An Introduction of Sorts (Mission Statement?)

My mom died when I was 17.  I'm now 29.  For four years I struggled with really bad depression.  My Mom died in April and my Dad starting dating in June or July of that same year.  So that didn't help my battle.  I understand now that all those things I questioned "Did he really love her if he just moved forward so quickly?", "Why does it seem like he's more interested in his new girlfriend (to be wife eventually), than he is in his grieving daughter?"  "Why do I feel so alone?"  I understand those questions and their answers now.  He did still love her, in fact as she was dying she told him she didn't want him to be a sad old man with a dead wife and that he should go find a new one to love and who will love him.  She loved him she knew he would grieve her forever if she didn't tell him to do otherwise.  And he loved her so much he did what she told him to do and he probably also knew he couldn't live without another woman in his life.  He didn't replace my mom but he found a new women, just like my mom told him to do.  As for why I felt so alone, well he was in a new relationship and be to quite honest I didn't REALLY understand why until years later why I started dating someone and realized everything else gets forgotten, not on purpose it just happens.  I wasn't alone, I just didn't want to be with the new happy couple then.  Makes sense now, but you're 17 and grieving, it doesn't always make sense.

So for all of that, plus the dead mother, I grieved and while no one knows how to grieve I really didn't know how.  And again I felt alone.  Sure for a few weeks after the death people always want to check in with you and take care of you but then when the dust settles, they have to go back to their lives, I understand that.  I won't detail the next 4 or so years of my life in great detail, but I will say that all these things led me to a severe depression.  Severe enough that one day in college I found myself taking myself to the emergency room because I'd taken a handful of random pills, I don't remember exactly what they were but I know there were many excedrin PM.  Now this being said, I wasn't trying to kill myself,  I never took enough to do that, but I did take enough to need an overnight stay in ICU, maybe it was 2 nights.  It also made me realize I'd let this depression thing really take hold of me.  It was the proverbial rock bottom.  And thank goodness for that.  So I moved forward, trying to figure out how to get from rock bottom back on top again.  My obsession with Celine which had started back in 98 when my mom died was back in action though slightly less than it was right after she died for that 1 and half years?  After I dropped out of college (wow, so much sharing that no one really knows!), after I dropped out of college I moved to Massachusetts where we once lived when my mom was alive.  I moved in with a woman and her family who were part of a big Italian family that my mom was so close to, I just called them family, it was like our family got adopted into their family.  So I thought, since I'd had this "thing" in FL, the best way to be put together was to go "home" where I would be loved and where I could put myself together with help.  Unfortunately I was wrong, the fault was my own for not realizing that they had different plans than I had.  I think it's possible they thought I was over it and I most certainly was not.  So rather than getting a well-adjusted girl from their dead best friend, they got me, a still mostly depressed little girl in the shell of a 19 year old.  Needless to say, that didn't go to.  Within 6 or so months I moved away, ran away is more like it.

Still miserable I moved to DC to live with my Mom's Brother his Wife.  I'm not 100% sure if my uncle knew what he was getting into but I think my aunt did.  We lived in a large house (the first one) where I lived on the bottom part and they made it a lot like home.  I was never required or expected to do anything aside from normal things, you know, keeping living areas clean if I use them, but down there I had my own room, study, bathroom, minifridge, microwave I think?  I basically was set up, and I had my own entrance so it was like living in my own apartment but I was welcome to family things but not forced.  I was making another attempt at school.  I wasn't paying rent but I still needed things so I got a job as a hostess at a local restaurant.  Moving to DC was CRUCIAL to my healing in so many ways.  To be free to be "a bird with a broken wing" as my aunt likes to call it, was really helpful.  There weren't expectations that seemed out of my realm of possibilities.  As I began to grow stronger for myself my Celine obsession become less crazy and more just a Celine fan.  About 4 years after my mom died, when I lived in DC I won tickets to the taping of a concert of hers.  It was in LA and I had to basically BEG my dad to help me because I think I hadn't quite made enough money for a trip to LA.  Anyway, at this point I know that I was happy with who I am, where I'd become and while meeting Celine would have felt right into my checklist, if it didn't happen it wouldn't send me back to my destructive depression.  I feel as though this is getting long.  Anyway to try to keep it shorter, I met Celine, completely by chance and luck and some tears (on my part).  That closed a chapter I had kept open for 4 years.  The Chapter on really bad depression.  And I had pulled myself out of it for myself (with help from a very understanding family), but meeting Celine was the closing of that chapter.

After that, what progress I'd made through the depression progressing even FASTER and next thing I knew I was basically happy.  I started figure skating, which was an interesting thing to begin with.  The short of it is that I saw a skater there that I really liked, but couldn't put a finger on it.  Perhaps it was because she'd trained at the Russian Olympic Prospect School, or because she was so beautiful when she skated, but I realized it was because I saw her as a mother figure, without even knowing.  I realized that when I pulled into the parking lot one night and saw her pulling her child out of her car, happy and in love with him, to which my response was to immediately start bawling in my car in the parking lot.  I knew then that while I was happy I was still struggling with my mom's loss.

So I sought out a meetup group for women who have lost their moms.  The first group was at a bar and there were three of us, shy and nervous and timid and did I mention nervous?  It was especially hard for us to go in and ask where the group of women whose mothers are dead are seated.  We ended up calling ourselves The MDs since it sounded better than Motherless Daughters.  What I learned from these MDs was not your normal "Support group" stuff.  What I learned seemed even more important to me, that we are not alone.  We're not alone if our moms die when we're 17 or 47 or whenever.  I only lived in DC for another year or so but we tried to get other MD meetups going.  Then I moved to LA and I think that group from DC sort of flamed out.  I tried in LA but I was not as successful as I was in DC.  Now here I am in Chicago, connected to the world by internet, Facebook, Twitter, etc and if I have to run this group from the internet for now, I will.  And that's fine, the point is to connect other women up with other MDs so they never have to feel alone like I did for many years.  No disrespect to my family, but I still felt alone, without other women who can help me and whom I can maybe help.  That's what I needed over those 4 years of severe depression, not family but to know I'm not alone and to connect up with women who are in the same situation I was in (to a degree).  I want to connect ALL of us up, and maybe this is the next step from Facebook Groups and Twitter accounts.

I also want to be able to show we've all been there, we've all been in such misery that we've considered stupid things (or done them--in my case).  I'm hoping that my "Full Monty-esque" life can show you it's still ok.  I'm hoping others will join by leaving comments and their own stories.  I hope to bring thought provoking questions to help us move forward, help us feel unlost, or whatever we need, I just want to help us all.  I don't have it all figured out yet, exactly what I'll write here but I hope it helps to bring the community together and I hope it causes you all to add your words of wisdom, your thoughts, your rants and raves.  I have lots of books with lots of questions that I'm hoping we will all answer in the eventual healing.  I won't lie, I need help too.  And anything I write here I won't lie about.  I've told things above I've never told anyone outside a very close group of people, but I feel in order to know what hell we can make it though, you might need proof that I have, at least that one battle.  The entire fights not over yet but I want you to know as you're feeling your pain that you aren't alone.  Together we all get through this MD "thing" we were thrown into.  We should support each other.  I hope this works :)

Sorry for the long long first message, I was trying to sum up the previous struggles, clearly it took longer than I thought it would. ;)  They won't always be this long I promise. ;)