My death

Five years ago my mum started having some heart problems. She went in and out of the hospital for several times. I was the only one for her. I have 3 brothers, one lived in Milan, other in USA, and the other here in Brazil, but he is married with children. So I was the one going through all the process with her. She went through many procedures. Every time she went to a surgery room I thought that was it. But my mum is tough. Two years ago we celebrated her 80th birthday. My brothers came from abroad, a big family reunion. She was healthier than us. My brother from Italy stayed longer. He was considering living in Brazil again. He was not only my brother but my best friend. We used to talk every day on Skype. He was baking me a cake, when he had a heart attack in the kitchen. He died in front of me and my mum. I tried to do CPR till the paramedics arrived, 20 minutes later, but he was already gone. He was 49 years old. I always thought when my mum was ill, that I’d spend my old age with my brother. But instead he was gone and she was well. It happened 2 years ago, and I still grab the phone to call him sometimes. I just forget he isn’t there anymore.
Last year my dog died. Well, he didn’t die, he was put to sleep. He was a beautiful boxer, an alpha dog, so strong he was. But he got cancer and suffered like hell in his last days. I had to take him to the veterinarian to end his misery. He was 8 years old.
Five months ago I ended a 25 years old relationship I had with this man. He was married, had other lovers like me. Well, I didn’t think they were like me, I thought I was special. But I realized I wasn’t.
I don’t miss my brother, I don’t miss my dog I don’t miss this man. I miss the person I was with them. That part of me my brother accessed could only be accessed by him. Same with my dog, same with that man. I am the one who died. I am some kind of a zumbi, half dead, half alive.

vcnavega, I was quite intrigued as to why you titled your post "my death" - afterall, you typed your post, so you must still be living. In your eyes, what you have experienced, losing people and your dog, you feel you have lost yourself, but you are still alive, just not in the way you used to be before these experiences. We have 2 choices after experiencing a death of a loved one, we either go through the grieving process, internalise the person we lose, and learn to move on, or we go to pieces and never learn to deal with it.

I really feel important parts of me died with them. My brother was my best friend, the keeper of my secrets, my protector. Although he lived in Italy and I live in Brazil we used to travel to India 3 times a year. I used to spend some time in Italy too. He used to stay in Brazil for some months too. When he died people didn’t even know who he was. He had so many secrets I was the only one who knew. If I was the one who had died and he had lived, he wouldn’t bear. We were soul mates. The biggest part of me was expressed only with him and vice versa.

My dog was my way out of this life of caring for an elderly. My mum was sick all the time, and I being locked in this house, living an 82 years old life. On the weekend I used to get my dog and we went wild. We went to the beach, to the country he was so brave, always getting into trouble with other dogs, with horses, even cows. We would walk on wild tracks, get into the nature. He was my companion, made me feel younger. His illness consumed him in 2 weeks, in 2 weeks! He started coughing, we did an ultrasound in his throat and the cancer had already spread to his whole body. When he died my youth died too.

And for the man I broke up with, he was a jerk, a sociopath. He is the leader of a cult. I was his lover like so many girls were. I thought I was a princess, but I was a slave. The princess died. My dreams of romanticism died.

So, yes, I am dead. And my life now is to wait for my mother to die. And another part of me will die too, because this woman is so strong, she is holding me alive. But when she is gone, the only part of me that is still alive will be gone too. There is not much left of me.

I thought I would spend my old age with my brother. I thought I would have at least some more 5 years with my dog. I thought that man loved me. I was mistaken. I am lonely. And this loneliness feels like death.

Vcnavega, I am terribly sorry for your loss. It sounds as though parts of you may have indeed died, in a way.

Try to have faith that you can rebuild what you have lost. By the sound of it, the existence of those parts was dependent on your relationship with those you have lost.

It may not feel like it right now but in a way, now that those parts of you are dead, this is an opportunity for you to rebuild yourself on a much more firm foundation – yourself.

Even if it may be much harder to do so – you can, for example, be young even without your dog… by forcing yourself to go out once again to the beach and country side… even if you are still taking care of your elderly mother, you don't need an "excuse" to do this. In this way your youth may grow inside you once again and once it exists independently of others – you will be able to share it again with others.

Likewise goes with all the other parts of you that you feel you've lost. Nobody will ever be able to take the place of your brother, of course… but you can still learn to someday be who you were with him – with yourself… and over time with other people as well.

I can understand your sense of loss over the man you were with for 25 years… but I'm not sorry to hear that you're finally out of that relationship. Even if it didn't seem that way at the time, I'm sure it must have been detrimental in some ways to your self esteem. Just like with any relationship, even if this was a very long one, you now have a chance to take whatever good there was in it by trying to understand what led you to be in it for so long… why you insisted on being a 'slave' and what can be done now in order to build yourself up as a person… and again, once you have that – over time you'll be able to share your new strength with a different partner, one who will behave as your equal this time.

Just don't give up.