Fathers day; post 2

I don’t know how long it’s been. You loose all concept of time when you’re grieving. Five months. I still can’t believe he’s gone. 7 days, from fall to … I can’t put into words how much I miss him. Somedays, I look at my phone and wonder why he hasn’t called and my heart feels like it’s being stabbed. The raw empty wound of my last parent gone. No more hugs, Saturday night dinners. No more advice when I’m needing guidance. I’m a orphan. I’ve never felt so lost and alone in my life.

I’m vulnerable. Listening to music that reminds me of an lover. The one who most of this blog is about; we’ve not spoken in 17 months. Today, for whatever reason, the grief, the disappointment that my life is not where I’d like to be, I thought of him. ‘There’s an empty space you left behind’. ‘All the love you gave, it still defines me’. Ridiculous that I feel this way. But this wasn’t an ordinary love. It was undefinable. It was 2 people lost in the world looking for something that neither could give each other. 2 people who made great friends, then lovers and then love got in the way. Then it went wrong. Such as life, so often. It hurt so much at the time but I hope he’s okay.

I shouldn’t miss him but I do. Maybe it’s the grief. Maybe I want him to know I miss him, that I think about him all the time. But I don’t know I can handle the pain if my efforts turn to shit. I’m not the same person. I’m not the weak pathetic girl anymore. Grief has hardened me to this world. Maybe I can handle it. I just don’t know.

Losing my dad so suddenly, I see life is so fragile and unplanned. You can map out every single path you want to take but it will constantly give you diversions, nothing in life is ever linear. I’m in limbo, head and heart. Mixed up with grief and a lack of motivation. The 2 men who’ve had the most profound effect on my life and one is still here. I just don’t know what to do. I wish my dad was still here, he wouldn’t know what to do either but his warm hugs would make it so much easier. I miss him so much but one consolation getting me through: he’s reunited with my mum and I can’t ask for more than that.

Fathers day

I’ve not written in a long time. Today has been one of the most difficult days of my life. It’s father’s day. I had to do decide if my father goes into cardiac arrest again, that it would not be in his interests to go ahead with cpr. DNAR.

The medics bought him back yesterday. I still have a dad. But how much of him will respond we just don’t know. I watched my mum die in the most violent possible way and now here I am watching a machine breathe for my dad, my only parent left. I’m not ready for my heart to break all over again. I’m not ready to be an orphan. I want more moments on a Saturday night watching tv with a takeaway. I want someone to tell my week about. I want my dad back. I’m not ready to lose him.

Haunted

Just when I thought I’d shaken the ghost that haunts me. He comes back. He doesn’t even know he’s there, following in my shadow. I’m haunted by the one thing that used to protect me.

I never felt good enough for him. It was fun at the beginning, the secret meet ups, the afternoons spent discovering each other. I wish I knew then that he was some kind of narcissist. He never loved me. Loved the idea of being loved.

But when you think you’ve met your soul mate, you’ll believe anything. You’ll believe every word he tells you, because you’re bound by his word, his charm. Until something makes you question it. A simple comment. One designed to undermine every feeling you ever had for him. One to tell you, I’m the boss, and I’ll do the fuck what I tell you.

The first time, he said to me, I think you’ve gotten to close. How could I not? How could I give my energy, my heart to someone I didn’t adore? Clearly, he didn’t adore me. I was just someone to play with, a toy, something to ease the frustration from being so deeply unhappy. Add that to the other comment, men will sleep with anything. Wow, you do some much for my self esteem. Why don’t you just rate me on a scale of 1 to 10? Put the result next to my name on your little black book of women you fuck when you’re desperate.

Because that’s how you made me feel. You made me feel like a second hand prize. Someone you settled for because you couldn’t have the winner. So took what you could get and you took everything. You took my heart, the only thing I have. And you didn’t just smash it to pieces, made sure you ripped it to shreds with your bare hands. Revelling in the blood.

You might have damaged me, you might have tried to destroyed me. But you never came back to see the destruction you’d caused. I’m still here. Even though I still love you. You might haunt me. But you’re a ghost. You’re nothing. I gave you everything and you threw it all back, you thought you’d take me down. You thought wrong. You’re the ghost and I’m the exorcist.

