to feel so deeply changed by an event

[simplythepest]

I’ve been thinking a great deal about this recently and have toyed with posting about it and asking if anyone has ever felt the same way.

About 2 years ago my dad took unwell very suddenly. I won’t go into the details but suffice to say he ended up in intensive care and then ended up on a lift support machine. We were told on a good few occasions that we should prepare that he wouldn’t make it. At the time I was pregnant with my second DD and virtually ignored the pregnancy in the 8/9 weeks my dad was in hospital. I spent hours by his bedside and spent many nights with my mum while my DH and MIL and FIL picked up everything with my elder Dd when I wasn’t there (which I am so so so so grateful for)

Thankfully he pulled through - there has been some lasting damage but he leads a relatively normal lift.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I feel so utterly changed by this event. I feel like I had lived in a bubble up until that point and my life was totally ripped open. We’re two years down the line and I still feel very much like I am deeply upset and sad about it.

For instance tonight I was looking at pictures of my elder dd and showed them to my husband and one of my first thoughts when I looked at the date was “god that was before he took unwell...”

I find myself wondering if anyone else feels this way about certain things that have happened and, if so, how do you reconcile yourself with it?

For example, if my mum phones me I still go into a complete panic that something has happened because my mind goes back to that panicked phone call from her two years ago.

I hope someone can help me or let me know that I’m not alone.

Try being the one in ICU and waking up.....

I relate to this, similar happened with my df, then he died of cardiac arrest a few years later. Shortly after that my brother suffered life changing injuries in a car accident, he too was on life support for 3 weeks. I've spent far too many hours in intensive care at bedside of loved ones. It definitely changes you. I was treated for anxiety for a long while.

Everyone, absolutely everyone, will have these sorts of events in their lives - it's absolutely inevitable. One of the reasons that they become sort of "special" traumatising events rather than part of the ebb and flow of life is because we are often insulated from illness and death, and have not learned to be resilient to it. I don't know that we ever "get over" really important events like this, even ones which result in the deaths of people we love, but I kind of think that's OK. All our life events change us, and this is just part of that change.

You're definitely not alone. It's the constant knowledge - and fear - of how quickly your life can change for the worse, how fragile it all is. The sinking feeling when the phone rings is all too familiar. My dad died in a hospice four years ago, and they phoned me recently about some fundraising I had offered to do for them. Totally driven by me, but when I saw the hospice name in my caller ID, I almost had a meltdown, sure they were phoning with bad news about my dad. So bizarre, but it's like being right back in that moment and all the emotions that come with it. I don't have much advice - I spoke to a counselling service we have through work last year as it was really building up, and that helped a bit.

I totally get it

“The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday..”

YY to that - I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse that we can't see what awaits us around the next bend.

For me the watershed is before and after my sister died completely unexpectedly. Trying to focus on mundane life afterwards was so painful, and remembering how caught up I had been in the little details of daily life beforehand, oblivious to what lay ahead, was equally awful. The present I had bought and wrapped and boxed and addressed for her birthday looked so trite when I came back from her funeral.

My moms best friend (father figure to me though they weren't romantic) had a heart attack whilst having our monthly catchup over dinner in the restaurant he worked at. By the time the ambulance came it was too late. I was 18 and the shock of it all sent me into a very dark place for the next two years.

However, he was lucky to never have been ill or go through illness. He had a good life and when it was over, It was over very quickly.

My mother died when I was a teenager. Last week I reached the same age she was when she died. It made me realize just how much she - and I missed. Years later I lost not one, but two babies shortly after birth. For me personally, nothing that has happened to me since has ever compared with what I have already weathered. These events can't help but shape our lives, and somehow you will eventually be able to deal with it.

I was badly injured last year in an accident that I have no recollection of. I feel like a different person now.

I feel very aware of how vulnerable I am now. Hearing about natural disasters, violent crime, RTAs and basically any 'random' event that can devastate lives really brings back awful feelings for me.

I still don't think I've accepted what happened. At the time I just pushed on and tried to be ok for everyone else. I never really even cried about it and I feel like I need to but I can't.

I've been waiting for counselling since February and I'm only halfway along the waiting list. I want to move on.

I'm really not the same person that I was before.

If you or someone you're close to have had a properly serious, life changing illness, it changes your feelings about health because you then know it can be gone in the space of a moment. That said, all you can do to fight against that is enjoy the time you have. I try to remember to value every day I am well and able to get out and about and do things, because of all the days I've spent stuck in hospital not knowing if/when I'd get out. Enjoy every day you have with your dad now. Don't live under a shadow of the worst period of time.

I know what your saying as I lost my beautiful mother 5 days ago to suicide. How I will ever be 'happy' or even smile again I just don't know. I have to be 'here' myself for the sake of my gorgeous children and husband when all I want is to join her
In the last 5 days every part of life has changed and will continue to be 'changed'

Oh definitely, my parents & sibling were involved in an incident that nearly killed them (too outing to go go into detail) The immediate aftermath & months after was left to me to deal with & sort out for them. However a few weeks after this happened one of my parents became seriously ill ending up on life support not expected to live however they did and are alive but with no quality if life. Aswell as us all dealing with the shock of the first incident & seeing how my parent rallied after it to then have the rug yanked from under with this absolutely devastates me every day a couple of years on. Because I was not involved directly with first incident people think I was not affected as much but I constantly relive the moment I opened the door to police and waiting for confirmation over his radio that they were all alive. Scared to say out loud to anyone I know because I feel people would think I was attention seeking.

