Not good enough

Please mods, can you leave this here if possible, because this part of the forum is where I feel comfortable and where the lovely familiar 'faces' are. If you do need to move it though, I absolutely understand.

I am a couple of months away from the 5 year anniversary of my mother's death. Today, I am haunted by all the things I did wrong. I want to really beat the absolute living sh#t out of my selfish 24 year old self.

I could not cope adequately with my consultant telling me I might be blind by 25. I could not cope with the invasive three monthly testing. I could not even ****ing cope with sleeping in a dark room, because when I woke I would panic and think my sight was already gone. I could not cope with my mother's dementia, which made her do crazy *** stuff. I could not cope with watching her disintegrate as a human being with autonomy and opinions and wit and warmth. I could not cope with life, full stop.

I did terrible things. I kept losing my patience.

- I shouted at her, over the TV remote, before we knew she had dementia because I thought she was just trying to wind me up by pretending not to know how to use it and constantly getting me to find the show she wanted.

- I shouted at her when my horse (my beautiful girl, who mum got me for my 18th birthday) stood on a nail and got infected and I was terrified she was going to die.

- I shouted at her when I was late leaving to drive to my pre-marriage course (probably because at that point, my gut knew the relationship was over already).

- The worst of all, I was fighting with my stupid, arsehole ex, and so tired from all the driving - I skipped a day at the hospital, and the next day I went back and she could not speak and had slipped into unconscious. I should have been there. I should have been there for her last bit of talking and laughing and conscious engaging.

I want to throw my computer at the wall and I want to burn myself with cigarettes. Obviously, I will do neither - I will content myself with smoking one instead, and drinking a cup of tea. But I deserve vast and severe suffering. I need rage and damage and pain and to destroy that pathetic, disgusting little loser piece of me. For failing to meet the needs of the person I loved. For not being good enough.

I can hear the hurt in your post. You need to externalise all that anger and hurt you have, instead of blaming yourself.
Can you go for a run? Punch pillows, draw and write all the anger out?

I hope you find just writing that post out helped you.

hey. i relate to this. my dad died from melanoma when i was 10. i watched him deteriorate from a very powerful man into someone lying in a hospital bed in my moms bedroom. one time i brought our cat from outside and put him on my dads bed. he yelled at me. i got so mad i went into my room and wrote on a piece of paper that i wished my dad would die. i remember that event to this day and it was almost 18 yrs ago. the guilt i feel for it is immense and sometimes unbearable. its hard to feel guilty and not be able to apologize or make peace bc that person is no longer alive. so it just eats away at me every day and left me for years feeling like i am a bad horrible person that deserves to be punished. the thing is there is no guide book on how to deal with death. we all react in different ways. i truly feel that i have to forgive myself in order to move on. but what does that look like? i havent found out yet..

I feel quite weak and dizzy because I smoked. I don't smoke regularly enough for my body to be able to not bat an eyelid. A run or pummelling pillows would finish me off!

Also feeling rather sick.

I don't know what I'd draw or write to myself if I tried. I think here has been enough, for now. While I was outside having my cigarette, I did realize she wouldn't want me to be like this. She'd be horrified.

I'm so sorry you can relate to this and I am so sorry for your loss.

I don't know how to unlock the way to forgiving myself. I wish I knew if there was some magic formula, and could articulate it for you. However, you must remember that you were a child, and you weren't equipped to deal with the cloud of emotions terminal illness brings along. You didn't do anything wrong. Your dad knew you really didn't mean that you wanted him to die - you were reacting with a child's flare of temper to a situation you were in. The same way children might say 'I hate you!' to their parents, but they don't mean it

thank u. i didnt mean to hijack ur thread. i just wanted to say that i can relate to feeling guilt and regret

It did in a way, funnily enough. I don't know what that means. I feel guilty about feeling slightly better, as if I just fling my sh#t at people - I don't deserve to feel better. But then I know rationally I don't deserve to feel so appallingly bad (to the point where my head gets completely filled with an urge to destroy myself as punishment) in the first place.

I am really, really confused.

Goodness no! You didn't hijack! I am just sorry that you can identify with the grief and guilt so much. Because it's shite to feel like that.

