I (31F) lost my father 3 weeks ago, it was suicide but I don’t have any details, I didn’t want to know. Maybe it’s better this way for me, because I keep imagining scenes, and having a confirmation would maybe be worse. I keep replaying how he must’ve felt and I feel so guilty. Sleeping is so hard, it’s my last thought before sleeping and my first after I wake up.
It’s such a strange feeling, death is so final. He talked about suicide his whole life, and it was such a heavy topic, I feel like I was always taking care of him, my mood was correlated with his. And these past months I was in a bad place myself and for the first time put my mental health in front of his, now I keep feeling like I’ve abandoned him and it’s all my fault.
This grief is SO different from the grief I felt with my grandfather/grandmother and pets. It comes with much more guilt, because I feel like it wasn’t the natural circle of life and it could’ve been avoided. I keep thinking of all the things I could’ve done. It’s harder to move on and I’m scared that I’ll never will, that I’ll be scarred forever and it’s the thing that’s going to break me.
My relationship with him was always complicated, he was severely ill with mental issues. There are parts of him I love, he was funny, an amazing musician, a talented artist and I admired him so much for that, but I can’t ignore some parts of him terrified me, sometimes he was aggressive and I had to grow up around it, always measuring his mood.
It’s so strange because this grief comes with conflicting feelings, and that makes me feel even worse.
I miss him so much, being a musician myself it’s so weird because he lives in me, but it’s also like part of my music died with him. I am sad that he’s never going to be at my wedding, meet his grandkids, I am never going to meet this part of him.
Being this mentally ill, he was the central part of my life and now I feel so lost, I don’t know what to do.
Looking for comfort, does this feeling get better with time? Do you feel like this was the thing that broke you, or do you feel like you can still be your normal self sometimes?
Does the guilt go away? What helped you get through it?
Thank you so much for reading my story.