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Welcome to this forum. I lost my boyfriend 8 years ago and we were on our 30s. I have this phrase that says I was killed and have been left alive. I didn't have tools nor support from my friends as they have no idea what this means. I isolated myself for 2 or 3 years. I found this place through Google and these people can be my parents for the age difference. Yet I nod at their posts in agreement and we all care here and nobody judges. Ana

Thank you for your words. I went to mass as it is Corpus Christi. I sobbed during the entire ceremony because I could not understand why God robbed my boyfriend from his dream of being a father. Why so many evil people are parenting and he didn't. I felt so much grief pain in my chest since waking up and it's been 8 years. I still wear a mask in crowded indoors and that camouflaged my eyes. In church I allow myself to make questions in spiritual despair and resignation knowing there are no answers. Ana

I have my dad but we live in different cities so I'm not seeing him today. My brother is becoming a dad but he lives abroad. I have a picture of my boyfriend with a friend's child. That's the closest thing I have of him that resembles parenting. He left the world without being one. A friend told me at his funeral what amazing parents we would have been. He was sure he wanted to be one and so he froze his sperma before the surgery. I was hesitant as any young woman would be about having children while living abroad with no close family support. It is all dead. Nobody mentioned me how many other things were going to die after the death. I'm very thankful to have my father alive and God I'm going to miss him so much the day he's gone. I don't know but Mothers day Father's day make me think of death.

I've never met again someone with the disease my BF had. It is a rare disease and so the chances are very low. Now I wonder what I would do. How I would react. I might look at him/her seeing death coming for them too. I may not be able to give any word of hope. I would hold his/her hand though. But I would feel my own misery and not theirs. It would be about me and not about their own persona. Yesterday I cleaned my old laptop. I found a file in which my BF asked for an extension of his sick leave at his internship. He stated that he hoped he would soon be back. He never did. I remember how broken and sad he felt at having to leave his internship and how hard he tried to stick to his training as long as possible. I put this and others in a folder with his name. I felt like a machine sorting out files and folders here and there. I was very close to break down and throw that laptop to the floor. I didn't. I stick to the task as an accountant. I need that small laptop to work while travelling. I couldn't find a "meaningful meaning".

Hello. I can relate to your experience. I took acqua gym classes back then but not with people from my age. I could not be in a class full of people ready to get fit. I had to be in one which could help me to ease the physical toll from grief and trauma. I felt it even in my bones. Bones can be felt. It is so hard to explain this unless you haven't been through this kind of loss. So I took the classes with the elderlys. It was more caring and you can do at your own pace. My body needed softness and calmness. Water provides this relief. Two years later my counselor took me to a yoga class to learn how to move with the breath. I thought I was going to be incapable of bending a toe. the amount of benefits to people physically hurting in tension and stress from trauma is beyond counting. In the USA there are places with Yoga for Grief being taught by people with special training to support bereavers. To breath. Just to breathe. Something I have stopped doing when my boyfriend died. It took me a lot of time to notice any change in my body. It is an ongoing process even today at year 8th. Good luck and good for you for looking for help and accepting advice. Be kind with yourself.

Oh yes. When you reach to the conclusion that you have lost the identity of being a husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend because of death.... I can describe that feeling I felt as some sort-of violence inflicted inside of me. And yet I was even able to survive. Looking back I'm always shocked about how I was even capable to. I cannot even say how I did it. One foot in front of the other, maybe.

So nice to hear from you again!

I haven't been able to have a restful sleep since then. I start "waking up" at around 6am and sleep a little more up to 7am. 8am in the weekend. I feel so alone when I go to bed. Sometimes I try to keep myself busy I put a YouTube video to have noise in the background. I know there are effective bedtime routines to try. When I'm in bed I have to make a lot of effort to not think of bad things and feelings. I try to think of animals for example. And I think that the fact that I make an effort when I shouldn't makes me sleep badly. I don't fall asleep "relaxed". Sometimes I take a pill. I dont want to. I so badly miss him when I go to bed. I think of him as someone who will stay awaken to protect me. But it's not enough. It will never be. I don't want him to be an angel. It's unfair. I hate nights.

You didn't kill your beloved one and you didn't cause/contribute to his/her death. I know how you feel and I've felt the same. We all understand. I'm not wise but I'm in my 8th year in this. Ultimately you'll be faced with the choice to work on this feeling of guil6 or not, you'll have to choose, or not, to release the only and one prisoner in there, which is you. Guilt leads to nothing but your own suffering. It cannot mend the past, it can make the life that is left to be miserable. Grief gives us very little or no choice on how and what to feel. But it leaves some room on how to face it. Use these few spaces for your own survival and raise from where you are cause you worth it. If you feel guilty for their death, they have the right, sort of saying, to feel guilty for their existences to ruin your lives. And we know that's not true. My two cents. Peace Ana.

Dear Kieron, allow me to suggest you to look at one option at a time and don't overwhelm yourself in making a decision right away. Ponder one aspect a day and write down your conclusions on that aspect. In a couple of days you will be able to make a choice.