You do not deserve vast and severe suffering. You strive to do your best with the cards that you have been dealt. You have tremendous insight regarding your own MI issues.

Cut yourself some slack sweetie, you're a good woman.

IG, I'm so sorry you are going through this!

I can absolutely relate to your post, as well! I don't want to hijack your thread, either, but I did almost everything you mentioned except for fight with an ex. My mother died 01/26/10..five years ago, too.

I'm also looking for ways to live with myself.

T says that people rarely get the ending they expect/want when it comes to their parents...

I wish I could be better help. Being a caregiver and losing our parents is one of the hardest things.

Thank you. I know I did try to do this. I was aware at the time I didn't feel resourced enough to cope, but there was no alternative. No way of making the madness stop for a while.

And things demanded my attention, that I still don't know how else I would have coped better with. A local farmer was trying to intimidate me off my land, cut off my water supply (absolute nightmare, driving enough water for two horses to the fields from home every day) hinted at poisoning my horses, leaving out a bucket of feed. I can remember screaming in the road, totally losing the plot, because I just didn't know what to do anymore. Thank god my wonderful best friend was with me (had flown over the day before) gently and tactfully helped me move my girls to a different field, and drove me to the police station to report him. He still f#cking managed to damage one of my horses a month later, she still has a scar.

There were so many things that were wrong and needed attention, but I should have found a better way of dealing with it all so I could have focused more on my mother.

I'm so sorry for your experience. Really I am. I envy people who don't know, who have never had to do it, I think in some ways it is another layer of innocence shredded away. It's too final. I still can't believe mine is never coming back, I still keep getting urges to jump on a plane and go home to see her (when I was suicidal, this got twisted round in my head as the perfect reason I should kill myself - to go home to her. She would have been furious with me if I'd acted on it!).

I wish there was something I could say that would help. Just know that I read your words and am so sorry you're struggling so with this. When my dad passed away in December of 2013 I hadn't been back to my hometown to visit him in close to a year. So I dealt with some guilt over that, and at never talking to him on the phone. The one piece of solace I have is that when I was there visiting that last time while he was still alive, I drove him from his house down to my sisters and we got to talk for about an hour. I'm glad I had that to hold onto when I was struggling with the guilt. My t helped me a lot with that.

IG, I think it is the nature of goodness that allows us to feel guilt, even when it is misplaced. The problem is the hating ourselves for it and trying to destroy the hate by hurting ourselves. Sounds rather convoluted, I think; but essentially, I believe that being able to feel guilt even when we needn't comes from a place of goodness and humanity. And perhaps the more we can acknowledge and accept the impulse, the less painful such guilt can be.

I don't know if this is helpful....but, as a mother of three, as a parent, I know there are times when my kids batter against me, and take out stuff on me that life has dealt them. I'm their mum, that's my job, and it's okay. My kids can be so unfair, rude, aggressive, they can throw all the anger and frustration at me and their dad cos they can't deal with it at source. They can be funny, gorgeous, amazing, loving...it's a real mixed bag being a parent. It's what we sign up for (or should, anyway). I know that, if I were ill and my kids were angry at me, it would be okay, I would understand, and I hope that they would know that I would always forgive them for this, and always hold them in my hearts, even when I can also call them every name under the sun. I would not want them to feel guilty or bad for allowing me to be their parent, and be their rock when they needed it.

Hi IG,
I too relate to your post. I lost my patience/temper with my Mum many times even though much of what I was frustrated about related to her mental illness and meds. I shouted down the phone and really upset her on several occasions. There was one thing I said when I was 17 that I still feel incredibly guilty about 12 years later.
Before she died last year she asked me to get her an emergency alarm to wear round her neck and gave me the number of her social worker to ring and arrange it. I didn't get round to it. She was found dead in the hallway of her flat and she'd been there for hours. It haunts me that she could have spent her dying moments thinking 'if only she had got me that alarm'.
All I can say is that I empathise so much with what you're feeling. I hope you can make peace with these feelings; you are clearly such a good person because you truly care.

