One Year On

[Sammyiam]

Well it's been one year since my Mother died. I want to thank everyone on here for all the support you have given me. It hasn't gone fast or it hasn't gone slow. It has just gone, life just keeps on going and time slowly ticks by. I never had a loving close cuddly sort of mother, in fact I spent my whole life trying to get her acceptance. It wasn't a level playing field as whenever I got anywhere near it was like playing a sports game where the goal posts kept shifting so you could never score a goal. It was always just out of reach, you could see it but never get close enough to touch it or feel it. The rules always kept changing as well so you never knew how to play the game you had to just keep guessing.

I thought she couldn't hurt me anymore but from the grave, but she has torn our entire family to pieces never to be the same again. I lost a mother and a sister the day she died and it just seems like nothing has happened. Time just keeps on ticking by, I don't feel anything I can write this matter of fact but don't feel what I'm writing. I haven't cried one single tear, I haven't got angry, I haven't got sad or yelled.

The only feelings I feel are guilt for not feeling anything, I see other people losing their mothers and are so upset and I actually feel like, I wish I felt what they are feeling, I wish I was upset, I wish I could cry, I wish I could just feel something.

Is there something wrong with me ?
Am I as bad as what she was because I feel nothing ?

Thank you for taking time to read this and thank you for all your support

Sammy

 

[mrsps]

Hi Sammy! :)

There is nothing wrong with you for the way you feel, and you are not bad.
If you had of had a close relationship with your mum you would miss her and be upset but because you never had a close relationship with your mum now she has gone it as if nothing has changed. You are free to feel how ever you do, it doesn't make you bad or wrong for the way you feel.
I hope that one day you are able to see yourself the way others do, a kind and caring lady
take care
xx

 

[Deleted member 12723]

My dad finally died a few years back and I felt nothing since I had disconnected from him so many years earlier so I think you have no reason for false guilt. You are normal and there is nothing wrong with you at all. It is so sad that some parents have hurt their children so badly that the kids left behind in death of a abusive parent, not missed at all. I actually felt relief that he was finally gone as he could never hurt anyone ever again.

 

[Sammyiam]

Thank you @mrsps and @gizmo

Yes I have felt relief but was to embrassed to say that, will part of me feels relief not to be put down at every opportunity and be guilt ridden or belittled Or told how stupid I am or that she is embrassed by me. I don't miss any of that.

I do sometimes sit in my car when I am parked in the middle of town and watch older mother figures and think to myself as I watch them walk past, gee she looks like a nice Mother I wish she had been my mother. Does that sound really stupid of me, especially when they are walking down the footpath with what looks like their daughter laughing and talking. I just sit their and think to myself Why didn't I have a Mother that loved me. Was I that horrible of daughter.

 

[macbeth]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with how you feel Sammy. Everything that @mrsps said is true. You are entitled to feel your feelings. There is no right or wrong and that you can see yourself as we all do my beautiful friend. Xx

 

[Recovery4Me]

(((hugs))) You gave everything you had to show her love. You stood tall, the best you could without even receiving- so much as word with kind regard. And still, her legacy of emptiness haunts you.

You painfully struggle to consider, if indeed there is something 'wrong' among this void within your heart. To which, I gently answer, "Yes! But not with you dear." You are doing the best you can to reconcile your pain of loss from the mother that will never be and the one whom has passed.

You are precious, just the way you are Sammy. Leave the guilt by her graveside and just carry our love with you.

 

[The Albatross]

Not wrong or bad Sammy.

You are feeling something, you are feeling that your family has fallen apart, that it will never be the same again, and that you lost a sister on the day you lost your mother.

You are also identifying that you feel guilt while writing that you feel "nothing". You are wanting to emote what has happened in a feeling other than guilt. Maybe you should take aim and write some free flow about what you ARE feeling and examine the guilt. There is likely some stuff to refute there. Guilt is optional... but one year on with a significant shift in the familial dynamic... well perhaps you are a bit shut down?

 

[Deleted member 20280]

Sammy, I concur with the comments from the other members, all of us replying to this thread know you very well as a fellow member of this forum.

I add nothing more to this reply but to say, I am here as are all your friends on this forum, we support each other as peers and if you ever need me you know how to get hold of me.

:hug:s

Laurie

 

[Friday]

Sammy, you are absolutely wonderful :)

I have more to say on that in just a bit, words are hard right now, but ...I will try anyway... I remember when your mother lay dying, you were still there, still giving her every last shred of an opportunity to do even one right thing. You tried so damn hard, did every single possible thing you could do, laid every path, all the woman known as your mother would have had to do glance, and you'd have carried her. You didn't just meet her halfway. You met her where she was at, did all the heavy lifting, left every single opportunity wide open for that woman to choose to be a mom to you, for even a second. She never chose to. Not once. That's not your fault. Stars above, she never did anything to deserve having someone so wonderful for a daughter, and she never recognized the treasure she had right up through the end. Not in thought, word, or deed.

I don't think you lost your mom when she died. I think you never had a mom. You raised yourself. You raised your own children up... Being the mom to them you never had, yourself.

I'm relieved you're relieved. :happy: