Grief, and other ramblings

I know, I know, it's been a forever since I've posted anything to this blog.

Truth is... I've been hiding from myself. I'm still dealing with all sorts of emotional fall-out from my mother's death, and whenever I get confronted with pain my instinct is to run away, shove the pain down into a little closet in my mind and barricade the door. Not exactly the healthiest response to grief, I know (and have been told by countless people), but... it's going to be a long road to reclaim that pain and actually deal with it.

The ironic thing is, when you shove pain away from yourself and refuse to feel it, you also end up cutting yourself off from joy, and every other emotion, until you're left as a depressed husk of yourself. I've been trying to reconnect myself to my pain, in fits and starts, but at this point the pain has been shoved down into that closet for so long it's hard to find, and mostly what I've been dealing with is trying to dismantle the barricades I've put around it.

Right now, the barricade I'm dealing with is anger. Have I mentioned that my anger and rage absolutely terrifies me? Because it really, really does. My mom always had anger issues, and she would make a point of telling me "I can control my anger, which is why I allow myself to feel it". But when she was always yelling and screaming at me it was hard to see how her anger was 'controlled'. Keep in mind, even when she was dealing with MS, her body atrophying and her brain refusing to cooperate with her, she was still intimidating and terrifying as hell. She was always a very strong person, even to the end, and I was never strong in the ways she was. For the longest time, I thought that meant I wasn't strong, because the only model I could recognize as strength was Mom; able to browbeat anyone into submission, able to beat up anybody who tried to hurt her, able to intimidate absolutely anyone. So I decided I would never be like that, hid my anger away and just vented about whatever made me angry, reasoning "well typing words about a thing isn't scary, that's a good way to deal with anger".

Keep in mind that while I was growing up, most of my energies were spent in major, heavy-duty shields to protect myself from my parents pain (mom's illness, migraines, depression over being so reduced by the illness; dad's hurt that his wife was slowly being atrophied, having to take care of her, depression of his own), and also trying to carry mom and make her feel better. So my emotions were very shallow, simply because I didn't have the energy to support them.

Hell, when I went through boot camp (dealing with severe lack of sleep, strenuous activity, dealing with all the drama from my flight mates and having to shield myself from their suffering), I was so much healthier mentally and spiritually because after dealing with my mom, boot camp was a piece of cake. I had so much energy it was surreal, but at least that energy went to helping me support myself through all that strenuous bullshit.

Then I went to tech school (where you actually start learning about whatever job you signed up to do), and I had more energy than I knew what to do with. I had the ocean right next door, warm weather and happy skies to play with, and the worst emotional fallout I had to deal with was various people being frustrated about "oh come on I want to get to my real job already, I'm tired of school". So I could suddenly really connect with my spiritual power, and I was happier than I'd ever been in my entire life.

Of course, having enough energy to feel joy also gave me enough energy to really feel other emotions. Such as anger. I'm not naturally predisposed to anger, so I thought I didn't have to worry about it, but near the end of my time there I met this guy we'll call Knight. He was severely emotionally damaged, so of course I tried to help him, but he would constantly ask for help and then refuse to let me help him, which helped build alot of frustration on my part. I got transferred to Germany as my first active duty base, and he would continue the same cycle of asking for help and then refusing to let me help him, complaining endlessly over silly problems while refusing to tell me about his real problems, calling me either at the weirdest times and then apoligizing for calling me at the middle of the night (my time), or calling me at a decent time for me and then complaining over how he was losing sleep since he had to call me at the middle of his night. So I blew up at him, screaming at him and then telling him not to contact me again because I was sick of his shit. I thought that was the end of it, except he would text or email me constantly, begging for forgiveness, and I just kept getting more and more frustrated at the whole situation.

Pertinent fact: I am a witch, and I am very connected to air and water. Not so much earth. So I'll ground my emotions and energy to the sky, instead of earth. Which is a really big problem when those emotions happen to be anger and frustration, and when I'm connected to the sky of a coastal region, and I ground those emotions to the sky. What I managed to stir up with that anger was a hurricane. Specifically, Hurricane Sandy.

