My Support Forums - View Single Post - how do you grieve major losses from childhood and adolescence?

The Crazy Rambler · Sep 23, 2010, 04:06 PM

Well hi everyone...
i came upon this website cuz i am bipolar. and since i have just lost my father, i thought to take a look here. as difficult as it is to have lost him for good, the whole situation of our family is so bizar and crazy that i don't really know how to grief his death.
you see, i broke up with my parents and brother over 20 years ago (when i was about 21-22) because we were so dysfunctional and i was totally loosing it. i was contemplating suicide...
since then i have tried to get back in touch, which they kept refusing point blank.
however, i received a letter from them in june 2005 (and we had been exchanging some letters since), which shook my world upside down. since then i have been in a rollercosater. first of all i had to stop working (i did social work in ukraine, but am dutch). i went to the states for a three month visit and ended up staying more then three years. last summer i went over the border with canada to renew paperwork, but it wasn't right and i was send back to the netherlands. i 'lost' all my stuff since it is still in the states. thankfully kept for me by a couple of good people.
during my time in the states i was first diagnosed with a severe burn-out by my counselor. but during our sessions together, things were not really going well and we didn't seem to move foreward. i was continually allover the place. i knew i suffered major depressions. but after a visit to the psychiatrist he diagnosed me with bipolar. it didn't take me long to realise it was true as everything slowly started to fall into place. meds were started, and although i am a rapid cycler, things started to improve. i have a wonderful counselor, i am so blessed he decided to help me and we have come such a long way. it was so though losing the face-to-face sessions. i am thankful though for modern technology that enables us to continue with me in the netherlands. i still speak to him weekly.
now, after a year i have my own appartment, fully furnished. in fact, i just had moved less than a month when i was informed over the email that my dad had died and was buried already. my parents had retired to france, that's where he was buried.
even though i knew from their first letter that my dad had colon cancer, it was a real shocker to know he had died. especially to be informed by my brother over email, which i was reading in a internet cafe since i didn't have internet at home yet.....
there have been many issues in my family concerning me, from severe neglect to abuse in its various forms. none of which my parents ever took responsibility for. in actual fact, i had to be so careful in what i wrote to them, because everything would be twisted and used to hurl insults at me, making me the guilty one. it took all those years of counseling to come to the point where i felt ready to tell my story and write them a extensive letter. for my sake. because i had come to realise it's my story, it's part of me, it deserves to be respected and to be told. no matter how they would respond. because i am my own person, with my own identity and i want to become all that i am meant to be.
and then dad died.
and since he is the reason for seeking relationship (in a very simple form as more was not likely to happen, if at all), that reason has gone now too.
but i have started to write the letter. for my sake. since the story still deserves to be told. even if they won't ever read it.
but.... there is so much pain, so much loss, robbed from my childhood, robbed from innocence, robbed from any sense of safety (honestly, i have no clue what that word means), left to fend for myslef, never protected, robbed of my identity, my self esteem etc. etc.
how does one grieve all of that?
inside of me is such a huge pit of emotions. i have a hard time to even recognise what i am feeling, let alone concentrate on feeling that particular emotion. when speaking to my counselor, i feel safe enough to let come things to the surface, but on my own i am scared to death. i am sad about a lot of things, especially all the losses i suffered during childhood and adolescence that left its scars on my further life.
in my little experience, grieving is a very lonely process, is it not?
can anyone relate???????????

well, if you made it to here, i offer my sincere apologies for rambling like a mad woman. my name should have warned you