pumpkinpie
Silver Member
Feeling sad, angry, and unimportant, because I was never cared about in my family.
I already was damaged from years of my father's abuse, but finding and resuscitating my mother when she attempted suicide was a whole new, different kind of injury.
I was a wreck, but my family insisted that I was "hamming it up" to get their attention, which needed to be given to my mother because it was she who was really hurting, despite being physically fine by then.
It didn't matter that I was exhausted and couldn't sleep or think, and that I cried all the time. It didn't matter that it was my final few weeks of graduate school, and that I was also just a few weeks away from my wedding, and now nobody could help me with it: "For heavens' sake, you can't quit your job early! Well if you do, remember you still have to pay for your own wedding dress"...
It was ironic (or something) that my mother's illness, which may have been prevented if they had listened when I begged her to get help, was completely curable - but my own illness that was the result of the failure to treat her own - was not. And that I'm still sick from it, 24 years later.
And nobody noticed that it was supposed to be the happiest time of my life. For me to be concerned about that was just terribly selfish.
That's what I was thinking about and feeling for a bit today. Most of the time I don't think about it because it was a long time ago, but when I do, it still hurts.
I already was damaged from years of my father's abuse, but finding and resuscitating my mother when she attempted suicide was a whole new, different kind of injury.
I was a wreck, but my family insisted that I was "hamming it up" to get their attention, which needed to be given to my mother because it was she who was really hurting, despite being physically fine by then.
It didn't matter that I was exhausted and couldn't sleep or think, and that I cried all the time. It didn't matter that it was my final few weeks of graduate school, and that I was also just a few weeks away from my wedding, and now nobody could help me with it: "For heavens' sake, you can't quit your job early! Well if you do, remember you still have to pay for your own wedding dress"...
It was ironic (or something) that my mother's illness, which may have been prevented if they had listened when I begged her to get help, was completely curable - but my own illness that was the result of the failure to treat her own - was not. And that I'm still sick from it, 24 years later.
And nobody noticed that it was supposed to be the happiest time of my life. For me to be concerned about that was just terribly selfish.
That's what I was thinking about and feeling for a bit today. Most of the time I don't think about it because it was a long time ago, but when I do, it still hurts.
