I, fuck, literally no one is online, it's just a fact not an accusation. My grandma is in hospice, I got to go over there and we all have to be stoic about everything and I can't. I can't I can't I can't. Holy shit is this bad. I thought I had everything under control. I'm just laying here in bed like, feeling completely alone and lost. I gotta get up, gotta get up and do my part for this family, the one person holding us all together is going to be dead forever.
So it turns out she's not immiently dead yet, they actually want to discharge her after 5 days but no one wanted to tell me that. Godddd, like pretty much whenever something goes wrong I'm like "oh God this is it she's going to die." She's skeletal and yellow right now because her body isn't processing iron very well. How much worse is she going to look by the time she actually dies? I can't imagine her looking more sickly than this.... The movies totally lied to me. I keep like messaging my sister when there's bad news, I'm like chicken little and the sky falling
I'm here for another night on deathbed vigil of family matriarch duty. I've been in this stupid room for days, weeks (36 hours) Probably...im so drained... I get to go home at six and shower. I said I'd be back at 9pm to stay the night again. I promised my sister because she started crying. Ajdjddjsifhdj. I need to sleep... i got 30 minutes of sleep last night. I dont feel like a human with emotions anymore. Also my sister said I might have to plan the funeral? Wtf?? I can't even call the car repair guy to fix the leak in the trunk. She thinks my dad and uncle might be too distraught and I'll have to step up.
-pets a lot- Can´t your sister maybe plan the funeral, or at least help instead of dumping it on you? (ALso gentle reminder: talk to your counsellor when you see them helping you with this is very much their job adn they probably know useful things)
She is in Texas and would love to help but she's in Texas and can't do anything? Maurine absolutely would, she's so much more organized and driven then i am
Also end of life medicine is fucking weird? I've had four people swear to me that she can hear me even though she's completely unresponsive at this point and I should talk to her anyway. So ok, I'll buy that, when the body shuts down you get left without the means or strength to communicate, the last thing to go is hearing. But she can't hear very well, she's 94 and has hearing aids. No they say, she can hear you. Then another person who worked as a nurse for years says that it's bunk. And I'm like, ok I was jussst starting to accept the whole talking to her thing but you are probs right and it's bunk, because how the fuck is being on the edge of death supposed to fix her hearing. So it's pointless for me to be here except as a comfort to the living because she has no awareness??? It's logical that they'd tell you to talk to the dying, it's a way for the living to get closure? To say what they need to say in order to move on? But the thing is one of the most experienced nurses who has been doing this for years 100% believes that they can hear you? Like some other people may have been bullshitting me but he wasn't. From the stories I've heard, even those who seem helpless and completely disconnected will still wait to die until loved ones visit their deathbed. Somewhere at the very end of life are choices where there should be none...
autonomic processing, maybe. the conscious mind could be already pretty much gone, but the brain on its lowest levels is still receiving input. so there could still be a "there are familiar voices" recognition in the really deep parts of the brain even though the surface awareness is gone, and even if the hearing isn't that great sorry if that doesn't make sense
She's been dead for....three days. I don't know, am I grieving? Like I should be grieving? But I'm more focused on helping other people who are grieving? I was definitely grieving at hospice when she was next to me dying. Now I'm just?? I'm still have bouts where I'm sad and cry, but don't connect it to thoughts of her. The only thing was seeing her skeletal and yellow, t he horror of that still makes me flinch. While she was dying I was diagnosed with major depression. And I still feel like that all the time...im actually doing better because I have a purpose, an obstacle besides my own brain? I tried to bring it up with my psych but we got on a tangent that was frankly kind of stupid. She thinks the word "but" can be replaced by "and". No it cant, i get what you are trying to say, but "but" has a fundamentally different meaning and can't be replaced without confusion as a connector of two ideas. I think it's about bringing together two contradictory statements while acknowledging the importance of one over the other without dismissing the former as unimportant or complimentary. Ok ok, not going off on that again. I'm gonna bring it up with her next time. I'm wondering if I'm too depressed to feel lasting sadness about anything besides the usual suspects. When I was sitting there waiting for them to take away the body. I was shocked and shaken, but otherwise it was a normal day on the hopelessness depression carousel. She wasn't part of my support system, I don't think she's ever been. She was a source of anxiety for years, moreso the last few since I stopped doing as much for her. I was waaaaay more affected when my best friend ended our friendship, I definitely went through all five stages of grief and it took me over a year to recover. This? Idk? It's nice to have a legitimate excuse to be fucking sad and moody all the time? People expect me to be depressed but putting on a brave face? Like I've been intermittently for three years? Idk, idk if this all started when she got really sick. Christmas got now levels of bad and I was feeling intense guilt from being away. 99% of my trouble with her has always been feeling guilt because I couldnt measure up. Now she's dead and that's gone. I can't let her down anymore. I canr beat myself up about being a shitty granddaughter. Shes noe dead and cant be hurt by my bullshit. Then again, I remember some years where our relationship was so much better and I wasn't so fucking depressed? I could do things for her because I wanted to? Even if she was still sometimes an asshole, I could still achieve and do. I don't, I don't know man this was one big tangent.. I don't what I'm feeling now. My sister, father and uncle are so sad that she's gone? So I'm focused on them and their clearly motivated grief? At least I can...pretend that I'm not some weird demon that feels detached from thoughts of dead person but still cries from intense, unsourced sadness.
