I miss my dad every day

[385957]

Trigger warning: self harm, suicide

I don't really know how to start this, so I'm just going to try and write what comes to my head and see how it goes. I apologize for the length of this post, but I need to get this out. I have been encouraged to write about what happened, and this is my first attempt.

I lost my dad when I was 4, in May of 2006. He had struggled with alcoholism for years. I didn't know about his troubles with alcohol for a long time. When I was 17, my mom sat me down and told me the truth about his alcoholism and death. 

My dad was a talented musician, and guitar player. According to everyone who knew him, he was charismatic and loving. He was funny, smart, and had so much life ahead of him. A good person, and an even better friend. These are the stories that I try to remember when thinking about him.

The last 5 years of his life were really hard for him. I have heard stories of him falling asleep at the wheel of his car at intersections, getting fired for showing up to his job drunk, etc. I want to mention that this was a job he had worked so hard to get, and was very proud of. 

My mom divorced my dad around 2004. She didn't want to raise her children with an alcoholic father. She said that she could no longer rely on him as a parent. He would forget to pick me and my siblings up from daycare, leaving us there for hours until my mom would come and get us. He was living in a house that my mom owned, because he could not hold a job. 

About two years later, in May, 2006 he was involuntarily admitted to a hospital for alcohol withdrawal, by my mother and my grandma (his mom). Shortly after being admitted in the hospital, my mom received a call, with the news that he was dead. The doctors said that his death was due to the alcohol withdrawal. That his body just didn't have the strength to keep him going anymore. The news was sudden and the way that the doctors explained it did not make sense. My mom, who is a lawyer, tried to press the hospital for questions, with no answers. She even tried to sue the hospital for medical malpractice/negligence. The lawsuit didn't pan out. We didn't have enough evidence. To this day I do not know if my father died from complications in relation to alcohol withdrawal or if the hospital fucked up. I don't think either answer would make me feel better, or give me peace. 

I remember my mom sitting me and my 2 and a half year old twin siblings on her bed, and telling us. Which I honestly thought was stupid at the time because I was the only one who could understand her. I remember crying. 

I remember his funeral I remember that the church was so packed that people were standing in the hallway outside. I remember the priest speaking to me directly, telling me that my father loved me very much. I remember feeling really embarrassed that everyone was looking at me.

About 5 years later, my mom remarried my stepfather. I was 10. We moved away to start a new life. Ironically, my stepdad also has a drinking problem. He is one of the meanest people I have ever met. My mom took his last name, and had my name and my sibling's last name changed as well. It wasn't long before he began to ask us to call him dad. And encouragement then turned to demand. I was to call him dad or he would call me a smart ass. This was so triggering for me for so many reasons, but I felt like I didn't have a choice. I started out wanting my mom to be happy. And if this dude made her happy then I would sacrifice my happiness so that she could have hers. 

Growing up after my father's death was exceedingly difficult for me. I grew up so angry at everyone. At the world. I was sad all the time, and I still am. I feel as though my mother's attempt to create a new life really backfired. I began to feel like she wanted to replace my dad, with this new, unfamiliar and hurtful person. My stepdad is a military man and his parenting style is very authoritarian. I did not respond to his methods. I fought, hard, and that made things really difficult for me at home. 

I moved from school to school for a couple of years when we first moved, and finally settled at a public elementary school in the 4th grade because they had a good disability program. This was necessary because my brother has severe autism and epilepsy. Right after starting at the new school, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. I remember wondering if I was going to be an orphan, and what was going to happen to me. I love my mom. I hated her decision to stay with my stepdad, but it did not change that she was all I had. I was so scared of losing the only parent I had ever known. Thank god radiation helped. After a year or two she was cleared and declared healthy and cancer free. I was so relieved when she got better, but immediately developed severe anxiety in relation to the death of the people I care about most in the world. 

I was diagnosed with major depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation when I was in the 7th grade. I started self harming in an attempt to distract myself. To feel anything different. It worked in the moment, but not in the long run.  I began to develop eating disorders and had a lot of trouble in school. Home life was awful at this point. My stepdad was bullying me every day, emotionally abusing me, drinking severely. I was becoming increasingly depressed and alienated from the people around me. I just wanted to escape. I felt so alone, haunted by the memories I could never create with my dad. I thought about him every day, and how I wish that he would come save me. I thought about taking my life a lot, so that I could be with him again. I didn't want to accept that I would never talk to him again. That no matter how much I hoped, prayed, yearned, that he was gone. That nothing will ever change that. And the fact that no one around me had experienced loss like that made me feel so weird. I had no one to talk to about it. Or, maybe I did, but they didn't understand. They never knew what to say. And I could tell that they were at a loss for how to comfort me. 

I believed that my life revolved around and was a product of the trauma I experienced. That every bad thing that had happened since then was because of this horrible event that happened to me and my family when I was so young. I felt like I never had a chance because of it. 

I walked around elementary school, middle school and highschool with a hole in my heart. I never got my grades up, and my depression was getting worse with each passing day. I attempted to take my life my senior year, but failed, and eventually graduated high school in 2019. After my suicide attempt, I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. From what I understand about the condition, it is somewhat common for children who experience trauma at a young age. Especially the death of a parent. 

It has been 5 years now since I graduated, 18 years since my dad's death, and I am still living with my mom and my stepdad. He is still emotionally abusive, and it still affects me so much.  I never thought about the future growing up. I honestly thought I would be dead before I turned 18. I never applied to college, which I deeply regret. I lost my car about 2 years ago, and have a lot of trouble holding jobs, and maintaining relationships with people. Nothing seems to get better, no matter what I do. I have tried therapy, and pretty much every SSRI that is out there, and I've been to inpatient twice. I tried grief counseling when I was younger but it was not successful due to my inability to address the death of my dad at the time. As I have grown older, it feels like it becomes more real. And I don't want it to be. 

