Had some tragic news

Hey there Miranda,
I can't speak for the poster who made the happy sitcom family remark, but I do think your parents may have royally screwed up and abused you, but they are also probably really hurting and care about you at the same time. You don't have to forgive them, but you don't have to completely reject them either. Life is much more complicated than that.
What's going on now? Are you having a memorial service or funeral. How are you spending your days? I hope you are ok and finding support somewhere.

"FYI every family has its quirks and issues."

seriously ? pretty sure suicide doesn't fall under the category of "quirks and issues" -

*** !



sorry for your loss NCOT -

Miranda, I just wanted to let you know I'm thinking of you. -Joy

Thanks folks.

I went to my gardening group today. I asked to be alone as I didn't feel like talking to anyone - but I did tell just one person what had happened. I ended up potting sweetpeas with her in the new potting shed for most of the session. Couldn't bring myself to tell anyone else. The group leader, who I like a lot, asked me about my appointment last week. So I told her about how I had uveitis in both eyes, which is probably what she thinks I'm depressed about :-/

Afterwards I tried to make an appointment with my GP, but the jobsworth receptionist told me she wasn't accepting pre-bookings. Like fudge am I phoning up at 8am on the offchance my GP might have a free slot that day, so I just walked away in a bad mood.

In other news, the UK is carrying on towards its destiny of becoming a banana republic. The main news of the day has been Prince Harry and Meghan's engagement, a subject about which there aren't sufficient words in the dictionary to express my profound lack of interest. If it was possible to be less interested I would be, but it's not physically possible for me to be any less interested. The only mildly interesting thing was seeing what bad news the government would try to bury behind the "good" news. Quite a bit, as it so happens.

Incidentally I wonder if this Brexit farce had anything at all to do with my brother's death. It's not just the status of EU citizens in the UK that's wholly uncertain; UK citizens in EU countries also don't know what's going to happen to them. Maybe he just lost hope in the future.

@gumby - Whatever funeral or memorial service there is will be held in the town that my brother was living in; he has already stated that he didn't want his ashes to be flown back to the UK. My mum and brother are going there this weekend - I wasn't invited, which is par for the course. Yes, I am angry and not even trying to hide it. (I seem to only have two states of mind these days - pure anger and pure sadness. Or three, if numbness counts as a state.)

I'm not doing much and don't want to do much. Even before my brother's death I was struggling but this has tipped me over into full blown depression, where I can't rise above the thoughts anymore; there is nothing positive to rise to.

@soy - I finally took you off ignore >.> Thank you. And thanks to everyone else too. I'm sorry I haven't had the energy to reply to everyone individually but I have read all your posts.

I'm thinking of you NCOT and hoping that life gets less hard for you.
I hope you do whatever the hell you want to do with your time here on this messed up world.

That stinks that your mum and brother didn't invite you along to your brother's town. Sometimes it feels helpful to do something in memory of your brother....volunteering, planting something special in the garden, writing a poem or story of happier memories, etc. Are you able to locate a grief support group for family members of suicide victims? They have those groups here in the States.

At any rate, try to set little goals for yourself each day so you get up and keep moving. Grief seems to take forever and this type of loss is even harder. It's great that you confided to someone at your gardening club. I hope you can find some support. I'll be thinking of you.

I second what Gumby suggested.

It's horrible that they haven't even invited you along. You need to be there as part for your grieving.

Messed up families are terribly hard to deal with in their own right. The consequences of the hurt never seems to go away, the only thing anyone can do is find ways to cope with it, which isn't easy and its even worse when it interferes with your ability to grieve.

Much love to you NCOT. please hang on to hope

Thanks folks.

I appreciate a couple of you telling me I'm not being unreasonable, as my mum has an unfortunate habit of making me feel unreasonable. She says things like, 'I didn't think you'd want to come' or 'you're not missing anything', which isn't the point. Another thing which has bothered me as well (and isn't my parents' fault to be fair) is that my parents have received several sympathy cards and most of them were addressed to my parents only. Like, I'm not asking for a separate card but is it asking too much to think of the children who lost a brother as well?

Nothing ever changes with my family: my brother's death won't change them, I can already tell. My dad simply denies all responsibility, my mum ostentatiously takes on the burden of guilt but without actually becoming a better human being as a result. She won't behave any better towards me, I guarantee it. Not that she's always horrible; it's just that she's always had a genius instinct for being horrible at the times when I most need her to be nice: not when she decides to be nice.

So yeah, I usually go over there on a Wednesday but think I'll skip it for today. Think I'll skip going over there until Christmas is safely over in fact.

@scifigal - You would think it would work that way, wouldn't you, but it probably won't. The physical healthcare side of the NHS is still holding up, albeit under immense strain, but the mental health side has all but collapsed. At any rate I do have an appointment with my 'support' worker and a psych doc on the 12th December and I will tell them what happened, but I'm not expecting much (i.e. nothing at all).

@Habs - I'm sorry about your brother. I'm not a religious person either, but what the priest said makes perfect sense: suicide is a result of a loss of all hope. It's not just pain; it's also not seeing any end in sight to that pain. At any rate I am glad you held onto enough hope to keep on living at least.

Thanks everyone else.

Urgh, my mum hasn't even phoned up to see how I am or why I haven't come over today. She knew that I was upset when I left on Saturday evening and she hasn't phoned once.

**** my family, **** them. My mum is almost the perfect martyr: everyone thinks she is a fantastic mother to me. No, she isn't. This is the sort of manipulative sh!t she pulls with me behind the scenes and nobody but me gets to see it. She's a bitter and resentful person but hides it extremely well.

In the meantime I'm 42 and have nobody else in real life. My social anxiety has got worse over the years and makes it impossible to make new friends, let alone form a relationship.

I'm going to seriously consider cutting myself off from my family permanently from now on. When I'm at my most needy, my parents without fail let me down. My dad used to beat me up in front of my mum; did I ever get an apology from either of them for that? No, I did not. And "beat up" isn't too strong a word, considering he was lashing out with his fists over and over again.

I hope they suffer.

See my last post.

I'm not going on any trip. And I would have paid for myself. Look, I know you begrudge paying anything towards the society that you live in, even schools, but don't project your attitude onto me. I would have willingly paid my own air fare, costs towards food, etc. But I was never even given the option.

Holy crap, no I'm not doing that. That couldn't end in anything except a disaster.

I don't know whether to go alone at a later date. I probably won't, considering I don't know anything about the place and there won't even be a grave to visit (my brother wants his ashes to be thrown over his girlfriend's garden).

Thank you. I had to laugh, just for a millisecond. Didn't realise you lived so close to where Meghan lived.

Heh, aren't you the privileged one, living so close to a princess? >.> Seriously, have you seen Mail Online? Literally dozens of articles on her and Harry. It's just bizarre.