Help pull me out of my self pity please

[bushymcbush]

My mum died almost 11 years ago. To be precise, she was killed in a car accident. I have been through all the expected stages of grieving, but very recently, something new has cropped up.

I suddenly have this idea that maybe, although she loved me, mum might not have liked me very much.

I was a difficult and selfish teenager and a constant worry to my parents as I drifted from one failed college course to another. I had to a large extent sorted myself out before she died (when I was 26). I had just finished my degree and had been discussing possible next steps with my mum just a couple of weeks before her accident. I know she was proud of what I'd achieved by that point but I just wonder if she thought I was a good and nice person. I don't think I am. And I'm very ashamed of the way I treated her sometimes.

We weren't very very close - we never had that 'best friend's' thing you hear people talking about, and makes me feel insanely envious - but she was very motherly and kind and was always there for me when I needed her.

I wish I'd been kinder and closer to her. I wish she knew how much I loved and admired and appreciated her.

Now tell me to pull myself together.

[SquishyCinnamonSwirls]

I won't tell you that at all.
I think you have to give yourself a bit of a break though. Why not write your Mum a letter, telling her how you feel. It might help to work it out?

[Hassled]

I won't tell you to pull yourself together.

What I will tell you is this: I was a nightmare teenager. I was that wild, obnoxious, selfish, opinionated, stroppy child you dread. And after my mother died (I was 16) I felt absolutely crippled with guilt about how I'd behaved. It wasn't until my own DD turned into the same wild, obnoxious, selfish, opinionated, stroppy child I was that I realised what I should have known - that DD's behaviour never affected my love for her, and my behaviour would never have affected my mother's love for me.

Your mum may not always have liked you - we all have patches of not really liking our children - but the love is the important thing. And yes, she would have been very proud of you indeed. She would have known you loved her.

[BettySwollocksandaCrustyRack]

My mum used to say to me "Sometimes I dont like you but I always love you"

[bushymcbush]

Thanks for the replies. Are these thoughts normal this many years later? I said in my OP that I'd gone through the normal stages of grief, but I'm not sure what they even are. Maybe this is one I haven't dealt with yet.

[SquishyCinnamonSwirls]

Nothing is normal when someone so close to you dies. There is no normal. What's right for you, would be completely wrong for someone else. Give yourself a break. Your Mum loved you, she was your Mum. Accept that we all sometimes behave in ways which aren't ideal, and the people around us need not necessarily like, but it won't stop them from loving you.

[TheFarSide]

bushy - I second Squishy's point that there is no normal. My mum died only two weeks ago but I have already spoken to a lot of people and devoured Virginia Ironside's book about grief, and I have been amazed to see and hear about many different reactions to bereavement, sometimes years after the event. It's easy to dwell on the things we do wrong, but I'm guessing there are many ways in which you showed your mum how much you loved her over the years.