When the ONLY person you want is the one you've lost

Hi everyone,

To keep a long story short: I lost my father to this f*****g disease we call "cancer" about 18 months ago. He was the love of my life. EVERYTHING that means anything is tied up with my dad. And I currently have no will to live without him. For any moderator who may see this, please don't worry about suicide - I do not plan to kill myself. However, I have absolutely zero - and I mean ZERO - interest in anything else in this world, which no longer contains the most important and wonderful thing I've ever known - my father.

I'm writing this post not to get "advice," since that has always been totally useless. I'm writing this to reach out to anybody who feels the same way - do you feel that the only person you want to talk to is the one you've lost? That all other people and all other relationships are second-rate (sounds harsh, but it's how I feel) and largely pointless? Here are things I've tried and found useless:

1) Counselling (4 different counsellors) - utterly useless

2) Talking to friends - utterly useless (they mean well but their empathy skills are extremely poor)

3) Writing about how I feel - not entirely useless but not much good

4) Posting here occasionally - not entirely useless but so far of very limited use

Here are the two things that almost everyone says, both of which are also useless:

1) "Time will help" - maybe it will; maybe it won't. I wouldn't be so sure in my case. Since my father was my entire world, and since I've lost him, I don't see how "time will help." Is time going to bring him back? Obviously not. It is now 18 months since my father died and I do not feel different at all. Not one bit. Every day is exactly the same. I do not expect this to change any time soon. I would not be surprised if I felt like this for years. Hell, I would not be surprised if I feel like this forever. I have never loved anything or anyone in the way I loved my father. I have never been loved by anyone in the way I was loved by my father. Neither of those things is going to change. 

2) "Your father would want you to move on and live your life" - utterly useless advice. My father is no longer here! What he would want if he were here is irrelevant. What's relevant is that I don't have him with me, can't cuddle him, can't hear his laugh, can't feel his warmth, and so on. I don't want to "move on and life my life." I want to be with my b****y dad!

So that brings me back to the title of this post - the ONLY person I want is the one I have lost. The only THING I want (interaction with my father) is the one thing I can never have again. Instead I am supposed to spend the rest of my life on planet earth (which could be decades) without the only thing that ever really meant anything to me (on the deepest level). Everything else feels utterly trivial and pointless.

How are you supposed to live when the ONLY person you want to be with is the one you've lost? If you feel the same, feel free to reply,

Adam

Parents
  • Hi [@bras1548]‍ 

    I am sorry to hear about your father and how you have been feeling. Cancer is truly a horrible disease and life can be so cruel. I have been reading this thread and can relate to quite a lot of it because my mum died a few months ago from pancreatic cancer. I'm about 3 months into grieving and it's incredibly tough. After my mum was diagnosed (with very few warning symptoms) I became her carer. Within the space of 3 weeks I watched her get sick, diagnosed and change from being a very positive person to telling me she all she wanted to do was die as quickly as possible- the cancer broke her spirit. I was very close to my mum and it was heart breaking and deeply traumatic. My mum died 5 weeks after diagnosis and I struggle every day  knowing  that she isn't here any more. 

    Friends haven't been very helpful and I suppose I don't blame them because none can relate to the situation I am in. Grief is a very individual, personal thing and I hope that you can heal eventually. You said you have had counseling which unfortunately didn't work for you.  I am going through that at the moment and my counselor has been really great. She has never made any judgements or suggestions, she just nudges me to talk about the most traumatic parts of my mum's death. Perhaps you should go back to your GP and ask for advice. Sorry I can't be more helpful, just came on here to say I know how you are feeling and how terriblly isolating it is. 

     

    Take care 

  • Thank you very much for posting, especially given that you're going through your own wretched experience. I'm really glad to hear that you're finding counselling helpful. That's promising. I hope things continue to go well there and wish you all the best. What happened to your mother (and to you) saddens me tremendously. If I believed in God, I'd be angry with him/her, but I don't. Instead I just think that dreadful things happen to good people and we're just supposed to "deal" with it.

  • Hi [@bras1548]‍ 

    I also do not believe in god and am not a spiritual person, however, I do hope there is an afterlife of some kind. I'm sorry if I upset you with my last post, but that is the grim reality of what I am facing, there are no winners in cancer and nothing positive can be said about it. At least on here, there are people we can talk to and share our traumatic experiences with knowing that they 'get' what we are going through because not many people around us seem to understand or relate to how deeply sad the situation can be. For me, personally, being so close to my mum and taking care of her when she got sick was deeply traumatic, and I had to do it alone because my mum more or less just shut down. I can't even talk to my brother about it because he lives in another country and never saw mum when she was sick.

    At the moment, I am just drifting through life, nothing excites me and I don't have much motivation to do much. Real life isn't like Hollywood movies, we don't move on after 5 minutes of grief - many of my friends / colleagues don't seem to understand that grief and mourning takes time. I will move on eventually and get on with my life because my mum told me on her deathbed,  'life must go on darling'.

    Take care and stay strong.

     

Reply
  • Hi [@bras1548]‍ 

    I also do not believe in god and am not a spiritual person, however, I do hope there is an afterlife of some kind. I'm sorry if I upset you with my last post, but that is the grim reality of what I am facing, there are no winners in cancer and nothing positive can be said about it. At least on here, there are people we can talk to and share our traumatic experiences with knowing that they 'get' what we are going through because not many people around us seem to understand or relate to how deeply sad the situation can be. For me, personally, being so close to my mum and taking care of her when she got sick was deeply traumatic, and I had to do it alone because my mum more or less just shut down. I can't even talk to my brother about it because he lives in another country and never saw mum when she was sick.

    At the moment, I am just drifting through life, nothing excites me and I don't have much motivation to do much. Real life isn't like Hollywood movies, we don't move on after 5 minutes of grief - many of my friends / colleagues don't seem to understand that grief and mourning takes time. I will move on eventually and get on with my life because my mum told me on her deathbed,  'life must go on darling'.

    Take care and stay strong.

     

Children
  • Don't worry - you didn't upset me at all. I can't be upset by anything really (except perhaps learning that my mother is also unwell), because I'm already depressed.

    Like you, I'm drifting through life. I have zero interest in anything. I just want to be with my dad, although I realise that I have repeated that ad nauseam and that it gets me nowhere,

    Have a good weekend