Author Topic: Bad person  (Read 1612 times)

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Offline Beanikki

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Bad person
« on: July 29, 2018, 09:35:24 AM »
Hi I’ve moved into here rather than keep the thread going in the welcome forum.

I have just lost my friend to brain cancer and spent many years not in touch other than an occasional Facebook message.
When I heard how ill she was I visited her in the hospital, I saw her 3 times before she passed.

The whole thing has hit me very hard, I didn’t expect it to as we weren’t close for a long time. I keep having a good cry and keep replaying the 3 visits over and over in my head.

But I can’t remember what she looked like when I last saw her. I can remember she had lost her hair and that her lips and mouth were very dry and sore looking but I cannot put it together into one image of her.
I feel guilt over losing touch and not being more proactive in getting back in touch. I always made excuses not to meet up when she asked because I had really ballooned in weight since she last saw me and I was too ashamed to go. How stupid is that? Vanity.
I feel guilty that I am feeling so bad, it’s like I don’t have the right to be this upset. Her family and partner were there with her for all the time and they should feel worse than me.

I feel guilty that people are giving sympathy to me about it, why have I told people about it all, am I after attention? I could have left it to her family to put it on Facebook but I did it and am getting lots of messages of sympathy which I don’t deserve. It’s the same at work, I told people all about what was happening- why? To gain their attention and sympathy? They didn’t know her so there was no real reason to discuss it with them. Yet I still did.

I feel like I’m a horrible person. And I sit here crying over the loss in my own private pity party.





Offline Lost675

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Re: Bad person
« Reply #1 on: July 30, 2018, 10:57:57 PM »
I think our brains shut out what we can't deal with, try as I might, there are things I just can't remember. I have heard friends talk about how my husbands loss has affected them. I don't feel it's a competition, he was their friend and they've had a loss too. Death is shocking and it's hard to get your head around. We all deal with things differently, your friends death has obviously affected you so don't best yourself up about it.

Offline Lost675

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Re: Bad person
« Reply #2 on: July 30, 2018, 10:59:23 PM »
I meant beat not best!

Offline Karena

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Re: Bad person
« Reply #3 on: July 31, 2018, 12:15:09 PM »
There is no heierarchy of grief, even though it feels like there should be -your emotions are yours alone.I think people do have friendships which remain even though circumstances make us lose touch for a while we dont need to be around them all the time but they remain our friend and these are actually often more close friendships than those where there is a lot of contact.
Grief builds guilt into us as part of its insidious nature. There will be people wishing they had visited in those last weeks, there will be others, friends and relations, wishing they had said or done something differently and all probably feeling they are bad people too, but none of you are, because none of us can see the future we can only act on what is in front of us and only with hindsight feel we should have acted fifferently, and even then had we done so. it wouldnt have changed the outcome and so we get into a spiral of guilt until eventually we can see this.
I think the memory issue is a bit like medical shock - our brains shut things out and we go into survival mode, then filter them over time . :hug: