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This year at the age of 24 I finally grew up. I don’t mean getting older, going off to college, owning a house, having kids. I mean when something terrible in your life happens that brings you to a certain realization. What could be so terrible you’re probably thinking? Well watching you’re mum flit from being the happiest you could imagine, to the depths of despair for your whole life could do that to the person. God, when life was good it was GOOD!! But when it was bad it was like no other. For years my Dad and I would try to protect my mum stopping her from taking pills, changing her pants when she had wet herself so your dad and the ambulance men don’t see her like that. I can’t take credit for most of this because I was a coward. I went away to college with crippling anxiety and ran away from an unstable home life in favor of independace and space. Space was what I claimed I needed. I was no longer available to help my dad as I was making a life of my own. While I was working my way through college and receiving counseling for my anxiety my dad was staying up for 5 nights a week listening out for my mum. He was holding her hand when she was intubated, hoping she would wake up, he was holding her down on the cliff face whilst my mum broke his ribs trying to break free and jump off. I was too busy and emotianally unavailable to help. When my mum would ring from the psych ward and I recognized her number I would avoid the call. When she needed me most I wasn’t there because I was scared and I was a coward. To clarify things a little, it wasn’t all bad, me and my mum had a rocky relationship when I was a teen my mum was too sick to give me what I needed and I resented her for it. The space I took to deal with my own problems and gain independence led me back to my mum and we were such good friends in the end. My mum was not a selfish woman, she was beautiful, she was strong, she was vibrant and she was happy. How can someone be happy and have depression is a paradox I will never understand, but when the deep depression abated she was so supremely happy you wouldn’t believe. On the 07/08/18 I lost my mum to suicide. I was living in the city, my dad at home in our small beach town. My dad went out to get mum coffee croissants and orange juice, when he came back he found her hanging in the garage. He had to cut her down, but he was too late. We couldn’t save her. When a person commits suicide they are not hoping to die they don’t even think of it, at least I know my mum didn’t she just wanted to make it all stop for a while. When you’re younger you think, yeah some bad things happen but usually right after some good things happen and life balances out. You think if I do good things and live life as a good person good things will eventually happen to me. But then one day something big and terrible and unimaginable happens and you realize that life is not fair, there is no such thing as grand karmic justice, good things don’t happen to good people, there is no such thing as fate or a path in the universe. Everything is just completely and utterly random and pointless and it doesn’t really matter what you do. It’s almost like a kid finding out there is no santa and no magic in the world. Some people are lucky and never come to this realization, but once you do there is no going back. It’s the most rude awakening you’ll ever receive, one that shatters all hope and naivety and youthful enthusiasm. When someone dies who isn’t supposed to your world is shook and you’re like what’s to stop this happening to everyone else I know what grand stroke of luck is going to keep the people I love alive. I just feel like this life lesson kind of breaks you beyond repair. Like I know one day I’ll probably feel happy and live my life, but there is always going to be part of me that’s irrevocably damaged beyond repair. I just want to go back, back to hope, back to naiivety, back to when I had my mum. There is a void in my life that cannot be filled, for no one in your life loved you like your mother, there is no love as pure and unconditional and blindingly strong and I will never be loved that way again.
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