((( froggie2 )))

I posted this in the DD Forum after I recently lost a good friend. I thought I'd share my grief issues with you and maybe we can lean on each other.

One of my PTSD triggers is people dying. I have suffered with pathological/complicated grief since my father died when I was ten.

I was very traumatized by that loss. Grieving was not talked about and if I questioned my father's death, I could see the great discomfort on people's faces so I stuffed all feelings down first, then went about stuffing the memory of him away with the grief. I still cannot remember him...I think I hold onto the grief because that's the only memory I have.

Within a year of him dying, people (mostly brothers but others) were overdosing (my house became a junkie flop-house) and I was literally trying to wake the dead (DOA's) or I'd wake up to the house burning in the middle of the night from ciggys.

I began obsessing about my family perishing. I was petrified that dealers would break in while we were sleeping and kill us for the money my brothers owed them. I was eleven.

So now, even all these years later, when a loved one dies it sparks that old fuse, complicated by the fact that my two brothers actually did die in the long run.

It makes me want to push people I care about away because I don't want to feel the hurt of "potentially" losing them.

This is why I distance myself.

Unresolved grief bubbles to the surface and mixes with the new grief which gets me all messed up and brings me to my knees.