Atonement

For all the wrongs I have done, please let me suffer to make them right.

No one can explain guilt. Not this kind. Looming over my head like a guillotine. I want to absolve it. But it want it to take me away. Cut off the air to my lungs. Make me cease to exist. The agony of guilt is worse than the action that caused it.

I watched my mum die. In such a horrific horrible ending. I watched as the life was sucked out of her, slowly, agonisingly, over hours. Until the final moment and I stood in horror as the devil itself manifested it’s evil. I, a nurse, should’ve seen this. I should’ve helped. Not run away. Not screamed in horror as the bile flowed like lava, her eyes, rolled back lifeless. I failed my mother and I will live with failure until the day I die.

I live with the secret. Of not telling my family, my father that she died a violent death. Me, my mother and the 2 other nurses that had to help where I failed. Believe me there is nothing more distressing than seeing the person who nurtured who, loved you, accepted you, die a slow undignified death.

The vision in my head is with me every day. Not every moment. But those moments when your remember what a shitty person you are. When you’ve done shitty things to people, been unreasonable, had arguments. It all comes back to flood your mind and drown your conscience. You are a shitty person. No wonder no one loves.

Atonement. How do I atone for my sins? How do I absolve myself of this guilt?

I swore after she died, I’d never be a nurse again. I couldn’t stand to be anywhere near a ward. The smell. The hopelessness. The reminders. I’d let down the one person who loved me unconditionally. Yet, Covid. Could this be a way to atone? To return to the wards. To see the grief and suffering again, to force myself to do better. Be a better nurse.

If I could handle the flashbacks of that night I could handle anything. There really is no pain like it. Except this time, I’d do my job properly. Not be overcome by the horrors that sometimes nursing throws at you. But this wasn’t a completely altruistic decision. I had an ulterior motive.

For weeks, I’ve begging, let me get it. Let me die. Let it be me, no one else. No one here deserves to die like I do. I’ve done wrong. Let me atone for my sins. Please don’t take anyone else. I’ve lost several colleagues now. Each one a haunting reminder of the cruelness of this virus. It will pick and chose who it takes. While I caught it, it did not take me. And I can’t describe my crushing disappointment that sometimes I am still alive while my colleagues are not. Life is fucking cruel.

I don’t know if this is enough. If this will absolve me of my guilt. Of my failings as a nurse, but more importantly, as a daughter. I let down the most important patient of all and I still want to beat myself up every day.

Atonement. Please absolve me of my sins.

But you don’t look ill?

Just when you think you’ve reached rock bottom, there’s always a few more rocks to hit on the way down. I think I may have reached it now. But then again, I really don’t know.

Sent home by occupational health, I’ve never been so relieved and yet so guilty. I feel like a complete failure. I can’t even do my job. Relived because I can’t even explain how exhausting it is, trying to put on a normal face. It takes up all the energy I have, to concentrate, to try and talk, to break down in tears every other minute. I’m tired of feeling so tired of life.

But guilty, as someone pointed out ‘but you don’t look ill?’ How am I meant to look? How does a mental illness look? Pulling my hair out? Head bowed down? Dirty face, dirty clothes? Mental illness doesn’t discriminate between social classes, anyone can suffer from a mental illness. We all start from some point and spiral out of control. Sorry if I don’t look ill, but my mind is. I’ve done some horrible things to my body to try to take the pain away, none of it successful. Which is why I’m still writing this.

How do I fix it? I wish I knew. I wish I could flip a switch in my mind, from sad to happy. From hopeless to hopeful. I know it’s up to me, to find the drive, the determination to want to get better. But sometimes I have so little motivation all I want to do is fall asleep and never wake up. I’m ashamed of myself for feeling that way, but I’m tired of doing this life day in day out.

If I had a broken leg, it would be put in a cast, no weight bearing for some time, maybe physio then gradually, start using it again. If only we could do that to the part of our minds that are broken. If only.