I think of my dad every day. Every birthday he isn't here to see. Every Christmas, and every milestone the he will miss for the rest of my life. The grief follows me everywhere. It feels like a life sentence. And it makes me feel so alienated from the people around me. I think about taking my life so much. I feel like I am  stuck in a never ending nightmare that gets worse every day.

I miss my dad. I miss the childhood I was never able to have. I wish that things, anything in my life would get better. Maybe it would give me a purpose, or help me get out of this cycle of grief. 

I dream that someday I will build a life worth living. 

 

[KayC]

This sounds very hard.  I hope by this you don't intend to cause yourself harm.

9 hours ago, 385957 said:

Trigger warning: self harm, suicide

 

[385957]

3 hours ago, KayC said:

This sounds very hard.  I hope by this you don't intend to cause yourself harm.

 

I don't. I mentioned the trigger warning in case anyone reading would be triggered by talk of self harm and suicide. Just trying to look out for people.

[KayC]

Glad to hear it, and it's true not just for loss of parent, but any loss.  Mentioned in my tips article:
 

Grief Process

This is not a one-size-fits-all, what strikes us one day will be different a few months/years from now, so please save/print this for reference!

I want to share an article I wrote of the things I've found helpful over the years, in the hopes something will be of help to you either now or on down the road.

TIPS TO MAKE YOUR WAY THROUGH GRIEF

There's no way to sum up how to go on in a simple easy answer, but I encourage you to read the other threads here, little by little you will learn how to make your way through this.  I do want to give you some pointers though, of some things I've learned on my journey.

• Take one day at a time.  The Bible says each day has enough trouble of its own, I've found that to be true, so don't bite off more than you can chew.  It can be challenging enough just to tackle today.  I tell myself, I only have to get through today.  Then I get up tomorrow and do it all over again.  To think about the "rest of my life" invites anxiety.
• Don't be afraid, grief may not end but it evolves.  The intensity lessens eventually.
• Visit your doctor.  Tell them about your loss, any troubles sleeping, suicidal thoughts, anxiety attacks.  They need to know these things in order to help you through it...this is all part of grief.
• Suicidal thoughts are common in early grief.  If they're reoccurring, call a suicide hotline.  I felt that way early on, but then realized it wasn't that I wanted to die so much as I didn't want to go through what I'd have to face if I lived.  Back to taking a day at a time.  Suicide Hotline - Call 1-800-273-8255 or www.crisis textline.org or US and Canada: text 741741 UK: text 85258 | Ireland: text 50808
• Give yourself permission to smile.  It is not our grief that binds us to them, but our love, and that continues still.
• Try not to isolate too much.  
• There's a balance to reach between taking time to process our grief, and avoiding it...it's good to find that balance for yourself.  We can't keep so busy as to avoid our grief, it has a way of haunting us, finding us, and demanding we pay attention to it!  Some people set aside time every day to grieve.  I didn't have to, it searched and found me!
• Self-care is extremely important, more so than ever.  That person that would have cared for you is gone, now you're it...learn to be your own best friend, your own advocate, practice self-care.  You'll need it more than ever.
• Recognize that your doctor isn't trained in grief, find a professional grief counselor that is.  We need help finding ourselves through this maze of grief, knowing where to start, etc.  They have not only the knowledge, but the resources.
• In time, consider a grief support group.  If your friends have not been through it themselves, they may not understand what you're going through, it helps to find someone somewhere who DOES "get it". 
• Be patient, give yourself time.  There's no hurry or timetable about cleaning out belongings, etc.  They can wait, you can take a year, ten years, or never deal with it.  It's okay, it's what YOU are comfortable with that matters.  
• Know that what we are comfortable with may change from time to time.  That first couple of years I put his pictures up, took them down, up, down, depending on whether it made me feel better or worse.  Finally, they were up to stay.
• Consider a pet.  Not everyone is a pet fan, but I've found that my dog helps immensely.  It's someone to love, someone to come home to, someone happy to see me, someone that gives me a purpose...I have to come home and feed him.  Besides, they're known to relieve stress.  Well maybe not in the puppy stage when they're chewing up everything, but there's older ones to adopt if you don't relish that stage.
• Make yourself get out now and then.  You may not feel interest in anything, things that interested you before seem to feel flat now.  That's normal.  Push yourself out of your comfort zone just a wee bit now and then.  Eating out alone, going to a movie alone or church alone, all of these things are hard to do at first.  You may feel you flunked at it, cried throughout, that's okay, you did it, you tried, and eventually you get a little better at it.  If I waited until I had someone to do things with I'd be stuck at home a lot.
• Keep coming here.  We've been through it and we're all going through this together.
• Look for joy in every day.  It will be hard to find at first, but in practicing this, it will change your focus so you can embrace what IS rather than merely focusing on what ISN'T.  It teaches you to live in the present and appreciate fully.  You have lost your big joy in life, and all other small joys may seem insignificant in comparison, but rather than compare what used to be to what is, learn the ability to appreciate each and every small thing that comes your way...a rainbow, a phone call from a friend, unexpected money, a stranger smiling at you, whatever the small joy, embrace it.  It's an art that takes practice and is life changing if you continue it.
• Eventually consider volunteering.  It helps us when we're outward focused, it's a win/win.

(((hugs)))  Praying for you today.

 

[Scott74]

 Great advice