I’ve been reading through a load of posts and have found that most of them are fairly recent, but I lost my dad just over 5 years ago now. I was thirteen at the time, secondary school in full swing, two younger siblings, living abroad. To this day it is still the most traumatic experience of my life, and it has shaped every aspect of my personality and my views on life.
In my mind I am justifying (although I am incredibly aware that I shouldn’t feel any need to justify) my post by the fact that up until this year, I have dealt with my grief through distractions and internalisation. I had a year of therapy, which undoubtably helped, but I had no time at all to properly deal with the haunting feelings of grief. I started university this year, in a different country, and suddenly I had SO MUCH TIME. I felt the full extent of the grief that I thought I was dealing with (intensified by the loss of my 13 year old cousin last August, after 6 months of living in hospital and hundreds of horrible procedures) and I didn’t know how to handle it. I was surrounded by all these people who spent every other day clubbing, drinking, hungover, and I couldn’t get on board with spending my life that way. I have definitely found that experiencing such profound loss at such a young age has made me so much more aware of general feelings of mortality and the value of life; I will sometimes look at my family and just get a sudden urge to burst into tears at the thought of losing any of them. Feeling the horrible pain of loss again is by far my biggest fear. I’ve also struggled with the concept of alcohol, as my cousin experienced liver failure and had a transplant last year, and the thought of essentially poisoning my own functioning liver feels selfish after everything she went though. (I know this sounds odd but that’s another thing I have come to peace with; grief and loss do promote irrational logic sometimes!)
I felt completely isolated at uni as I didn’t know who to talk to or how to stop feeling like I was so different to everyone. I obviously had my wonderful family, and it always felt like a relief to spend time with them, but I knew I needed to start working on the way I was understanding and handling my grief if I wanted to live ‘happily’ alongside it. Since then, I have done so much reading, meditating, journaling, talking, thinking, just trying to be able to think about my dad and my cousin without it becoming incapacitating pain, and I know I’m finally getting to grips with my thoughts and emotions, even though not a day goes by where I don’t feel the pain of their absence. I also know I am different to a lot of the people around me within my university bubble; experiencing grief makes you different, it changes your life focus and your priorities. I’m emotional, (overly) sensitive, living in a new country with an excruciating load on my shoulders that most 18 year olds can barely even imagine (I don’t know if this makes me sound like I picture myself on some sort of high horse, but statistically it is true I guess, and thank god it is because the pain of losing a parent is the kind of pain that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy).
I didn’t intend to ramble so much. I hadn’t realised how much I had to say until I was scrambling to fit it one idea before the next one replaced it. I don’t even think I can read this back so apologies if anything doesn’t make sense. I have so much on my mind constantly (I tend to overthink a lot) so I definitely think having somewhere to put it where it can be read by others in similar positions will help me.
I lost my dad to suicide, and that is what I think about a lot, but he was also the kindest, calmest, most hilarious man I have ever known, and the 13 years I had with him I will treasure for the rest of my life.
If anyone ever needs to talk, I would be more than happy to listen 
M x