My mom hasn't called my sister yet, not since grama died. I could murder her, God is she going to take this feud past her death. Just call your grieving daughter you stubborn ass. It doesn't matter anymore the old lady is dead and you are still alive. Help your children omg.
I really want to start something with her, really bad. I want to fight, I want to scream. I'm not gonna, it would be bad, i'd regret it. Just screaming into the abyss.
Okay okay so hi still obsessing of grama. I think...I think my problem is that she spent most of my life being disappointed with me. She wasn't interested in excuses, she wanted results! She wouldn't have been disappointed if I had managed to achieve certain milestones in a timely manner like my sister and every other member of my family. Her decades long feud with my mom didn't help. I ended up with frustrated and disappointed grama, I spent years hiding from her as much as possible so that I wouldn't have to be judged by someone else in the same harsh way I judged myself. Even when, as an adult, I tried to build a better relationship, it worked for awhile, I visited her a couple times a week, tended her garden and brought her things from the farmers market. It was ok for a few years until she pulled me aside and told me that 1.) My mom was keeping me at home by always telling me what I wanted to hear (they're fucking feud hi) 2.) If I didn't move on I'd end up taking care of my parents til they died and have no life of my own. J took what she said to heart, but it didn't help me. It made me feel the same way she always made me feel, Inadequate, intrinsically flawed and ashamed. She's such a different person then me, all she could see in my failures over the years was laziness and/or all my mom's fault. I here all these things she did to protect and encourage other members of my family. About how great she was. Well, for me, she could make me feel like absolute garbage with a few well placed sentences. I could never perform at the level that would avoid her disappointment and frustration for long. She's the one that told me that "sorry" doesn't mean anything, the only thing that matters is a change in behavior. I keep hearing that she loved me? She never said it, she was personable but didn't show affection beyond smiles and a friendly tone. If she loved me, why did she keep holding me to standards that i couldn't meet? Why did I have to hide my feelings from her? Why did I have to force cheerfulness when she said things that hurt? Why was i so afraid of her judgement? I could never challenge her views on me because I was also disappointed in me for failing over and over, for not being able to meet her standards. The last time we had a clash, she was going on and on about my brother-in-law's weight. I would pretty much die in battle for that man, tried to ask her to be more understanding, I argued with her that it wasn't greed that made him so fat, he had a fucking medical condition that makes it really hard to manage his weight. I wouldn't budge so she said something like. "Your sticking up for him because he tells you what you want to here about your issues". It was a nice reminder that yes, she always uses personal attacks if someone doesn't march to her beat, viscious personal attacks that will hit precisely where it hurts the most, which is why nobody in my family ever argued with her directly except my mom. ....maybe I am going through the stages of grief, but the anger is less, "why did they have to die" and more like "why were you shitty to me my whole life? Why did I spend so much effort trying and failing to win your approval? Why did you tell me that I was going to die alone instead of help me..idk, not be on that path? Why do I have to fucking stop myself from occasionally treating other people like you treated me?
I'd like to thank everyone on the stream for calming me the fuck down, I was spiraling into a pit of negativity before we started. Life is shitty, but it's not irrevocably shitty. I need to remember that.
