss or grief. I wonder if it’s that far from actually accepting that she’s gone? Most likely, we’ll never talk again, and that I might not see her again in this life.

Some people might not accept or understand this as grief. It’s very lonely, because those around me can make me feel isolated. They don’t give me permission to grieve because they don’t wish to acknowledge it. I give myself permission to grieve the loss..#ComplicatedGrief #Grief #PTSD #Depression #MentalHealth #movingon

I’m reading Joan Didion’s ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’. I have always found comfort, and a home in books. Where some parents elect to use the television as a nanny; mine was reading books. I’m grateful for the understanding and wisdom I learned through the accumulation of stories from my fellow outcasts. This knowledge however, in time became a bridge between myself and my family. For at some point I journeyed too far beyond their comfort zones, their norms, and their unhealthy coping mechanisms.

The bridge will always be there for them, but I don’t think they’ll ever be in a position to cross the distance between us, so fixed they are in their fear. I still have love for them, but it is also mixed with sorrow; that their faith in themselves and others is so limited; they are in effect hiding from life and the kind of enrichment that can only be achieved through being vulnerable with others, and find that—flaws and all—you can still find unconditional love and acceptance, for none of us here are perfect.

The strange thing I’ve come learn about interpersonal boundaries is that they are isolating no matter what. For the person who is forced over time and error, to learn how to create healthy boundaries and then put them firmly in place, and equally the person who lives in a world without boundaries. For they embody the relationship version of a bull in a China Shop; they only know how to break things—despite the very thing they long for most being wholeness.

My father passed away several years ago, and more recently since the cutting of ties between my mother and myself, I have felt what Didion refers to as “the loneliness of the abandoned child of whatever age.”

A friend writes to Didion about the death of a parent after the passing of her mother “despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, (death) dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and they may cut free memories and feelings that we had thought gone to ground long ago. We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean’s bed, aware of the depth charges, now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections.”

Reflecting further on loss, Didion writes that “Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”

For myself, I mourn the loss of my mother while she is still alive, and in the worsening of my poor health, it has dislodged so much within that I feel numerous waves of grief. For the good that was in my mother, for all the times she abandoned me, and for all that might have been. I grieve the understanding that my own mother’s mother abandoned her numerous times too, and my mother—whether she tried to or not—failed to break this cycle that leaves nothing but destruction in it’s wake, as it creates multigenerational bulls in China Shops. Capable of breaking much, and healing nothing.

#ComplicatedGrief #Grief #GriefQuotes #StagesOfGrief #ChildhoodEmotionalAbuse #Childhoodtrauma #NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder #Relationships #MightyBookClub

I came across this - ‘sometimes in grief rock bottom so feels like home than a place of discomfort & joy is the scarier emotion.’

So is one’s sense of reassuredness obtained more in our seeming gloom, grief & misery? Is pain and anguish the overarching and more truer condition of our living? Not sure which philosopher it was - Schopenhauer or Spinoza or Kierkegaard who had a similar premise but speaking for myself, all the loss, defeats and shame I have endured, suffering has been more determining of life’s trajectory. Even as i cannot but acknowledge few moments of exaltation, joy and contentment, the larger narrative of misery and despair renders me deeply suspicious, indeed dread whatever seeming moments of happiness that objectively speaking is on hand. For example I should be elated today for my book has finally been published. But the occasion has only made my deep sense of loss more pronounced, absences of folks I hold very dear more acute and my grief so apparent.

The existential crisis - of loss of meaning, of no emotional peg to hold on to, the hollowness of positive affirmations, emptiness, the very collapse of hope, the uselessness of faith, sacraments & prayer - is so permanent, structural, so default that the so called affirmative, hope inducing path not to speak of so called moments of celebration & joy, appears so misguided & pathetic.😕

My ex is descending into vegetative state and i’m unable to provide any succour or reassurance to her…😢I love her so deeply…being with her was much more than being with a person…there was our house, our beautiful garden, our soul enriching dogs…it was elevated living in every sense of the word all coming together in her. In her presence, company I grew, my soul nourished and my spirits soared…But her ailments consumed her reducing her to an existence of excruciating pain (people can’t even begin to comprehend how debilitating her illness is) and agony. Yet she braves it all. She doesn’t want to give up. i still can’t & couldn’t deal with her suffering. And she couldn’t deal with my suffering me & she insisted on separation . I failed as a care giver. I felt so then and I feel so more now. Is it my love morphing into something evil that is causing her to suffer? To love is to suffer as someone said. The painful poignancy of it all. The appalling conditions of existence with its ordeals, misery & aches being showered on few in unrelenting flow🤦🏽 if my condition is such, imagine what she is undergoing saddled with both excruciating mental & physical condition.

The free who may have been following my posts here would probably figure my drift. Most may barely comprehend what i’m babbling about. I often don’t comprehend it myself. Figuring all these in isolation & loneliness is all I have for attempts at reassuring me by few (maybe well meaning) with bare cognisance of such travails, shame & suffering has been more damaging… most don’t even bother or attempt anymore. They have had enough of my moping & lament and my seeming inability to get over for many years now. But this grief is my own and overwhelming and i won’t allow anyone to trivialise it.

For as things stand i’m my own best friend, counsellor, confidant even as I’m my own critic & enemy. I dedicate the book to her - the endearing, bravest soul I know notwithstanding being rejected. The research, the writing, the readings, the visits, my work…all that the writing of the book involved her presence was constant. But it was no therapy. Today the despair and anguish has only flared up. What satisfaction or contentment leave alone celebration or joy when the most dear to me not around…?!!😢 I do want to be cherished, hugged and in the least desire quality time of deep conversation, over food, drink and drives -things which did transpire between us for sometime but alas ! Very voodoo of life undid it all and in certain viciousness! 😔 #Grief #ComplicatedGrief #Pain #Rejection #Shame #despair #Depression #Loss