It’s been nearly four years since I moved into my first home with my partner. Just a month later, I found out that my mum had been diagnosed with cancer. Fourteen months after that, I lost her to this terrible illness. I thought I was strong, that I could cope because ‘I knew it was coming.’ Believing I was ready, I proposed to my partner, and we began trying to start a family. We got pregnant quickly, but then we had our first miscarriage. We didn’t let that stop us—we tried again right away and conceived again. But on the day of our scan, we lost that baby too. All of this happened in the span of about 15 months.
Then, Christmas 2023 came, and I lost my grandma. A month later, in January, we suffered another miscarriage. Throughout this time, I became distant and cruel to my partner. I thought I was coping, but when she took off her ring and asked for time apart, the pain and grief from the past three years hit me all at once. It was then that my partner told me she had spoken to her stepmum about how I never truly dealt with losing my mum. Hearing the woman I love say that, and to someone else instead of me, sent me into a deeper spiral.
I’ve developed high levels of anxiety and have done things that have only hurt my partner more. I don’t know how to handle all of this, especially when the one person I want to talk to doesn’t want to talk to me, and I keep upsetting her and losing her trust.