I (46m) was very close to my Mum (79) and lived with her all my life. She got a terminal diagnosis last August and spent five weeks at home dying. I lost it straight away, unable to sleep or eat and felt suicidal. I had to see the local crisis mental health team.
When she actually died I started to feel completely numb and got through the funeral & the next few weeks with only a few tears, no major meltdowns, just a little sob at least once a day.
My sleep became almost non-existant however and my mood soon started to plummet. The suicidal thoughts came back and I decided I was going to act on them but as it was October I wanted to wait till after Christmas. Because I was convinced I wasn’t going to be around much longer I told myself I didn’t have to grieve anymore and the tears all dried up.
I saw the mental health team again in November and they put me on an antidepressant (mirtazapine). This helped me sleep and after about six weeks the antidepressant effect came through and my mood improved drastically during December.
By January my mood had improved so much I didn’t feel like suicide anymore. However I haven’t been to able to ‘turn the grief back on’ again. It’s as if the whole thing never happened.
So just 5 months after losing my beloved Mum my mood is far too good, I feel no pain or sense of loss. As I type this today I feel fine. But I’m very worried about what’s going to happen later on. I shouldn’t feel this good after such a massive loss.
I think there are 3 possible reasons why:
- my brain subconsciously knows how painful losing Mum is and isn’t allowing me to feel the pain in order to protect me
- the mirtazapine has made me feel emotionally blunted
- I’m consciously not trying to think about losing her
But surely I can’t keep this up forever? I want to live now but my worry is that someday I’ll feel the full pain of losing her and it will send me into a suicidal spiral again.
But I know I need to feel the grief in order to be able to ‘heal’. Am I just setting myself up for a massive crash down the line? My family think I’m ‘getting better’ but the reality is I haven’t processed any of the grief, I’ve just ignored it or talked myself out of feeling it.
Surely this situation can’t last forever, I know I’m not grieving properly but I don’t really want to as the way I feel now is much better than the way I was before Christmas.
If anyone else has ever experienced anything like this or has any advice please comment.