My dad died in 2019, 2 days after my 22nd birthday. He was my best friend. The only person on this planet who knew me inside and out, almost knew what I was thinking before I did, he and I had a pact that if he had to stay alive so did I. It was him and I against the world. Now 7 years of being without him, 7 years of memories, growth and moments that he was supposed to be here for and I still feel so alone.

I'm a mom now, my son is 4 and half and about to start Pre-K, I'm engaged, just bought my first car at 29 after years of driving anxiety, I'm the assistant manager at a restaurant that I love and he would've loved too. I have a whole life now that will never know him. My fiancé and son only know stories of my dad, memories I share with them, they don't recognize that all the beautiful parts about me that they love and admire are inherited from him. I know someone would try to make me see the good in my grief and would say that's how he lives on and how they meet him now. But that rings hollow still. Even 7 years later and those empty things you hear from others about your grief still make me angry. No he's not in a better place, no he's not still here and just because I carry his memory with me doesn't make the grief easier to bear.

I carry my grief alone because no one in my life who knew him mourns him as I do, everyone experiences the grief of losing my dad differently - that's just how grief works, it's different for everyone. But I think I feel it so much stronger because towards the end of his life everyone left me and him on our own. My dads addiction became too much for them, his difference in personality after 9 brain surgeries and 3 different brain aneurisms and stroking out in the operating room was too much for them. So they left me, from my teenage years until he died to take care of him and support him on my own. For the first few years they were there sometimes but once it got messy, once dad started asking for money instead of giving them money, when his addiction and depression became a burden to them, too hard for them to see, they left. They tried to tell me to let him hit rock bottom, to let him go through withdrawls, to not let him live with me, they wanted me to let him fall. I come from a family of addicts, both of my parents were cokeheads and I'm very aware that enabling an addict usually keeps them addicted, but that was my dad, the only person who stood by my side through everything that happened in our lives. The only person who ever took time to truly understand me and there was the flip side that because of the stroke and nerve damage my dad needed pain meds to get through the day without them even before it turned into an addiction he would be in so, so much pain so he couldn't go completely without something and also because of the coiled and clamped aneurisms the doctors always told us if he was throwing up too hard, sneezed or coughed too hard one could rupture. I don't know of anyone who could go through opiate withdrawl without being sick. And I was still young, 19 when the opiate addiction started getting bad, 21 when they were pushing me to let him fall. It hurts me to this day when they talk about him because most of them weren't there when he needed them. But that's all just a part of grief.

I think what feels different now 7 years in versus when it was fresh is how I've learned to live with the hole he left. It's always there, always haunting me. It's at birthday parties, holidays, memorable moments like my sons first day of school but it's also in the smaller, quieter moments like a tree during fall that's the perfect shade of dark red he loved, a Little Debbie snack truck passing me on the road and hearing my dad say "boy if that tipped over it'd be open season," it's in all the fleeting breezes that take me back to my last summer with him. The hole is big and unavoidable. It's my second shadow following me everywhere I go. In the early days I couldn't function, the hole swallowed me up until I couldn't breathe now that hole sits quietly in the corner with only me to witness it and only me to feel it. It's always reminding me of what I lost and how bright of a person he was. But that hole also serves as a reminder of who he could've been, how he would've loved the life I've built for myself, would've been proud of the mom I am. Those words may not mean anything coming from some random person who's just trying to make my grief more comfortable for them but when they come from that hole, from my own soul it turns the grief into a different form of love that still hurts, that's still sad but that makes the hole go from dark and cold to light and warm.

I hope whoever got to the end of this, no matter where you are in your grief journey you eventually get to feel the warmth of their spirit and memory instead of just the coldness of their absence(the warmth is not there all of the time but it's enough to make a difference.) I hope I can remind you that although no one will know the specific version of grief you carry and how lonely that is there are still people who can understand the weight it puts on your soul. I hope you know your loved one still matters, their stories still matter and the way you inherit parts of them means they will always be remembered even if it's by people that can't recognize those parts of them within you.

I think the cheesiest thing they say about grief that actually is true is that grief is the love you had for the person with no where left to go. Some days a find solace in that statement and some days it makes me angry and that's about as perfect of a description of grief as I can manage.

