February's a bad month for me. Granted, I've never been a fan of Valentine's Day, but now I loathe the day. It's a yearly reminder of what I've lost. Some years I'm okay. I make it thru. But other years I just want to die. This year is looking to be the latter. I've had my first panic attack of the season and it was a doozy. My usual methods helped very little.
February 12, 2011 I lost my mom to cancer. And the pain hasn't subsided. It never will. You just learn to survive with it.
She was home. It didn't matter what I did, she was home. I lost so much that day. More than anyone can imagine. When the world was trying to change me, she encouraged me to be who I wanted. She let me explore myself without pushing me into a mold.
I didn't cope well to begin with. I was told at a young age that crying was a sign of weakness. I didn't want to be seen as weak, so I trained myself to not cry. Which makes mourning painful, emotionally and physically.
By default, I bottle up anything emotional. Emotions equate to weakness, because that's how I lived for so long. Even now, trying to bring out true emotions is hard. I know it's no longer a weakness, but rewiring my brain is hard. And this month makes it nigh impossible. All I want to do is cry. But crying causes pain. So I fight against it. Which only leads to more problems.
How can I work thru the pain if I never properly grieved in the first place?
Yes, I cried when my mom passed. I cried a lot. But I was also numb to my feelings. I distracted myself. With making the video for the funeral home. With packing up my mom's clothes for my dad. With watching my nephew for my sister. I distracted myself until I couldn't feel anything. But I never grieved.
Five years later and I still haven't grieved. I've distracted myself thru everything. Everything that I should have had an emotional reaction thru, I didn't. I didn't know how to. I don't know how to grieve. I don't know how to live without numbing myself. Emotions cause me pain because I never knew how to experience them. They were a weakness. They caused problems.
Even now I'm trying to stop the tears from falling.
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