Time will tell, and the antidepressants I used to rely on are back. I feel like a zombie when I take them, but if I’m happier, then maybe a happy zombie has to be better than just existing.

2020: so far, so shortsighted.

I’ve been feeling overwhelmingly inadequate. Not just lately, but probably for the last 3 months. Like I’m a spare part that’s no use to anyone. Hard to describe. But I’m failing everything. And everyone.

Uni. The first term. Queue a meltdown on the train on my way to my first class. Trying not to cry on a packed train full of commuters is a newly acquired skill. I actually loved my first term. I’m the least cool in my whatsapp group but I can handle that. Now I’m in a class full of mainly academics and post graduates talking about theories and approaches that are so far over my head if I was in the sea, I’d be at the bottom of the ocean. I should leave me to drown.

Maybe I’m just being cynical. But when you’ve so little self-belief, because someone had a way of belittling you that you actually start to believe what they’re saying is true. You’re fat, you’re not doing anything to change. You’re deluding yourself. I probably am. Who am I kidding? I left a decent job to be a nurse and look how that ended up? Stick to what you know, Sharon, fucking up anything half decent in your life. Because you probably are deluding yourself.

I’ve had a pretty decent life, despite the hideous birthmark, the one that people still make a point of pointing out, ironically. Wow, that’s a big red mark! Oh is it? Really? I hadn’t fucking noticed, I’ve only been walking around for the last 41 and half years with it, how the fuck did I not notice it? I’m learning to treat people with the same sarcastic contempt they treat me. Pointing out the fucking obvious to satisfy your curious need to know why I don’t look like the average white person. Oh what a super bitch I’ve turned into.

2020 and it’s still the same old shit, but revisited. I drink more than I did 20 years ago, except I go out drinking less. I’m the old fart in the pub drunk after a glass or two of prosecco. Happy days. Some days I’m life of the party, other days, I just can’t bare to be around or talk to anyone. I’m a useless friend.

This life probably isn’t going to get any better if I don’t try. But when you’ve nothing much to keep you going, then why keep going? Back at counselling again, because: because sometimes I just don’t have the energy to keep living. Because I actually miss someone so fucking much it hurts. Everyday, walking the same corridors at work, wondering, is this going to be the last day I walk down here? Will this be the last day I speak to the man who waits patiently outside the renal ward for his wife 3 days a week while she’s having dialysis? Why don’t I appreciate life like she would? She doesn’t have the freedom I do. I’m an ungrateful person. If I could give my freedom, I’d trade it to someone more worthy in a heartbeat. The fact that my kidneys and liver are probably wrecked is no comfort either.

I’ve got an appointment with the work occupational health doctor in a weeks time. The same man, who prior to my breakdown in 2016, told me ‘you’re not depressed, just slightly anxious. Here, read this [extremely pretentious text on how not to be you]’. Not once actually asking me what my symptoms are or even looking up from his desk. I was caring for my mum, we’d found out what we suspected, but hoped was wrong, that her cancer was terminal. His response ‘parents get ill, they die. You’ll get over it.’ Nearly 2 years on from her death and no I haven’t. I learn to live with it each day, and still relive the last horrific hour. But by far the worst comment by this ‘doctor’ was this: ‘you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself’. Let’s get something straight: I don’t for one minute ever or have ever felt sorry for myself. Self pity is an ugly emotion. Do I wish I hadn’t been born? Yes, often. Do I go to sleep and hope I don’t wake? Also, yes. But I don’t feel sorry for myself. I don’t want people’s pity, or sympathy. Just some acknowledgement that actually, it’s not been plain sailing sometimes. Oh god, I’m dreading seeing this monster again.

I know despite everything, I’ve been incredibly lucky. My mum always said to me growing up, on a bad day, there’s always someone worse off than you, just dealing with it, without complaining. She was always right. I was and I still am lucky, sometimes, I’m so numb, so empty, I just need reminding.

@specsygurl

Learning to let go.

The hardest thing I found from everything, being let down in love, losing my mum, generally not coping with a crushing depression, is how to love someone new. When someone comes into your life, turns it upside down; how do you know they’re not going to leave you? Ghost you?

