Hello everyone, I am doing much better now, passing my math class and everything. About to get the Associates Degree and all. But, the path I took to get here, something seems....missing. Just so everyone knows why I have been freaking out over the last year, I'll tell what happened. It's a long read.
It started in October 2010, my family got forcefully moved by the Government because of a HUD house we inadvertently bought to renovate. So, we get thrown into financial turmoil and my family life starts unraveling into dysfunction. That same month, I meet this girl who is my age (we were both 19 at the time, I'm almost 21 now, she is a cousin of a friend of mine who had cancer), it was during the same week we were forced out. She approaches me and interrupts me during a conversation I was having with a couple other guys, trying to get my attention by poking my shoulder, telling me that her cousin is on a mission (she's LDS) is on a mission in Johnny Cash's hometown (the discussion she interrupted was about country music), we share a long gaze.
She's very polite and very sweet, cute, green-gray eyes....a redhead, I fall for her, hard. I was much more concerned about what was happening at home, and I didn't feel confident enough to ask her out, part of me didn't want to drag her into what I was going through. We catch glances every now and then, chat a little, field trips and such in our geology class. As my home life starts to fall apart, she gives me something to look forward to every day, I'm always happy to see her, even though I'm unsure about telling her how I feel.
So that semester comes and passes, Spring 2011 sets in, fights with my dad start up over my major, which at the time is History, he considers it worthless and that I'm screwing off his money.
In April I see the girl again one day, I see her crying as she walks through the crosswalk at the college and it tears me up inside, when I wave to her she sees me and looks so appreciative and happy to see me, giving me a sideways glance that melts me a bit. This is the last time I see her for 10 months. About 5 hours later dad comes home from work, very angry. He's convinced that he's going to lose his job and not be able to retire, and immediately gets on my case about my degree and how it's worthless. I try to logically defend it, but it disintegrates into an f-word shouting insult-fest between the two of us for a few more hours. He very loudly and angrily puts down my choice for a major and physically threatens to throw me out of the house in the middle of the night or else change my degree or he'll cut off support. I'm tired of fighting by this point and passively say "okay".
A couple weeks later I test into a higher (Graduation credit worthy) Math course. I enroll in it during the Summer class from May to July, and bomb it. I take a CLEP test to get the credit, fail it 4 points short of a credit worthy score. And the fights pick up again, I didn't change my major in April, I just gave dad lip service. He's beyond angry at this point, and the loud and angry swear-laced fights go on for a few days and I'm physically threatened to be thrown out of the house again, then I post my July thread:
https://www.city-data.com/forum/relationships/1331092-i-think-my-life-over.html#post20030885
At about the same time, less than a couple miles away, a friend of mine has become resurgent in his cancer, his parents allow him to marry his girlfriend and keeps the secret from the world that he was terminal. Death and cancer were never easy subjects for me to talk about, especially when we were in High School. I congratulated him on his wedding on Facebook, and that was the last time I spoke to him, I was unaware of his condition.
10 days later (late July 2011) my grandmother's alzheimer's developes into dementia, somebody has to live with her at all times. So I move in, it was very hard to live with somebody who gets worse every day and there is nothing you can do about it, she was terminal. For the next 6 months I live with grandma, and she has violent mood swings and violent night terrors. My school and social life suffer as a result. I'm taking that math class again as well, and not doing good at it. Grandma's house doesn't have internet, and I can't leave the house at night while she sleeps. So I am pretty much to myself most nights, whatever books or movies I bring are all I have.
Becoming more introspective as the days pass, my mind starts to wander while I lay up at night in the back of the house. I start wondering where the girl I fell for went (I find out soon after, it hurts to know that she left town, permenantly), also I wonder very deeply as to where my life is going, and why my college life has been nothing more than a giant dysfunctional fight. I make only one small prayer at that time, and that is "If I can make it through this, please let me see <her> again". In hindsight it was a badly thought out prayer.
I had come to live with the fact that grandma was terminal for a couple years already, but seeing her go down as bad and quick as she did when I was staying with her was distressing. I remember being in class thinking to myself "what if she runs out of the house and attacks the neighbors again?", "what if she gets flustered and wanders away?", "what if she DIES while I'm at school?". Christmas comes by, I still don't have the Associates Degree, I'm very sternly told by dad if I don't pass this math class on the third try, then I'm done. At this point, I start planning to visit my friend that (I thought) beat cancer (but he was weeks from death) sometime in January when this is all settled, because I never spoke to him about it, and felt lingering regret that I hadn't visited him since he got married.
A few nights after Christmas 2011, grandma just finally hits that "point". She gets up in her bedroom and starts clobbering the walls with her shoes. It's about 11:00 PM, all I do is sternly tell her "grandma, cut it out your disturbing the neighbors", I don't raise my voice (I sounded more deadpan). She starts screaming "don't you tell me what to do!" and starts throwing stuff at me (mind you she's 85, I can't exactly restrain her with force), it's when she picks up the lamp is when I try to defuse it. So I send her back into her room to cool off, she starts beating the walls again, so, I take the shoes away when she isn't looking. Grandma doesn't remember my name by this point, she only calls me "the Man". Grandma won't calm down so I call dad, he comes over, sees what is going on, has my mom come over, then my aunt comes over. It is now midnight, grandma is going nuts. She gets a hold of steel toed boots in her closet and screams that she's going to kill all of us "starting with 'the Man' and the woman that's with him! I'm gonna go into that room where he sleeps and if the right one don't kill him THE LEFT ONE WILL! The eyes, THE EYES!!!". Just to note, I'm single, I've never had a woman in that house with me.