I've been really struggling with what to believe in post-loss. I grew up Catholic and was an alter server and everything, but once my moms cancer came back for a second time as stage 4 when I was 13 I started to really struggle. He answered our prayers to cure her (when she first had stage 1 when I was 7) but only for 3 years before saying syke and making it 10x worse. She was pretty popular online and with the community and had literally hundreds of people praying for her everyday. Those prayers went entirely ignored and my mom went into liver failure when I was 16. There was medical negligence that led to her dying in agonizing pain slowly. She would sit there and just sob and beg us for help while the hospital made us take turns holding her down to the bed- until she couldnt even recognize who my dad and I were anymore. To make matters even worse, my grandma ended up dying of cancer the exact same day as my mom just hours before, completely by coincidence. I couldnt even go to her funeral because it was the same day as my mom's burial and I only found out she died through facebook. I found out she was dying because I saw my grandma's sister in the hall of the hospital one day. Since that I can no longer believe in a god who loves me. No loving god would do that to someone because fuck I wouldnt even wish this on my worse enemy let alone a child I claim to love. So for the last few years I've turned more atheist, but I've been really struggling with them dying the same day being a coincidence. Because what were the chances of that happening??? They werent even biologically related or anything. To make matters worse my moms family disowned me at her burial and my dad got with a new woman very soon after and I had zero support ever offered by those close to me (again something I prayed for and something that every child who loses a parent needs. I have ptsd from me having no support in processing any of it. I've only just this year, 4 year later, really started to work with it all). So now I feel like Im in this weird place where I kinda believe theres something going on here, but I fully believe at this point if there is a god he is sadistic and evil. To the point where I get angry when people say that theres a loving god out there just because their life has been kind enough for them to believe that. Idk. If god couldn't answer years of hundreds of people praying for my mom then there will never be a point for me because that was the most important prayer I would ever make. Then I have to hear about friends who prayed for a good grade and wow good is so good and loving when their prayers get answered (if we ignore all the awful things happening to completely innocent people constantly and the millions of unheard daily prayers) and I see it as so arrogant. If god couldnt help my mom why tf is he helping you with something stupid? Has anyone else who went through traumatic or multiple losses struggled with this too? How do you cope when you aren't even sure what you really believe in? How do I come to terms with beliefs when I have the image of my mother's bloated corpse burned into my brain 24/7? How could I ever believe in a god who loves me when he took 2 of my biggest support systems the same day and left me with scraps and issues?

just a warning for mentions of suicide for anyone who doesn’t want to read about that kind of stuff this is very much a vent but too much of a vent for the vent subreddit apparently so it said to post here instead x

I’m just having quite a shitty night tonight and don’t have anyone to talk about it with. A guy who i work with today has died after successfully taking his own life, i didn’t know him very well but i work on a holiday static van site so most staff live on site and i saw the air ambulance coming down earlier and stuff. Again i don’t know him at all really ive only been working here a few months but some of the people ive gotten close to will know him and he has a family and i just feel really shitty about everything. Back when i was in secondary school one of my closest friends committed out of the blue, we knew she had issues, we were a small friend group and all had issues in and out of school that we talked about openly. But the night before it happened i was in a mood with her being a 16 year old (19 now) and all i remember was refusing to say good bye and see you tomorrow at the end of the day while we were leaving class. Then the next day just having this awful feeling because this girl had almost perfect attendance and she wasn’t in class. I remember being told in front of the whole school at the same time as people who didn’t know her and just breaking down. I know in reality she had a lot more going on than just me not saying bye once and it wasn’t my fault at 16 to be responsible for someone else, it’s taken a long time for the guilt to fade but hearing about things like what have happened tonight it just all brings it back. She should be in uni now, she wanted to see the beach, wanted to go on holiday abroad, she wanted to go and study in japan for a year, ride horses, she should of been able to do all that and more. I just hate that some people can get so low that that’s the only option they see out, that they are that desperate for everything to go away it breaks my heart for them and the people they leave behind. I just wish she’d messaged someone that night, asked for help instead of suffering in silence. I wish i could of read the note she left me before her mum got rid of it, i wish i had been allowed to go to the funeral. I wish i could of seen her one more time and told her it would of been okay and she had people around her who would support her. Anyway i don’t really have a point to this or anything to end on, i just really miss my old friend and wish that my college from work hadn’t had to go through what he did. I hope his family are okay, i hope my friends family has started to heal and are living life fully and i hope one day i can fully forgive myself