SynthR
Tiger Woods' golf club (which is also his penis)
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PSN - Xbox - Steam - Discord = SynthR
Posts: 2983
Ontario, Canada
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Adonael, I'm really sorry for your loss. I've gone through it recently myself. I know you’ve had a rough go for years; at least since I’ve read your posts on this site. I just want you to know I feel for you and encourage you to not give up. Things will get better. It might not seem like it and it could take years, but believe me, it will happen. You just have to put in the work. You can’t expect anyone to save you. That’s harsh, I know, but it’s a step toward fixing what’s broken.
I can't speak to addiction, but I can speak to facing fears, accepting truth and mental illness. I don’t know if anything I’ll say is helpful or not, but in the event that it might be to yourself or someone else reading, I’ll tell a recent story about my life. Please don’t think I’m trying to hijack this topic. I’m doing this because I believe it could help others. Also, I’m sorry that it’s so long; I’m a writer and this is what happens when my thoughts spill out. Be aware that it’s a bit graphic at points.
I've always had long-standing issues with my parents for a multitude of reasons over the years. They were emotionally abusive to pretty much everyone around them right up until their final days. As an only child, I would be on the receiving end of text messages, emails, voicemails, carrier pigeon, every other form of fucking communication daily detailing how much they hate their lives, want to die and how I'm a horrible son for not running to their beck and call. They were full grown adults, who in actuality, were my first children.
My last three years have been an absolute rollercoaster ride of bullshit. One bad thing after the next. Every time I hit rock bottom, I wondered how much worse it could get it...turns out it can get much, much worse.
My dad started showing signs of decline three years ago. It took a year and a half of falls, agony, dropping cutlery, and being unable to hold up his own body weight before he was finally diagnosed with ALS. He became a prisoner in his own home on a borrowed hospital bed and a hostage trapped in his body as everything slowly began to stop working from the neck down. He was in and out of the hospital during his final year, which was a tease because I wanted his suffering to end as fast as possible. I have never seen a disease so awful and unforgiving.
The last time he was in the hospital, he died but they brought him back because he didn’t have DNR status (Do Not Resuscitate). He was too scared to let go. I knew he wanted to be released but just didn’t have the courage to do it. I had a lawyer come to the hospital a few days later to give me Power of Attorney (POA) over both of my parents. My dad blinked his acknowledgement of what I was about to do as the life support machine prevented him from speaking. Several days later, his organs began giving out and he was placed in a medically induced coma. This was it. I was forced to pick the date and time of his death as the POA. In the most literal way, I had my dad’s life in my hands. He passed away in February 2018 with his family by his side.
My mother, already losing her mind by this point and horribly sick from abusing herself for years, was actually in the same hospital at the same time as my dad. She went into ICU with a blood infection that was nearly fatal two weeks before my dad’s final days. She didn’t know who I was, where she was, could barely speak. Luckily, she snapped out of it just before my dad passed and was able to be there for his last moments. When she was released five weeks later, she went back to an empty home. I tried to get her setup with everything she needed, removed things that would remind her of my dad’s decline and we had PSWs coming in to help her rehabilitate. It didn’t take long before she stopped answer the phone, the front door and stopped going out for groceries. She was discharged from PSW care and would only speak to me. She demanded things of me that were not reasonable, told me I was a horrible son, apologized and said she didn’t mean any of it, and so it went on.
She was in and out of the hospital five times last year, diagnosed with lupus, developed another infection and was warned that if she continued to consume sugar on the level that she did then her 330-pound body and diabetes would kill her. Her house turned into a dumpster of food scraps and trash, and the cats used every inch of carpet as their litter box. I tried everything. I took video of her life, showed doctors and asked counsellors to intervene to no avail. Nobody cared. I was told that unless she’s suicidal or verbally stating that she was going to hurt someone else, there was nothing to be done. People joke about Canada’s free health care, but I’ve repeatedly watch it fail. And that’s exactly what happened, the system fucking failed yet another person in my life.