And so that next week in January we moved her out to a nursing home in town, we spent the rest of that month cleaning out her house, all 60 years of stuff she held on to, with 10 years of stuff from the current house, including some knives and a baseball bat she had hidden. I was planning to visit my friend at the end of the month.
Come January 27th, 2012 I have a foreboding and dreadful dream that night of a highschool class yearbook with blurred faces and a feeling of death. For the next day I asked myself what that dream meant, is someone going to die? On January 29th, a Monday, my friend died.
The morning I found out, it was almost as if I couldn't process it. My mind went blank, I sat in a state of denial until his viewing on Friday and when I saw him in his casket like that, it made me start thinking internally: "He was your friend, how could you do that, you didn't visit him, you could have changed it.", I held my pain in, I didn't cry, I barely spoke. I just sat there in the seats during the viewing, looking at the floor after I saw him. A little voice in me just started screaming "WHY ARE YOU NOT CRYING! HE WAS YOUR FRIEND! AND YOU DID NOTHING!". That night I went to bed, I couldn't sleep, his body was the first thing I saw when I closed my eyes.
That next day was the funeral, I couldn't talk. I just sat there, listening to his parents give his life story, emphasis on the last 6 months of his life towards the end, and I just say "that day I was with grandma, I could have visited him that weekend, but NO I had to be on the computer when you went home for the weekend!" to myself. I internalized it further, I held all the tears, pain and everything else inside. When we went to the burial services, I just stood there towards the back of the crowd, he was being buried literally across the street from where he died. As I scanned the crowd I notice a face among his family, it's her, his cousin. She came back, I was shocked because I remember that only prayer I made months earlier. That "click" I felt (explained here:
https://www.city-data.com/forum/relat...y-problem.html) was my feelings I still held for her briefly coming through the grief to just talk to her for a second. And once again she sees me and is greatly appreciative and happy to see me.
So, after the shock of my friend dying, the realization that I had two people I cared about dying around me, one I took care of personally for 6 months and the other who's condition I was unaware of, seeing somebody I prayed to see again. Stress of school, the guilt I felt, the self hatred for not showing any emotion at the funeral, how useless I felt. I held it in for 4 more days. On February 8th I drove out into the desert and had a nervous breakdown.
This depression carried on for 4 weeks, then I visited his grave, sat and talked for over 2 hours, and it felt as if he had heard me and hugged me, and the pain regarding him was gone.
Then, in March, grandma fell at the nursing home and they couldn't take care of her anymore. We move grandma in with my aunt, who literally lives up the road and around the corner from where my friend passed away. So my friend passes away less than half a mile away from me, as does my grandmother. Grandma can't walk anymore, barely eats, the nurses say it's Hospice Care now, she's in the death process. I visit whenever I can.
Then, at the end of March I have a dream that takes place at my friend's funeral. I'm sitting where I did in real life, but I look down at my leg, and there is a note with golden lettering that basically says "Perserverance". That was a dream that made me wonder.
Then there was the issue with his cousin, she didn't respond to me on Facebook for almost 2 months. When she did earlier this month, she was sorry that she didn't respond, that her life was a bit crazy as well. She related the story of how badly hurt she was when a mutual friend of ours died in High School from an accident. She understood too well the pain I felt. I told her my feelings for her, she was thankful and very appreciative, she was so happy that I was honest with her and thanked me for it, she called me smart, sweet and big hearted. She hoped her honesty wouldn't hurt me, because she never thought of me in a romantic way. In response I told her about what the last year of my life was like, and how her cousin's death and my grandma's dying simultaniously happening wrecked me.
Then I visited my friend's parents 10 days ago, told them exactly how I felt. I primarily spoke with his father and cried with him, I related to him about the nervous breakdown I had about having 2 people dying around me and the guilt I felt. It was a 2 hour long conversation that I put off for 3 months, he told me I shouldn't feel guilty at all about what happened, I had no control over it either way. I was right to look after my family first. I went into the room where my friend died, discussed things in there. He told me it doesn't make me less of a man to cry, I told him about the dream I had a month earlier, about the "Perserverance" note. And you know what he says? "Yep, that was him". Apparently several others have had similar dreams, and my friend always went on about perservering and pushing forward. I left that night feeling so much better.
Dad has retired now, and has cooled off quite a bit, but he's still kind of cynical about my direction with work and college.
But now I'm having dreams about his cousin, little symbolic dreams about elements of her. What does it mean? Are we going to meet again!? Why did an unrequited love help me through the worst period of my life? Life has become so much better for me, but I'm still so uncertain about what is beyond the Associates Degree. What would the rest of you recommend I do?