Hello to all.
I'm here for many reasons and I don't know where to begin. Whether to introduce myself professionally or as a person who really needs this platform for support. Well, let me begin by telling you all that I am an anthropologist in my Master's degree at a Canadian university. My topic of study, is palliative care and community support. In this light it may seem like I am here for solely academic purposes but I can't tell you enough how much reading through some of your comments have helped me grow as a person. You see, the reason why I chose this topic is because my whole life I have lived in a state of grief without knowing how to hande it, and feeling completely alone in how I felt.
I was born around death. My mom lost her father at the age of 15 to a heart attack, her mother at the age of 18 to a brain aneurism, and her brother at the age of 20 to suicide. I was born into a world of grief and it was an awfully helpless experience as a 4 year old when I came to understand what grief looked like. As a young child still, my grandfather on my dad's side died of hereditary illnesses when I was 7 years old. Of course this was hard to process being young and experiencing death first hand, but not even a few months later, my friend and classmate who was also 7 died in a tragic truck accident burned alive. I spent years in a state of psychological trauma, unable to sleep properly, unable to attend school, and unwilling to seek professional help. Following this, when I was 8 my father had a heart attack and was simultaneously diagnosed with diabetes. Thankfully with surgeries and medications he is still alive today, but I have always (and I mean even as often as every single living day of my life as recenty as today and yesterday and the day before that) lived with anticipatory grief. I can't remember the last Christmas that I didn't spend crying because I was worried it was going to be the last one. My problem I think is that I can't stop dwelling on the fact that we will die. I cannot accept it and I just don't know how. This was probably exacerbated by the fact that I had two aunts diagnosed with cancer when I was 12, one of whom died not long after, and a total of 8 friends throughout my highschool career from ages 16-18 who commited suicide as a result of my community's poor access to psychological support services.
I never planned to study what I am now because I wanted to avoid the topic altogether and stop "dwelling" on it. That is, until this summer when a member of my best friend group was suddenly diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma at the young ripe age of 24. To watch him go downhill after the removal of his first tumour, watching more tumours pop up and swell making him look 9 months pregnant was devastating. Watching him go through chemo only to be told that it didn't rid him of his tumours. Watching his extremely religious family refuse to follow the medication regimen because they believed that Jesus healed him, left him in extreme suffering pain that angered me to no end. Watching him shrink to nothing but skin and bones unable to complete a sentence because he was so weak. There was nothing I could do to help. His partner, also a best friend of mine since the age of 3, is a palliative care nurse herself and she is devastated and wants to run away and I have no idea how to handle (seemingly selfish to say) my own grief with all of my own problems and to be there for her to. I really can't do it without feeling like I might break down completely.
I chose the topic of palliative care and support services as my focus in school because it feels hopeful. It feels like through this topic, I might finally be able to shake this lifetime worth of grief that I carry everyday and to help me cope for what is to come in the future with my own aging parents whose health is only getting worse. Because as it is right now I know that I will not be able to handle myself if something were to happen. I honestly don't know what I would do. And I don't want to be so afraid of myself, for myself. I want to be able to care for my friends and family when they need me without being a complete disfucntional wreck.
I suppose what I am here for is to ask you brave people how you are doing what you are doing and if you can help me to overcome some of my biggest concerns about how not to keep dwelling on the inevitable. How can you possibly cope given the circumstances that you're in. I admire you all so much and like I said YOU are all the reason I feel a sense of hope in what is to come. I am blessed to have stumbled across this site even if not because I will receive some life altering response to my post, because what I have read from the participants of this site have shown me that I'm not alone.
Mel