Summary: incoherent rant where I yell at my brain for being so unmanageable. I've gotten an hour if sleep because of an rp which was great and so my garbage brain is picking apart everything and making up reasons why people don't like me and also the rp wasn't great because suddenly I think the other person wasn't happy about it. Even though there's no evidence..just they aren't very demonstrative out of character and my garbage brain can't handle that, no, my grey matter needs way more validation when I'm feeling fragile and if I don't get it then the thing was obviously bad, what was I thinking look at all these mistakes and oversites I made. Oh god this is too stressful we messed up let's never talk to them again they hate us. Fuck off brain, just fuck right off with this bullshit, stop making every nice thing bad if it wasn't perfectly free of ambiguity? No you can't message the person demanding clarification on the thing you made up them feeling. Just because you write essays about how things went in to doesn't mean everyone does that. Brain you are supposed to be sleeping stop crying omfg why are you like this? Gotta learn how to validate myself and not rely completely on other people to validate me. It's not there job, it's not.. So I just lay here having all these needs that other people can't really do anything about anyway, but I want them to. Just powerless. What is this fabled ability to selfsooth and validate my own existence, and how do I get some? I just want to sleep....
I think I slept and now I feel better, maybe selfcare is screaming into your vent thread on the Internet?
Total vent: day before the funeral, all the family is here I had too much caffeine and now I'm screaming inside and I feel really out of control and I want to go cry somewhere alone with no noise. Tomorrow I'm having zero caffeine no matter how tired I am. Uggggghhhh
Spoiler: night before the funeral and emotiondump I just need to type this somewhere.. I feel almost the same as the day she died. Had to drive off after I took my mom home because I needed to cry so badly. I feel so alone, I just, I...everyone had good experiences with her except my mom and I. To me, I loved her and thought she was great but was also afraid of her disapproval, she could just destroy me with a few words. She was so much better then me and I couldn't meet her expectations. I tried so hard for awhile but I couldn't be a different enough person to behave acceptably. When I was young and spiraling down into failure and depression, I could have used her strength. But she never tried to help me, all she could do was get in power struggles with my mom. It was all about my mom, me and my problems were baffling and in the shadows. Whenever I try to peel back the layers of my feelings about her, my self hatred just hits me in the face. She became...like a personification of my self hatred. I don't how much is real and how much is projecting.. I'm so...i can't see anything clearly, I can't sort anything out, it's just a wreck of strong emotions, guilt, jealousy, sadness, I don't know what goes where or how it fits together. My brother in law says he's worried about me? Maybe I'll get the chance to tell him about my depression? Maybe a little of how bad it's been? Can I please tell someone in my family about my suicidal thoughts? Just one person, just so someone knows. I can't tell any blood relative about it, even my sister hasn't reached out to me about grama dying even though she's right there. Feeling make everyone uncomfortable and it would be too shameful. Not safe. That's the only way I can describe it, it's not safe to talk about that. To talk about anything thats wrong with me. Since I got depressed way back at age 12, i felt like there was something horribly wrong with me and nobody wanted to here about it, so best to hide it. Goal: be publically sad tomorrow, it's allowed. Also to cry in public because that is allowed, also to have a heart to heart with Andy because damnit you want to tell him, your problems are not shameful and don't have to be hidden from every single family member.
I finally figured it out, whenever I have to think about my own problem for an extended time. I get really really upset afterwards, it usually doesn't hit me until I'm alone. Usually I don't do anything remotely difficult on the day I see my psychologist, especially not afterwards. I almost ruined a day out with friends by trying to tell my best friend a tiny bit about my difficulties at the beginning.. and then I was an anxious tense mess for the rest of the day. I feel pretty much then exactly as i do now. Anxious and tense and shivery, like im waiting to be attacked. I couldn't get rid of the feeling until I was completely distracted by the dnd session we were playing...and it all came back after I dropped my friend off that night and was alone in the car. It was really bad, I just fell into my pit and couldn't get out. Probably the worst cry session I've had in a week. Luckily my driving isn't effected by me emotionally losing my mind on the freeway :/. Looking at the previous entry, I never got to talk to Andy, we were too busy for the short time he was here, I was waiting and waiting but no. He said that we should talk on Skype but I don't think I could do that? Idk. The week of the funeral was me pretty much driving around for an hour and crying every night, I was always so emotionally spent every day. It was relentless.