My mom could barely walk by this point, couldn’t take care of herself or the house, she needed help every step of the way. I paid for grocery deliveries, took care of her bills, tried to convince her to move to a one-floor apartment, cleaned her house and property...I started doing whatever I could when I came into town, but the reality was that my mom gave up. She struggled with horrible depression for decades and it was out in full force. She would often call me in tears talking about how much she missed her favourite cat who passed away last November, but wouldn’t mention my dad and how much she might have missed him. I supposed she was blocking out those memories.
In the last phone call I ever had with my mom, I wasn’t very nice to her...I was at my wit’s end. My mom was preventing herself from getting better and began wondering why she was still around to which I played off as just more drama. I took her grocery list and ordered it while on the phone, told her to be ready for 6:30 p.m. for the drop off and told her I loved her. End call.
Five days go by and I couldn’t reach her. She never picked up the phone in the past so I didn’t think much of it. On the sixth day and fearing the worst, I asked my aunt to check on her since I live over an hour away. My aunt’s friend went into the house first and found a trail of fecal matter and blood leading into the basement where my mother was found dead. She had fallen down two flights of stairs in her split-level home. How it happened and how she made her way down both flights is up for speculation. The one thing that I feared and repeatedly warned her about actually happened. I begged her to leave because stairs plus the inability to walk equal a massive risk. No exact date of death was given as she was found days later, but she passed away nearly a year to the day of when my dad did. This happened this past February.
That week, I took ownership of all my parent’s debts (because we never had much money) and buried their ashes together in the same $700 drilled-out hole in the ground at the cemetary. This was their final act of drama, to leave me with both their financial and biological mess to clean up. And let me tell you, putting on a hazmat suit to do a walkthrough of your childhood home so the professional cleaning services can give you a quote is fucking surreal.
All of this shit has been surreal, but through it all I allowed myself to feel the emotions that would hit me like a falcon punch. I face everything as it comes and it’s never easy. I cry. I shake from anxiety. I sit and stare at nothing. I go to work. I lay awake in darkness. I hulk out and smash objects. I scream. I laugh. I mourn. I’m still a husband and father. There’s no hiding from the truth, so I surrender myself to it. Life marches on with or without you. It owes you nothing. I don’t have much time to feel sorry for myself, so I feel the feels and get back out there. Life is a struggle and you can only exert so much control over it, and trust me, I have control issues (I wonder why?) so I have difficulty accepting this truth.
I think the point I try to make when telling people how I cope is that you can fail and fall down. There’s no shame in it, but you have to recognize and accept the situation at some point. That’s the only way you can overcome it. You have to face your fear of what could happen next. If you know you have a drinking problem, but can’t leave it behind, try cutting it down. You will have days where you fail, lots of days. So what? Fail and face the next day. Don’t find excuses. Climb out of that fucking hole and every time you slip, find your footing again and climb some more.
I also tell people to talk about it. Find people who will listen and let it out. You don’t have to be alone. Yes, a lot of people don’t want to hear your shit, but those people are selfish pricks. Fuck them. Find people who will lift you up when you’re down and don’t surround yourself with anyone less. I don’t have many people in my life who I can go to, so I can only assume there aren’t many to begin with. It could even be a weekly program like AA or some sort of subsidized counselling. You just have to get over your reservations and feeling shame. Expect to do some searching to find these people and possibilities.
Now for my secret weapon. The most powerful tool that I have that helps me is pure rage. I get to a point where I’m just fucking fed up of whatever bullshit situation is happening to me and I run full steam across the battlefield with a sword in hand. When I’m in this frame of mind, if death were staring me right in the face hinting it was my time, I would tell him, “Come and get it.” That energy is so powerful and learning to harness it has helped me overcome things I didn’t think possible. I don’t believe it would work for everyone, but there might be something equivalent that you can tap into. Something that will help you focus. Stand up and fight.
Fuck, that was long. Sorry.
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