Entanglements of Sorrow and Rage

My Dad was the coolest person you could know, and everyone knew it. He could play any type of guitar you handed him, after tuning it by ear. He learned to play songs just by listening to them. He loved music deeply, and instilled that love, and the love of the written word, in his children too. He often said he would much rather lose his sight than his hearing, because a world without music was not worth living in.

He was loving, kind, generous with what he had (and what he had was very little). He was a (literal) genius but was never able to better his life due to extreme mental illness. He could make even the most unlikeable food taste like gourmet meals, and he could not stand to eat most of it. He could compute complex calculus equations in his head in seconds. When I was younger, he wore armor and fought other people with handmade swords.

He was an absolute nerd, and the greatest human I ever met. He was incredibly funny, considerate, and genuine. He was patient, even when we were at our worst. And then he was a hollow shell of deep depression. I spent my life marking time's passing by which dad I got. As I got older, the smiles became more and more rare. His depression ate away at all the joy, and eventually the physical substance of my hero. He died suddenly, after mowing the lawn. He wasn't even 60 years old.

My mother and I didn't have the best relationship. We were not even friendly at the best of times. We mostly just tolerated each other. My parents divorced when I was very little. My mother had no desire to raise us, so we were raised by my father. She visited us a few times before I went to stay with her for a short time. She was also mentally ill, and was also addicted to drugs and alcohol.

When she eventually quit using drugs, her body was destroyed. She had a heart attack in 2012, has to be put into a medically induced coma so detox from alcohol did not kill her, and had a pacemaker installed. He liver function was less than 10 percent. She would not quit drinking. This caused her to have a rupture in an artery in her stomach. During the treatment, she was put into another medically induced coma. She got sepsis.

I was pregnant with my youngest child, high risk, while she was getting antibiotic infusions for her sepsis. This was the time that our relationship was actually good. We would go together, three times a week, to her infusion appointments and my doctor's appointments. We would get lunch and just talk. That was the only time that I felt like she was actually the mother I had always dreamed of having when I was a child.

She died five and a half months before my father, at the age of 54. Her entire body just stopped working. Her liver failed, her kidneys, her heart couldn't be bothered to pump her blood anymore, even with the pacemaker. It was just after Christmas. I don't know what I felt then. I know it hurt. I know I cried. I had no idea that less than half a year later, I would be screaming in rage and pain at the loss of the only person in the world that loved me as I was.

I have a lot of rage over the loss of my parents, and it is very hard to explain. Some of this rage is the unyielding pain at the fact that there was nothing I could do to help either of them. Some of this is at myself, because I was not there. If I had been, maybe I could have done something, anything, to keep them around longer. Some of it is the fact that I am selfish enough to want to prolong the lives of people that were so ready to not suffer anymore pain.

The most complicated feeling is the absolute furious rage that I have for both of them. My mother, for denying me the love every child deserves. For abandoning me so many times. For not caring enough about herself, and not allowing me to learn to care about me. For always holding an account of every kind deed like a tally, instead of just being there because that's what a mom is supposed to do.

My anger for my father is different. I am not really angry at him, I am angry at the disease that made him want to die. The disease that told him he did not matter. The disease that took all of his willpower and ability and left a wasted husk of sorrow, despondency, and depression. He would not seek treatment for his physical ailments because he did not care. He had no desire to prolong what he felt was torture.

I cry a lot. It hurts so much to be where I am today. I lost both of my parents before I was 35 years old. I do not know how to truly grieve, so I just let it out in tiny bits because I am afraid that if that pain ever goes away, I will forget. I will forget how badly it hurt to lost them, and I will stop fighting for my own life. I will stop caring about my own health. I will give my children the same future.

I am in the process of seeking help for my own mental illness, which is a struggle for me. I keep my thoughts and feelings locked up pretty tight, but I feel fractures in the emotional dam, and am afraid that if I do not get help, I am going to fall apart. Every day is more difficult than the last. I use the lesson of my parent's suffering to strengthen my resolve to do better for myself. To do better for my children.

I really did have the best Dad. He just wasn't always a very good example of how to take care of the broken and bruised mind. He tried. He was always supportive, loving, and full of great advice. I wish he would have seen himself as we saw him. I miss him every day. I don't know how to let go of that enough to be okay. Every day feels like the day after. It is still fresh, raw, ugly and painful.

If you are struggling with your mental health. Please reach out to someone that can help you. No matter what your illness tells you, you are worthy. You deserve to be able to be happy. You have every right to be in this world, to feel the sunshine on your face. You deserve to feel love, to love yourself. I know it is hard, but it will be worth it.