Vee-Freak

I turn 38 on Tuesday, March 1st. I miss my mother more on my birthday than I do on her birthday, Feb 19th. If there's one person in my entire family that never forgot about me (even my bio dad, I shit you not, could never be bothered to remember) and no one acted like I mattered at all once I reached adulthood. I still get well wishes and cards from friends and the in-laws and that means the world to me, but... it's just not the same. No one could truly, fully replace the touching Mother to Daughter cards. We had our disagreements, but she never had a mean word to say every March 1st. It mattered so much to know that I wasn't forgotten, but when she died, no one cared anymore. She wasn't there to remind anyone that hey, she exists, you should say something.... Her death left behind such a huge chasm of deafening silence, turning the pain of her loss into something beyond that, something so gut-wrenching that it became tangible (ever cry so hard you throw up? Yeah, that was me). She was the last bit of glue that kept the fractured remains of my dysfunctional family together.

This is the fourth year I've had to go through this and I don't know why it hurts worse now than it did in the prior three. Maybe it's because of my father's death and recent news about my biological father, Richard, made me remember the trauma of all the terrible things he did and said before and after that brutal divorce during fits of rage that I can never forget has reopened those old wounds of my childhood... There are too many memories that are too easy to trigger like a cascading line of dominoes when you're already feeling vulnerable. Life is complicated.

I've had bouts of unhinged crying all day and I can barely function and even when I do, I do so mechanically, my mind in such a fog. It hurts so much and I probably sound stupid, selfish and a little immature saying this, but fuck it, I have zero fucks to give about how I'm being perceived by anyone right now. I'll never have another card that never failed to show up with "Happy Birthday, Love, Mom" written by her in it and I miss the hell out of that.

Everything has been a little too overwhelming, giving me little time to come to terms with one loss before the next one strikes me down. I'm 37 years old and my parents are fucking DEAD. That's not the kind of milestone I was expecting at this age, but here I am, having to literally pick up the shattered pieces of what remains of their estates and sift through things that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Material things can't bring them back (only rake me over the coals of past traumas) and neither can their ashes, no matter how much I scream for them to hear my final good-bye or beg for the closure I was owed. I'm not fine and I need to be okay with that because life's a bitch.

Well.. today,... Fuck, where do I even begin? It's not every day that a woman manages to lose BOTH her parents in under 3 years (also lost both paternal and maternal grandmothers in that time as well).. my stepfather, my best friend and kindred spirit from the age of 11, died at the hands of COVID-19 today. Shell shocked doesn't even begin to describe how devastated I truly feel.

Yesterday, I completed a series of tasks that have left me feeling productive, but at the same time, utterly incapable of internalizing my feelings like I usually do. I am physically and emotionally drained and numb after being in existential crisis and crying most of the day (my chronic pain is through the roof, at the moment, magnifying all the deep-seated negative feelings). It's no one's fault except my own because I struggle to express myself in a healthy way. I internalize my problems until the rising pressure eventually reaches critical mass (blowing up like the proverbial Mount St. Helens) has been a habitual conditioned behavior since early in life.

I recognize that it's irrational for me to expect myself to be an emotionally detached robot, but I fail to understand the concept of what 'normal' really is, especially given how fucked up my life/upbringing has been. Grief has only exacerbated this issue, so everything I've felt has been, to say the least, intense. I'm going to be honest. I hate myself and it's sometimes a daily struggle to silence the demons that say "no one gives a fuck about you, kill yourself" (I know this is also irrational, but mental illness, self-loathing, PTSD and suicidal ideations are a bitch).. with all that said, as much as I sometimes think that life in general is "out to get me down" I'm glad to be alive and failed at my numerous attempts to end it all in the past. Thank you, all of you (especially my fiancé), for giving me a reason to live. I literally wouldn't be here today to fight the good fight without you. "If they say, "who cares if one more light goes out?" ... well, I do...." - Linkin Park "One More Light"