Apparently, being sad because I have to celebrate my 40th birthday without my mother is not acceptable to some people. some people being the man I live with, the man I chose to spend my life with, the man I intend on spending the rest of my life with. Granted, I was not a happy camper yesterday and I don’t do a very good job of hiding my feelings so I wasn’t all sunshine and happiness on the outside; when he started to sing to me in the morning something about being the Birthday Girl I said “I really don’t want to talk about my birthday, unless you want me to cry” which was the truth, I was on the verge of tears as he sang. But still. I shouldn’t be made to feel like it’s not allowed to feel the way I feel, and that’s how I was made to feel yesterday. I was made to feel like my sadness, my difficulties, my grief were insignificant and that I ruined the day for everyone else; I should have sucked it up and been happy for the sake of everyone else around me. I “rained on everyone’s parade” is what I was told. What parade?? There were no plans, no party, no anything. There weren’t even flowers or wine. So what parade was rained out due to my bad mood is totally unknown to me.
What do you do when people don’t understand why you are grieving the way that you are, and they react in a negative way? Everyone’s journey is different and no one deals with things exactly the same way; someone else may have celebrated yesterday because they were still here and because their loved one would have wanted it that way. Someone else may have drunk themselves into a stupor so they forgot what day it was altogether. But I chose to just be however I was going to be, and how I was was sad. I was just sad. Sad that I wouldn’t talk to her, sad that I wouldn’t hear some stupid joke about still being here and how it was better to be 40 than 80 and that when she was 40 she had just had me and to hear the story of my birth again and how ironic it was that my daughter was also born on her due date at almost the same time I was (just 12 hours earlier). It’s not like I sat on the edge of my bathtub with a razor in my hand, looking longingly at my wrists all day, I was just sad. I don’t expect people to understand it, I really don’t. what I expect is respect for me, for my feelings and for my process and what I have to go through to get to the other side. But how do I get someone to just be respectful, to not take it personally and to be supportive? That’s all I wanted – support. Comfort would have been nice too. But instead, he backed off to the point that I felt ignored, I felt insignificant and ignored. He never offered to hug me, he never offered to hold my hand, he never even offered me cake – cake that he had bought but thought I wouldn’t want since I was upset. I didn’t even get wine!! I should have been given wine, damn it. When did grieving for the loss of someone you loved become a personal insult to those around you? When did grieving become unacceptable??
I don’t even know what to say to him tonight. The last words I said to him last night before I tearfully went to bed were “I shouldn’t have to apologize to you because I’m sad”, so tonight should be interesting.
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