I never wanted to fall in love. I wanted to keep anyone at arms length. Because I knew, sooner or later, they’d leave. Because they’d realise what a fucked up mess I am, or like anyone I’ve loved, they’d die. Either way, they’d leave me heartbroken. I am not cut out for any more heartbreak.

Last year, I met someone. Someone I never in a million years thought would change my life. But he did. For the first time in a 40 years, I actually felt beautiful. I loved him. I still love him. And though he’ll probably never see what I saw through my eyes; how amazing, how beautiful he is, because why take my word for it. I know what I know and I know why I fell. But now that’s short lived. Now I feel like the usual sack of shit I’ve been feeling for most of my life. Maybe because I am said sack of shit. Trying to find my way in this fickle superficial world that values looks over personality. That bullshit phrase I’m so common with ‘it’s not what you look like, it’s what inside that counts’ and everyone knows what an absolute crock of shit that is. No one wants to drive the ugly car. Know what I mean?

So, anyway what’s the point of all this? Actually I’m fucked if I know. All I know is, in the words of Nelly Furtado ‘all good things come to an end’. I’m done with the hurt that follows when someone doesn’t want you anymore. Why stick around when you know you’re not wanted anymore? Only exacerbates the pain.

I’ve learnt the hard way, people you love leave. That’s the way life is. People move on. Yes, it fucking hurts. It’s like having your whole body ripped to pieces and put in blender. Every time you think of them, your insides feel like they’re going to explode. Nothing hurts like being replaced with someone else. But it’s life. And even though you’ll have times when you wish you could take the easy way out, you wish you could end the humdrum and tediousness of getting out of bed and trying to be happy, you have to find a way to keep going. Even if it means you have to go it alone.

So you must let go. Accept you’re no longer part of something that kept you alive. Slowly, slowly dwindle away and with any hope you’ll find something else to keep your heart beating until that fateful day.

For Kay xx

We were never great friends when we met. I think you approached me and mentioned something about spreading my name around and how you’d not lied about me. Honestly, to this day I have no idea! But I know you’d never be cruel or nasty to me.

Fast forward 6 years and we saw each other so many times. Out of work, at our local doctors surgery. I knew you’d been ill. The whole office knew but kept it hush hush. Out of respect. The least they could do. You were so bold, like cancer was just a blip. Something that you’d conquer and move on to the next stumbling block.

I’d left by then, no longer an exclusive member of the postal clan. Climbing the ladder of nursing in a hopeless trust, hoping for the best and getting nowhere. ‘Don’t give up, you’re a natural’ you said. But I had, disappointingly. I was tired, stressed, beaten. But you still carried on. Still fought. You were so young. Just a few years older than me.

I remember, 2016, you were at the finish line, cheering on the runners in the Race for life. We chatted and said ‘you’ll run it with me next year’. That was the last year my mum could run it too. In 2017, she was too poorly. But she went. She stood guard of the tent, guarding the samosas the lovely Tesco lady had made. The thought of these delicious samosas, gave me my PB of 30 minutes (yes, I know, it’s crap, but if you’ve ever seen me run, you’ll know why I was so elated). But no Kay at the finish line.

Roll on a year. Various bumping into each other at the doctors, me for mental health, Kay for bloods and other stuff. She looked tired. Still like Kay, but like someone had worn her down. We chatted. I’d lost my mum. To the disease that was slowly taking every inch of her soul. I could see in her partners eyes, he was already broken.

Race for life 18. No mum. No Kay. I wasn’t in the mood. The first time in 10 years, and my mum wasn’t there. I won’t lie, I cried like a baby at the start line. Maybe blame it on the jet lag from traveling to Canada and back from seeing my aunt in a micro amount of time. The one person, aside from me, who was closest to my mum. She felt the loss, the emptiness, the void like I did. The gaping hole that death leaves in its wake. I didn’t want to run that day. I wanted to crawl. Like I was expanding all my limbs across hot coals and burning every single entity. Because the loss of my mum was so raw, it hurt like like the biggest burn you could ever imagine. Exposing every vein, every wound that’s ever been inflicted. Every thing I’d done wrong and never righted. Grief. What a fucker. I’d heard from ex colleagues, Kay is very poorly. I was to, ashamedly, grief stricken to see her. A few texts and phone calls, but to see her face to face would have ended me.

So 2019. No race for life. I’m struggling with my own life. My own mortality. Word from the docs is, I have the manky gene. I’m doomed. But I’m ok with that. I’m not afraid. What will be, will be. But Kay. There’s nothing more anyone can do. She’s so young. A life cut short.

I never got to run the Race for Life with her. But I will run it for her. I will run it for my mum. My cousins, taken at a ridiculously young age. Because we can’t fight genetics. We’re just predisposed. It’s life.

She died on my birthday. A legacy I’ll never forget. I’ll play some Stevie Nicks and raise a glass in her name. Rest peacefully Kay. Thank you for being my friend and teaching me real humility. I hope you’re up there chatting with my mum, the most dignified, beautiful human I was ever lucky enough to know.

@specsygurl

PTSD & me.

So, counselling has come to a end. A decision I made. After 26 sessions, I’d had enough. All talked out. Even though there’s so much I could talk about. I’m done. I’m all talked out. It’s exhausting.

Still the reoccurring nightmares, the flashbacks of that final night are still there, but fading. The last night, spent with my mum before she died in the most cruelest, horrific scene, like something out of a horror film. The last nightshift I ever worked as a nurse, years before, that kick to the head, that I can still feel, plays on my mind like a broken record. And yet, I tell no one. Maybe two people know about my PTSD. Because it’s not something that’s easy to discuss.

So fast forward a year and 5 months. It’s taken time but here I am. Still healing, still struggling in my own silent way, but hoping I’ll get back on track.

We all struggle with something. Whether we want to admit it or not. Sometimes admitting to yourself you’re not coping is the hardest part. Hiding from the world, pushing it to the back of your mind because you don’t want to admit you’re failing or not coping.

We’re all human. We make mistakes, we fail, over and over again. I fuck up. I fuck up all the time and now, I’m paying the price. And fuck does it hurt. I’m a fucked up human. But I’m trying.

PTSD doesn’t help. Makes you paranoid, gives you delusions of doom and makes you see disaster on the horizon. Because that’s all you know, that’s what you’ve seen.

It takes time. It takes patience. But most of all, it takes energy to keep going and I don’t have that much anymore. All I can do is try.

@specsygurl

Ashes.

So much plays on my mind right now. I never thought I’d feel so insecure but yet here I am. Wondering when I’ll ever feel good enough. Good enough about myself. Sometimes, I just need reassurance that I’m not slipping away from someone. Someone I adore. That self doubt is painful when no one tells you and you dread to ask because you fear the worst. The end of something good.

It’s not just that, there are things on my mind that not even I knew were there.

It’s been over a year now since mum left. I still haven’t scattered her ashes. How do you do these things? How do you know where the final resting place should be? Thinking back, I feel sick that I’ve left it this long. I feel sick thinking that I’ve forgotten her, left what remains of her in an urn, in a cupboard in a room next to others, awaiting their final resting place.

The truth is, I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to just throw them anywhere like they’re rubbish to be discarded. Mum was worth more than that. She deserves better than to be holed up in some dark cupboard somewhere.

But I don’t want to deal with it on my own. My dad can’t, my brother can’t. So that leaves me.

I wish I’d told my counsellor. 26 weeks of intensive counselling, and the one subject I never brought up. And now I’m done. Dealing with the after effects of a violent death and all the horrors it brings back. This is the one thing I pushed to the very back of my mind and now, like a catapult, it hits me.

How can I do this? How can I give my mum the send off she deserves? She never got the peaceful end she should’ve had so I can’t fuck this up. Because I’ve fucked up enough the last 2 years. The last 2 months. The last 2 days. I’m always fucking things up, especially with the one that means the most.

I don’t know. I wish I knew how. Wish I knew how to say goodbye to my mum. Ultimately, I’ll probably have to say goodbye to him too. Pain all over again. Watch my heart turn to ashes too.

@specsygurl