Grief

“People talk about grief as emptiness, but it’s not empty. It’s full. Heavy. Not an absence to fill. A weight to pull. Your skin caught on hooks chained to rough boulders made of all the futures you thought you’d have”. Author: Elan Master

The day my daughter left, I was frantic, full of fear and disbelief. Fear she wouldn’t be back. Fear she would be hurt, or that our Grandson would be. Fear that all those times I had a nagging feeling that she secretly despised me, I was right. I saw it in the way she looked at me or dismissed me or rolled her eyes at me. I heard it in her voice every time she told me she does not want to turn out like me. Her disapproval of me was apparent over and over again. I tried to tell myself it was a mother/daughter thing or dismiss it as normal teenage angst. But when she left, it was the ultimate way to tell me exactly how she felt. Fear she was right.

She and our 2 year old grandson were temporarily living with us and I loved having them around while she got on her feet, but she began talking to someone online, who drove from California with his dog and arrived at our home to meet her face to face. We wanted her to feel free, as an adult with autonomy, so we allowed him to stay in our home.We encouraged her to give the relationship a try. For a while it was great! I loved seeing her happy and they seemed to connect on a level I hadn’t seen in her before. we began seeing some red flags and while I don’t tell any of my grown children what to do, I did openly ask her to go slow because of the red flags. I didn’t tell her to walk away, and I didn’t say she should break it off. I didn’t speak badly of him. But, I was the one she turned to when something would happen between them that would upset her, I’m her mom and I love her with every fiber of my being, so of course I was honest with her and shared my advice. Isn’t that what parents are for? It doesn’t matter that she was 24 years old, parents never lose the instinct to feel protective of their children. Suddenly, there was a dramatic shift in the way he behaved toward us. And before we knew what was happening, she was gone. She sent an email to my husband that literally destroyed me. As I stood there reading it, it felt like the air was being sucked out of the room and I couldn’t breathe. WHAT?! She said she “could not have a relationship with me because her therapist told her with a good deal of certainty that I am sick and need help.” She accused me of having Borderline Personality Disorder, accused me of self diagnosing my 1st grade daughter with OCD, told my husband I’d eventually hurt him and he needed to protect himself at all costs, and more than that, our little girl, from me. And “fuck what mom says…” That’s the short, abbreviated and kind version. When we arrived home she had set all of the things we had given her, in the foyer, including her cell phone, which was on our plan. She was gone. They were gone.

The grief.

This was very dark, deep and suffocating grief, almost too much to bear. Every single thing I thought I knew about life, about being a mom, about relationships and people and family and most of all MYSELF, I no longer believed or understood. So much of my identity was tied into being a mom to my 5 beautiful children. Here was my oldest daughter telling me I had failed miserably at the part of my life that meant more than anything else. He sent me a random text telling me to” never contact his family again, they know all about me and to get help”. This was more than “detaching”. This was meant to hurt me. My nervous system was in overdrive, I went into shock. I felt like I had just watched my daughter die. I was grieving her physical presence but also the relationship that would be forever changed and what I would never be able to have with her again.I was existing, walking and talking, going through the motions of life, but completely living in a fog. I was slammed with shame, guilt, anger and overwhelming sadness that covered me like a heavy, wet blanket. I would count the hours until I could reasonably go to bed just to escape the overbearing weight of the sadness. Suffocating sadness. I was desperate to understand why she went to this extreme? Why didn’t she try to talk to me first? How could cutting us out of her life even be an option? How was I supposed to go on living life normally with one of my children GONE? Why didn’t she tell us to fuck off and she needed a break for a couple of weeks? Why didn’t she say she wanted us to go to therapy? Would she ever be back? How would she explain this to our grandson, who were very close to, that he wouldn’t be seeing us or E anymore? What would it be like if she did come back? All of these questions swirling in my mind, and nobody could answer them.

Anything would be better than the violent silence.

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