I was a momma’s girl. Maybe even to a fault….I was shy and quiet and had really high anxiety. She was loving and nurturing and so confident. She was so safe. I remember her hugs, her laugh, how she smelled – it was all so comforting.
Things didn’t change overnight, they changed really slowly over a handful of years. I knew she wasn’t the person I felt safe with anymore, and that was a significant loss. I held on to the hope that she’d go right back to the Mother I knew and loved. It took me a really long time to understand how that hope was not fair to her. She needed to break free from that person she was, but I just wanted her to be the same. I missed my constant source of comfort.
The catalyst was my senior year of high school. My grandmother died. Then my grandfather – both of my mom’s parents, within 4 months. Then – by freak accident – my mother’s sister passed away. My mom spun out of control and never came back. I lost her completely, and I grieved really hard. She was a stranger. She was volatile and hard to understand. She could be so mean. There was no safety in her arms, or in her home. I was so angry.
The thing is – I was grieving the loss of my mother, because for all intents and purposes she was gone…but she was physically still there. She was eating and breathing and sleeping and destroying. As it turns out, it’s really hard to grieve this kind of loss when the person you miss is standing there in the flesh. It felt like no one could know my grief except for maybe my siblings, but we all experienced this grief so differently. On the outside, it didn’t seem like we were dealing with a catastrophic loss, which could be confusing. Suffering the loss of a loved one is unimaginably hard. But suffering their loss when no one else can see it – that felt impossible. After all…she’s right there.
Loving an Addict 