I feel so alone. I don’t know if I have ever felt as alone as I have done this past week. I can’t really say what happened, I only know that I woke up one day and felt the weight of such a profound sadness that I could not shift.
Now anything will set me off, the kindness of a stranger, an ambulance driving past at full speed, a songs on the radio about love, loss, hope, the sad things my children say about my Dad, the fact that I can’t make death make any more sense to them that I can for myself. If he had lived in Neverland, said my four-year-old, then he never would have died. If Father Christmas had used his special magic, she then said, he could have made Grandpa live for ever.
I was sewing for a while, and that made me happy, but I somehow lost faith in myself after I woke up that morning and haven’t made anything since.
I feel so wholly separated from my family, emotionally as well as in distance. It makes me not want to speak to them at all at the moment. My mum is doing fine, she has a very good support system around her and although she is sad, she is ok. My sister has always been in a world of her own, nothing has changed there. My brother, who said he would always look out for me when I told him 6 months ago that I wasn’t ok, and that I felt he had left me alone in my grief, who said he would call every week just to talk, never called. If I have to have one more conversation with my mum gushing about how wise he his, about how sage his advice is, this enlightened brother of mine, so wise that he simply forgets to ever speak to his sister, I think I might hang up the phone. He’s having a baby, he’s too busy. He’s been having a baby for the past 8 months. I had two babies and don’t remember anyone giving me a break or falling over themselves to give me recognition for simply being a mother. I don’t recall anyone saying anything at all.
I have long known that my brother is the Golden Boy in my mum’s eyes. She will ask him for advice, but dismiss the thought of ever asking me, and then gush about his answers, which are the same answers I would have given. But she has never given me the credit for actually being an adult. It has never mattered that I got married, that I had children, that I moved away all those years ago. Even when my dad got ill I was always the little one, can’t handle the truth, she let my brother in, but not me. Only now when I look back do I feel that I was almost unaware of how serious his illness was, I was simply not told. When I was finally informed I remember the words, “we are all adults now, so it’s right you should know..”.
And I am so angry about all of that. That I feel as though I was the child pushed away, and now I am here, on the outside looking in, held at arms length from any real decisions or importance.
How are you? they might ask in a couple of weeks. How can I answer that question when this is what I feel? This is too much to tell somebody. So what do I do? How do I move forward? I don’t want to be bitter. I want to have a relationship with my family that is based on mutual respect.