Tomorrow is her birthday and I have felt a bit hesitant but generally okay all week. And then suddenly I’m sitting here sobbing and cancelling all of my plans. I just miss her ❤️ grief is hard, birthdays are hard, milestones are hard, life is hard. It’s all feels so hard without them in moments like this. I know it’ll pass and soon I’ll be able to grieve with some amount of joy while remembering her but damn, those waves sure are strong.

Why me and mom? I didn’t have anyone but her. I was prepared to live single , but with her. I cried sometimes about my life and I complained to her a lot that I was torn, I couldn’t travel to work and leave her and I couldn’t stay where I was and just keep going in circles while times passes by. She made the choice for me , she died. And now I keep living in these flashbacks. Last memories which were so painful and odd and the better ones. I thought I had so much time with her but suddenly I didn’t. I don’t know why her body started collapsing now.

My mom knew she’d die suddenly and I lived with the this thought. That her body was too damaged from all the depressive over eating and all the laying down… and her not going to doctors . It was like mom had a timer on, and I was living with her not knowing when but being certain it would hurt and shock me and leave me damaged and alone . She did not want to fix things because she believed that whatever she had was beyond fixing. But before she died she got checked and regretted not knowing earlier because diabetes had damaged many organs and especially the heart…. I was behaving like an angry teenager when I found out. I didn’t rush her to a hospital but kept asking her to do labs ( she was delaying ) and i made her do it and also I stayed with her off of work for two days and got her a doctor the same day she died. The doctor reassured me she’d be okay.

Then she died! I just can’t believe what happened sometimes I feel so scared. Other times I feel hopeless… that’s how I just continue to survive. I hate that I’m not living . My mom loved me so so much. I hate the petty arguments we had. I hate that she made me believe I was the reason her heart got sick…..- I was going through a dark phase wanting to make decisions for myself. I wanted to go out by myself and her to let me get used to doing things alone. That didn’t mean I didn’t want her in my life! I love my mom so much. I don’t know how to live without her two years after she’s gone and I’m 32

Grief is a splinter.

Suppurating subcutaneously.

Inundated by what used to be

and what could’ve been.

Submerged in scar and once-soft sinew.

Sleeping softly,

silently, sometimes—

But it’s always there,

begging to be bumped into,

Startling sorrow from its sullen

slumber.

©️~HKK~

Personally it's been nearly three years since my last relationship. Im tired. I've started listening to my head more than my heart. I've learned how to survive in the real world and take care of myself more than anything. It's hard when you want to be happy but circumstances have really made you place a guard on yourself.

If anyone has any advice that would be much appreciated.

My older brother killed himself years ago, and I still feel panicked almost every time his memory comes up. Which used to be every day and is now every other day. He was a top level chef. He was also a skydiver, scuba diver, sailor and surfer. He was a mixture of gentle and fierce like we all are, but the last few years especially he was so very nice to everyone. He was hardworking and always helping his family and others. The last time I saw him he was helping me. I kissed him on the cheek while I hugged him and made him wait to leave until my 2 young boys could hug him. I had never kissed his cheek in my life. I don’t know why I did that day except I was overwhelmed with loving him. When I got the news. It was and still is a knife that I don’t understand. Everything stops and it’s like I’m looking at a gun. But I remember he had written in a journal that life was becoming less and less sweet. I often think about that as I am now older than he ever reached. And how much I would like to say goodbye to all the misery of this life. But I have kids, and a responsibility to persevere. I am resilient anyway, but knowing he left in what was probably such agony and loneliness just makes me panic when I think about it. So I can’t. And I can’t talk about it. I became estranged from my father afterwards for many reasons, but it’s been so hard to deal with the fact that I can’t think, talk, or do anything about it without harsh consequences. If anyone else is going though this, may you find peace.

How has people get pass grief? Especially if it was sudden and yall were arguing before they past? Just want some opinions on how others did?

