stages of grief

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

Something that keeps sticking in my mind lately is this idea of Acceptance in the stages of grief. I think that when you are chronically ill, you end up spending months, if not years, cycling through the stages of grief. We Deny. We feel Pain—both chronic, and emotional. We feel Guilt for all the things we can no longer do. We Anger at our mounting disabilities, and we Bargain. Depression that existed before, becomes infinitely worse. Anxiety or occasional Depression becomes something more permanent, that twines itself into your mental and emotional state within this vacuum of lost time.

We Reflect. On the past, all that we have lost, the limitations placed upon our futures. Chronic illness makes philosophers of us all. And in all this reflection many of us find that we gain new insight into what it means to live, only for this enlightenment to deepen our feelings of Despair and Loneliness.

Acceptance can be elusive.

Often, just as you settle into your new normal, some unforeseen event upsets the balance you managed to create out of chaos. We spend days endlessly trying. The illness is trying. The uninformed world made up of doctors, carers, spectators, friends and family, can be really trying. Trying to navigate life with a chronic illness is no easy task in a society that wants us whole, or dying, without much room for anything in between. I always think of “The Beach” when they move their dying friend out of camp, so they don’t have to bare witness to his pain and suffering. In doing so, they relieve themselves of the burden of a prolonged state of grief. Nice for those who are healthy and able to lean out and turn their heads away from suffering.

Betrayal writ large for those of us who do not have this luxury.

This is where I have a problem with the idea of Acceptance. I can accept that my health is what it is now, and I understand why my most of my friends have moved me out of their mental village. It’s difficult for me to live with my failing health, and when you don’t know what to say, I can see how it just becomes easier to say nothing at all. What I find Unacceptable is how much support my family, my own blood, have happily accepted from me over the years, and can’t even be bothered to read up my illness as one of my friends did of her own accord. I don’t need anyone to get the words right to show up for me, it can be as simple as showing willing.

Trying to support someone is supporting someone.

The other thing that makes Acceptance of my new normal difficult, is that I have yet to get any formal diagnosis. In mid January it will be 6 months since my first trip to hospital. Where my trust that I can rely on doctors to support my health was thin before, it is now almost non existent. Considering all of the many doctors I saw while in hospital, failed to recognise that I was suffering from medication induced hyperthyroidism, so that the thyroxine they sent me home with only made me worse so that I eventually broke out in angry hives one morning after taking it.

I still have some way to go in finding out what is wrong with me, but while I still have the bandwidth to advocate for myself, I will continue to search for answers. Because I cannot Accept having no diagnosis, and no direction. The only light at the end of that particular tunnel is surely a diminishing one. I shouldn’t have to Accept fighting for my health alone, but I will shoulder it in the face of having no other choice, which I guess is a grudging kind of acceptance.

I will keep surviving and I will keep trying for as long as I am able to do so. And in the event that I succeed in recovering some of my health, I will be prearmed with the knowledge of how “happy” people will be for me; some may even describe me as being “brave” as if that means something. And I know I can count on at least one person to tell me how well I looked while I spent this time stuck on the platform between the realms of the able and the disabled. Some people just can’t help themselves, and fail to see how this presents as the most backhanded compliment you can pay to any person who has experienced long term physical disability.

It’s all very trying… but I guess that’s why it’s called grief.

#Grief #StagesOfGrief #MyCondition #MyalgicEncephalomyelitis #ChronicIllness #ChronicFatigue #Hyperthyroidism #Depression #Loneliness #MightyTogether #InvisibleIllness #InvisibleDisability

I always held onto the fact that my Nonna met Tash. Since the night I got certified and she ended up calling the police on me my Nonna always told her 'you're the best friend Kailey's ever had' I spent years... living up to Tash's ideal. Being the perfect carbon copy of someone she wanted to be with. Yet in complete certainty I lost myself. My autonomy. Tash convinced me that I was tremendously hard love by me because of my mental health. She'd quote my Nonna saying that and it would reel me again. I forever felt indebted towards her.

Yet I didn't realize I felt horribly indebted for years since my attempt. I wish more than anything that my Nonna could see the human I am today. I know she is proud. I know she's my guardian angel but I am angry today.

I couldn't give my Nonna all of me because she was using coke daily. I was constantly worried even feels as i was cheated out of my final months with her. She made it about her and how Much she missed me being around.

It's hard. I remember the call like yesterday. I remember getting chills because my dad was calling "No news is good news" being the motto in our family. I knew though. As soon as he spoke I could hear the devastation in his tone. I'll never forget that day. In that moment I realized I was going to lose my biggest cheerleader and my Nonna. My true mum. Who always had shoulders for me to cry on. Room for a cuddle to have. Time To hug. Time To tease. Time To laugh. She HAD time for me. My hero, every day... she got up and she did it all; she always was loving and gracious.

I always have felt incredibly selfish because of all the shit I put her through but I know in my heart it's 'water under the bridge' as she would always tell me.
It makes me angry how an Tash who was a transient person in my life was able to create the chaos she did.

I understand the struggle already in place when one has a mood disorder and then loses a parent. I have bioolar 2 and lost my mother a few months back. The reality for meis trying to judge where I am at on the grief scale because ofthe depressive nature of bioolar.2 being already in play.The dreams I am having are the worst part of dealing with this. I keep on going
back to the point of my mother's death and the
difhculty of it and have not gotten to the point
yet where I can see the happy memories of the
past.
My dreams make me frantic and I wake up with
a headache and a pounding heartland it takes
me a half hour to an hour to calm back down.