IG this is incredibly hard to go through. I'm going to point out one element of your memory there. No one understands why it happens but sometimes a loved one deteriorates quickly in the single day or just one afternoon's absence of family. It's like the sick person takes the time alone to start letting go. That doesn't make it "right" but it's a pattern lots have observed as their parents die. You missed a day because you're human, you were overwhelmed. Really instead of punishment you deserve self forgiveness. The medical stuff you were dealing with was scary and naturally was going to bring about self doubt. The 5 year anniversary makes things harder for ruminating. We are glad you are able to share with us on PC.

I'm so sorry for your loss, and for the guilt your suffered. I'm really glad you had that good journey travelling to your sister's place, and that your therapist was able to help you. Thank you

The drive to hurt myself as 'revenge' for my shortcomings at the time has eased now.

I do feel intense guilt at times, and it can bowl me over. However, I think I feel guilty as well for some things that actually weren't my fault as well. When my head quietened down, I tried to unpick some of it, and as well as the guilt for the events I outlined in my OP there are suffocating feelings of pure helplessness. They relate to things I just had no idea how to deal with.

For example, once my mother forgot which parts of her body had been amputated from previous cancers, and sat there with me and my brother and the consultant, denying it in her quiet, well-spoken voice, and looking so hurt and vulnerable and lost. I didn't know what to say to make it alright. Nobody knew what to say. I remember this - and a million other instances - and it swallows me up. There's guilt at not having had the right words, and something else alongside the guilt that I can't articulate.

I know all this, and you also sound exactly like the kind of parent I want to be in the future.

It just feels like it was my turn to be the parent and look after my mother, and I screwed it up.

This sounds incredibly tough I'm so, so sorry. I hope you are okay. It must still be so raw for you, only happening last year.

I'm so sad there seem to be quite a few of us who relate to this stuff.

Yes, I do know this tends to happen. Nurses told us about this a lot - that a child would fly half way across the world to be with their dying mother, or whoever, would give them a cuddle or whatever - and then go get a cup of coffee and the person would die when they weren't in the room.

Mine didn't die for many more weeks. I feel like I grew up almost overnight, and from that day when I walked in and she was unconscious I did everything for her as well as possible. It was only then I transformed into protective mama bear mode, and nobody could have done more for her and fought every impossible step of the way to make sure she eased out of the world the way she did.

But. That day I missed. We all thought she was trying to hang on for my wedding. What if when I didn't come, she 'forgot' what she was hanging on for

And I called off the wedding because the final straw was my 50 year old fiance being astonishingly immature about the terminal phase and my mother's death. I feel, maybe if I'd managed to stay in love with him and not been fighting and had visited that day, and got married, maybe she would have lived a bit longer. I know how crazy that all sounds. Again, she would have hated to think I was marrying somebody if I didn't want to. But it took her really entering that dying phase for me to see my ex for what he was and start to distance away from him. Why couldn't I have seen that sooner and had more time with her

I'm really sorry you had to go through that. I can also relate. My dad died 13 years ago. I blamed him for a lot of things and took out my anger on him. I felt guilty about not talking to him more and trying to understand everything that had happened. I found out a few years ago that the things I blamed him for were not actually true/or his fault. I felt even worse about how I acted when I realized the truth.
Therapy helped me realize that I'm only human and dealing with a situation that I didn't ask for, the only way I knew how at the time. I also found that writing him letters after he died also helped me; I burned some, left some at his grave, and still have some.

I hope you are OK.

You have some very helpful and insightful comments in this thread.

Don't judge yourself based on what you know now.
You cannot expect yourself back then, to have done what you would do now, because now you know a lot more. You have that experience behind you, and you have learned from it.
It would be like looking back to, say, when you first had a driving lesson, and looking back on it after passing the test, and saying, "I shouldn't have stalled the car in that first lesson."

Life is a whole series of learning experiences, and most of these need repetitions for us to really understand them, because life is complex and confusing, so please do not judge yourself harshly from a place where you have the advantage of hindsight.

I too wish I had done some things differently before my parents died, but I must admit that I didn't know then what I know now, so I probably wouldn't have got as much from it then, as I would if I had the chance now. That is an important realisation for me.