CW: suicide, parent death, isolation, rehoming a pet
Trauma is weird because sometimes you don't realize how bad something was until you put into words what actually happened.
Because when I was 20, my mom killed herself on one of the few weekends I didn't come home from college. I went home, helped organize the funeral, had the funeral, and then went back to school like nothing had happened.
Then school ended and I went back home to the house my mom killed herself in. My grandma and dad both offered for me to come live with them, but neither of them would take her/my dog, because she was a pitbull mix. They wanted to leave the dog alone in the house 24 hours a day and maybe have someone come by to feed her and let her outside. I said no, so I went home and sat around in my mom's house with our dog and cried all the time. I went to my grandma's house for dinner and to shower (because my mom did it in our bathroom), and my grandpa spent the night with me so I wasn't sleeping there by myself. But otherwise I was completely alone. Just me and this dog. For months. The entire summer.
I went back to school and we eventually rehomed the dog. I was living on campus and no one close to me would take her. But eventually my mom's best friend's friend took her.
Before this, I had been doing a 2+2 program at school. Which means you go to a 2 year school and then transfer to a 4 year school because it's cheaper to get your Gen Ed classes done at a 2 year school if you don't know what you want to major in. Except at no point on my first two years had I landed on a major or a school I wanted to go to (well, except the one my boyfriend was going to. But my mom said that was a horrible idea so I didn't choose that one. This will come back later). So at some point during my accidental solitary confinement, I decided to go to the college my mom went to. Which was a private Catholic school.
I am queer, not Catholic, and could not afford this fucking school. But that was actually fine because I dropped out 2 weeks into the semester because I was spending all my free time crying.
So I went back home, this time to my grandma's house, and we cleared out my mom's house and sold it. And then I went to a different school for a minor that misrepresented what it was, I ended up not likong anyway, and didn't finish. I was horrifically depressed the entire time, and only made one friend there. That friend dropped out.
All my other friends were actually at my boyfriend's school. The one my mom told me I shouldn't go to. I probably would have also been depressed there, but at least I would have been depressed around people I love instead of alone in my room for 3 years (3 because my credits got fucked over by my advisor before she quit and I had to take another semester for one single class).
And for the longest time I didn't realize any of it was traumatic because to me while I was living it, I was just grieving, being a good dog owner, and taking what I thought was good advice. But then you realize, oh no, actually I was alone in the house my mom killed herself in for months, and then I was mostly alone in a dorm room not talking to anyone except on weekends for years. That's not normal or good for you.
And then I wonder why I am the way that I am.