You can imagine why I'm absolutely terrified of my anger now, feeling that I can't ground it (because I can't connect to the earth, I'm not going to burden any plant with that toxic emotion, and I'm terrified to ground it through fire or water because that would be immensely destructive as well and I don't need any more guilt).

And I have alot of anger about mom's death. Not the fact that she died, no, I'm actually glad she doesn't have to suffer through having the core of her identity (being strong, being independent, being intelligent) being whittled away by her disease. No, my anger is over the fact that she had to suffer through that disease at all, that she had to have a longm drawn-out death because she refused to leave me motherless while I was growing up, and then wanted to see me one last time before she went. She told me the doctor said she had two months to live, and I immediately booked a flight to see her, and when I got home I discovered that she was dying and I had only an hour with her (when she was unresponsive, couldn't talk, could hardly breathe) before she could slip away. The day she messaged me telling me she had two months was her last coherent day.

What's worse is that, after I grew around 17 or so, she was fairly open with me about wanting to suicide. And of course I was alright with that, she had the right to determine that she'd had enough pain and wasn't going to stay any longer. She also said that she would absolutely write me one last letter, tell me all the things she wanted me to know, say goodbye before she went. And I never got that, I never got to hear her tell me goodbye (though message or voice), never got any closure from her. The only reason I knew she could hear me say goodbye to her was I was babbling all sorts of things I wanted her to know, and then when I ran out of things to say started reading her a short story from Mercedes Lackey, our favourite author, and she slipped away before I got two pages in.

And it hurts so damn much that I can't have her in my life anymore. I'd grown to depend on her and her magic mom powers to be able to come to her with any emotional problem, have her explain me to myself, and give me advice that was always right.

And I feel so much damn guilt over the whole situation. I feel so damn guilty that the moment I left, I apparently withdrew my magical support from her, and never gave it back. I feel so damn guilty because if I hadn't been born to her, she likely wouldn't have suffered though MS at all. See, Dad told me (after she died), that I was diagnosed with autism as a toddler, and Mom was so upset about the prospect of me not being able to live life as a functioning being she made an open-ended bargain with the universe, for me not to have autism and be able to function, and the price was apparently to have her identity and strength slowly whittled away from her by this fucking disease. Oh, did I mention that the only reason she had me in the first place was because she believed in taking hints from the universe? She'd managed to get pregnant two or three times before me, and aborted those fetusi because she didn't want any kids. All of her pregnancies happened while she was birth control, and she got really paranoid about making sure her birth control was solid. But then I came around, and she was basically like "Okay fine universe, I get the hint, leave me alone and I'll have this damn baby already, sheesh". I don't know if it was the universe at large ensuring her pregnancies, or if my soul was so determined to have her for a mother for my incarnation that I made her make a body for me, and I'm kinda scared that the second option is the answer.

I'm not sure why it's taken her death for me to start ruminating on the injustices of her life. But my connection to the universe and my own spiritual power is severely strained as a result. How can I connect to the universe when I'm so angry at it? How can I connect to the universe and risk my anger stirring up havoc?

No, I haven't asked for the reason for all of this, because I'm afraid Dad's answer is right and I really don't need that certain guilt piled up on me. No, I haven't tried looking for her soul because she'd beat my ass for trying and I respect her wish. Yes, I've gone to grief counseling, but all I received were unhelpful answers and platitudes so I stopped going after the second visit. No, I can't really go to therapy since I have no insurance, probably couldn't afford it, and even if I could I need to save my money for as long as possible.

It doesn't help that I've been living with my dad since I got separated from the Air Force. This is still a very unhealthy environment for me, and I can feel myself regressing to how I was as a teenager; artificially depressed (since this house still has alot of psychic negativity in the atmosphere, and I just don't have the energy to clean it out), unable to do anything (since we're out in the middle of nowhere and I don't have a driver's license), and just all around miserable.

I think going to visit my sister will help, though. She lives in a city (so there's things to do besides internet all day), she lives by the ocean (who I know loves me and is willing to help heal me), and she's much more emotionally intelligent than I am so it'll be so wonderful to have her support.

(yes, this optimistic note of an ending is deliberate. Don't want to depress myself over my own venting, after all)