I lost someone to suicide a little over 3 years ago now. They committed suicide not long after we broke up. Throughout our whole relationship they would always make joke about how they would do it and because the jokes were so convincing i never believed they were serious. They began doing self destructive things which included cheating on me and it ended our relationship on really bad terms and i never spoke to them again. The only time ive spoke to them since then is in my dreams where im apologising profusely for not taking it seriously and telling someone and reaching out. The grief is so painful in the first year i would genuinely hallucinate in the street when someone would ask for directions for example that it was them and even 3 years later i spend late nights thinking about ending it all myself and i even know exactly what i would write into letters for my loved ones. My ex never left a note for anyone but id want everyone to know exactly how much I love them all. I’m in a relationship myself now and i couldn’t possibly imagine leaving my partner with the guilt i was left but i just can’t continue living with this grief and guilt anymore. I’ve been on almost every antidepressant and therapy there is but i just can’t handle the grief anymore.

I feel weird writing this but I need some advice. This is some delayed processing on my end but I really need support. In September 2023, my husband (now my ex husband) left me on a random Friday. He unilaterally initiated a divorce process and moved to an apartment he’d secured for himself … down the street. For some context, he’s Australian and I was his immigration sponsor, and a few days after he left, his green card arrived. The timing was super weird. I was heartbroken and pretty numb; we’d had arguments about his mother, who had been very abusive to him and me. Before he left me, he was wavering between getting trauma support for his childhood trauma, vs literally yelling at me that I’m the problem, “not his mom.”

Four months later, in Jan. 2024, his mother suddenly and randomly (literally completely out of the blue) was diagnosed with cancer and died ten days later. We weren’t even halfway into the divorce process; I’d known her and loved her for ten years. She often raged at me when we visited for “keeping her son in America” and I always tried to extremely thoughtful and compassionate toward her. My ex admitted to a couples counselor that his mom was “the family bully.” Our final visit to Australia was awful; I was hospitalized for Covid and she was so angry that I was sick that she stared going through my social media trying to find things to start fights over. So, I temporarily unfriended her; she was outraged and my ex husband wouldn’t do anything to say like “hey let’s cool down,” it was very hard.

Basically I became the “bad object” in the family and my ex husband not only excluded me from any of the information about her death but also the funeral and obituary. The exclusion was so noticeable and hostile that friends of his parents reached out to me to say that they knew how much I loved her and that they were sorry to see the family treating me that way.

My own family of origin and friends were super dismissive as well; they said “she was horrible, f her, don’t shed a tear over her, just move on. Good riddance.” I was in a weird double-shock from adjusting to life without my husband, and then her sudden death. To this day no one has told me what happened and what things were like. I almost feel my ex husband blamed me for her death, which I know is unfair - he blamed me for a lot of his family dynamics and was veering back and forth trying to figure out what he needed. I’ve read that a lot of dysfunctional families will pin blame on the most “outsider” person, especially a woman (and especially if said woman has rocked the boat, which I did by unfriending her - though it was never meant to be permanent and I was trying to prevent her from starting conflict and combing through my personal info).

I feel immense regret. Like maybe I should’ve called the funeral director. Maybe I still can? Would I email them? I feel I don’t have a right to talk to my ex husband’s family though some have been very kind to me, like his sister. I’m supposed at how some of my friends have responded especially over time - saying stuff like “well he lost his mom.” I was like “I lost my mother in law; I wasn’t some random girlfriend or something. I called her Mum. I was literally triangulated into almost every conflict and he used me as a shield. I feel really horrible and alone.” Folks just say “yeah it sucks, he had issues with his mom that he took out on you.”

Where do I turn?

Preferably one that relates to playing cards, she was an older woman who played cards/dice all the time with her sisters, and we lost her suddenly. I am trying to make something for my Granny, one of her sisters, and need help with a quote that pertains to the thing they all loved to do the most, spend time together and play cards/dice. Thank you!