Broken

I lost my sister and two brothers in rapid succession.. I miss them every day and resent that they missed out on so much life, all under 30.. and I am constantly on edge about the DC and DGC. An accident in the county where they live and I have to check it's not them...the phone rings and my heart pounds. A police officer visited about DH's shotgun and I panicked.. this became my new normal.

There are some really tough stories on here. Makes me feel less alone. I know exactly what one PP means by life before and after an event.
@brokenbeyondrepair. You will be happy in the future and smile, I promise you. When you do, please don't waste energy on guilt like I did, in a 'my Mum is dead I shouldn't be happy' way. We get this one life, and you have to take happiness whenever you can. It's late so I'm not very eloquent!

There is before. And then there is after.

And way too many people who need help to navigate the new realities who can't access it because funding isn't there for those services.

Broken - I wish you a long life.

You are so not alone. But just because everyone will most probably experience those moments at some point in their life it doesn't mean the effect they have should be ignored or accepted. You went through something really traumatic concerning those closest to you and your dad pulling through and the worst not happening doesn't change your experience. If I were you (and with hindsight) I'd look at getting some counselling. The NHS has a self-referral process if you don't want to speak to your GP first or if going private isn't an option. And if you don't feel it's helping you can stop the process whenever you like. Just knowing you're doing something about it can be really helpful in itself.

You’re not alone. When talking about past years I still calculate my age by using the year my mum died as a marker.

It’s as though I went from BC to AD that year. Everything pivots around it.

Some events do change us.

My DM died nearly 6 years ago. There’s a part of me that aches for her every single day. It’s never been the same since that day. I was with her when she died and when the Dr confirmed she’d ‘gone’, I felt a physical jerk/something popping almost inside me (this is very hard to describe) but it literally felt like my heart had cracked or something.

I've lost a lot of people this past year. Two of them I was very close to. One I watched die of cancer the other it was a complete shock and came out of nowhere.

I still feel very sad and I'm so anxious something will happen to my Mum or another family member next.
Yes, I do feel it's changed me. I know some people say life is short, grab it I just feel scared thinking who's next?

My DF had already died aged 54 when aged 69 several years later my DM was killed in a car accident. I was 44. Nothing much really fazes me now tbh. I just get on with life, but it has completely changed my perspective and I certainly don't put off doing anything anymore.

My eldest son was diagnosed with a brain tumour just before his 16th birthday. He was at school the day before. The next day he was in hospital fighting for his life. 2 days later an 11 hour operation to remove what they could. I lived in hospital with him for 6 months. Rarely saw my youngest son.

Followed by 2 years on and off at home or in hospital trying to beat the onslaught of chemo, radiotherapy, physical disability and the regrowth of the tumour.

He passed away aged just 18.

I honestly think I had PTSD from the horrific experience of watching him suffer so terribly and die in my arms.

There is definitely life before cancer and the life after. Then there's the life after he died.

Life has changed spectacularly. My expectations changed. My feelings for people who were there to support at the time and those who didn't. I have patience with some things I didn't before. Fierce anger at the pathetic moaning people make about things that are so unimportant. Fierce rage at the world that my child died. Fierce rage at myself that I couldn't save him, that I live whilst he died. But 5 years on the rawness has gone. I have learnt to lock away in a box some of the destructive thoughts and anger. I live and I love and I laugh but I am forever changed.

My mum died the following year from my son's death from her own cancer and I don't feel I have grieved fir her, even yet 4 years on from her death, 5 years from my son's. I just don't have the space or strength for more grief.

My dad went into a dementia care home after attacking me a year ago. I am spectacularly unemotional about him there. Again I have no more emotional space.

Yes. One normal, sunny morning when I was 24 I got a phone call while I was eating breakfast to say that my brother (in his 20’s) had been in a horrific accident and was dead.
How can something like that not change everything afterwards?

We (as a couple) have had a string of tragic and terrible things happen to us over the last four years. I can't speak for him but I know that I am changed completely as a person and I find I can only find happiness in small chunks. Hopefully things will get better for us but it will be slow.

I suspect you have a degree of PTSD OP.

Minmooch I can relate so much. Just no emotional space left. But then wake every morning about 4 am . My life changing event was a murder suicide in immediate family. Need to accept that I will just never get over it. 💔

Sounds like you have got a bit stuck on that time and might need to talk it through with somebody. Completely understandable, it sounds really traumatic especially when pregnant. How is he doing now?

I feel like I’ve gone the other way. I’m almost numb to loss despite losing several family members and don’t think I have ever grieved properly. To me, they are both still rattling round in their houses doing what they’ve always done, I just haven’t seen them for a while? Live in fear that one day it might suddenly hit me out of nowhere.

OP I totally hear you.

I had a very similar event happen in the last year and it hits me at the most random time. I have panic attacks now which I never used to and I haven't slept properly since.