Dear all I have been away from here for a couple of weeks because I have been battling against an awful realization. I have been feeling "bad" lately "in my heart". There was something "wrong" going on with me and I wasn't able to put it into words. Was it anxiety? Stress? Boredom? I took a couple of days "off" from the phone, social media and from meeting the only two friends I have in this town. Sort of reclusion. Am I angry? At what? Frustrated? But this doesn't feel like a normal angry feeling.... I made a list of the achievements and recognitions I have had in the last couple of months and years. I'm good at my job. I receive compliments for my work. I'm efficient. I'm honest. My health is very good. I rent a small place in a safe neighborhood. I eat healthy food. I'm a good cooker. I can take care of myself. I know the priorities. I'm a good citizen. I have values. I have ethic. I have achieved all that. I'm in a better place. I have done a f**** effort to "restore" whatever was left from me. Yet.... he is gone. He is not seeing anything. He knows nothing about my new self and no matter how hard I have tried, survived, cried and cope. He doesn't know. And if he does, what's the point of knowing it. If he sees me now, for what? What have this 8 years ment for BOTH and not just for me? Nothing. Maybe there is no more US at all. What I have been doing for 8 years is separating from him without noticing it. Knowing that none of this will bring him back was too much to deal with. I don't know who he is now. Of course my mind knows he died. but maybe my soul expected a come back. If I did everything well he would be back. Well he hasn't. And I don't know what to do with this new Me. He is a ray of light and I'm someone covered with salt.

I understand you all. And I'm going to share an episode I have never told to anyone. My boyfriend died after a transplant. The surgery was successful. But it arrived too late, we found. A week later his kidneys started to fail. He was in coma. At that moment I remembered what he mentioned, if his kidneys failed it was the end. I wasn't his caregiver and he never wanted me to be to. But he "trained" me for the after surgery. I was ready. I must have felt something very similar before you enter into a sport field or a battle field. A sense of duty, purpose and faith against the odds. It never happened. There was no need for me to enter the field. It was September. Morning. I was sitting in the waiting room and I watched a young girl, I think she was 18 or less, walking in the aisle with his doctor. She looked pailed and frail. She survived her transplant, I found. The nurse told me that she was a patient who didn't want to live, she was tired of being sick, of fighting. She was letting herself go away. Yet, she survived and she woke up. I thought that if she didn't want to live and yet she overcome the surgery, my boyfriend, who wanted to live and did not let himself to slip away, would too. And the kidneys failed. I think I said to the nurse something like why she was alive when she didn't want to and my boyfriend was going to die in spite of everything he had done? I was "using" a nurse to ask God why he was not keeping BOTH alive. Or why he didn't deserve to walk again. I can see the scene now 8 years later. I can see the girl's parents being anxious for her daughter. My boyfriend and another young patient from the transplant unit died within days. I never knew what happened to the walking girl. I truly wish she survived and found meaning in being alive. The other girl who passed away was the only child of a single mother. I won't ever understand. That same nurse told me that if my boyfriend survived, he would have lived tightened to a machine. That would have been devastating for him and for us. But then.... Months later, my MIL said: We cannot lose another one. And so in reply to you Marg, I don't like evenings and I feel relieved when I wake up. It means that I will get another chance to fill up my time with stress over nonsenses rather than thoughts from the past which snick into my bed in the dark. I don't sleep like restored, even though there isn't anything that should worry me know. I should get a restorative sleep. Yet I don't. I have vivid dreams but not from the past anymore, thankfully. For many months I dreamed that it was me in the surgery room, in the hospital bed. That should mean that I'm healing... I hope I am. It's not the healing I have read about nor it felt like a healing journey. I believe I have lost my shoul. I believe I have seen hell. But I have to be honest in writing that I did make lots of progress from that September morning when I caught a glimpse of a future that was almost there to catch but was not ment to be. I don't take sleeping pills and when I do I feel sorry for myself and for the reason why. I didn't take them when he was alive. Irony Peace to you all. Ana

I quoted Kalil at my bf's funeral.

Hi Gin. Hope you are doing well.

A very touching story. Thanks

Marg. I like your family stories and pics. Thank you for sharing. I understand what you mean by "He" picks up the best. I thought it too. However, my boyfriend was 31 yo. He would have been even better being alive here on Earth. He didn't want to die. He was tired yes, but he fought. He wasn't given a choice I think and he had to leave. I remember being in the waiting room and hearing the beep beep beep from the heart machine. It lasted too long. We were taken outside from the ICU room and he didn't pass away immediately. The beep and beep and beep was a torture. Please God stop this sound if you already decided to take him with You. Stop doing this. My angry to Heavens (and to nothing) comes from that place. I worth to be alive. I don't feel I worth less for being here. But he worth it too!!!! I don't remember who said this here but If I were given an explanation (by whom exactly?) I wouldn't understand. And I never liked to be underestimated. I would still be angry and resigned. Peace Ana

Dear Gwen this I just to tell you that I come regularly to read how you are doing and I'm really sorry for not knowing what to say about your circumstances and challenges. But we are all supporting you and we are hopeful for you and Also for Melody. Ana

That's a very good book, the year of magical thinking. I'd also suggest It's okay that you are not OK from Megan Devine

My boyfriend admired De Andre's songwriting. I can't remember his favorite unfortunately. I would like to think that he had met him on the other side. I wasn't able to appreciate it as I'm a Pop music girl. And that's ok.

My memories from the 80s are tied to Bon Jovi and Madonna.

Enza, the piano versions (I don't play) of my "grief songs" are Angels by Robbie Williams. "Does an angel contemplate my faith.... and do they know the places where we go?" My immortal by Evanescence "I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone, but though you're still here with me I've been alone all along" Slipped away by Avril Lavigne "now you're gone somewhere I can't bring you back, now you're gone somewhere you're not coming back" I admire those with the gift of playing music! I don't understand classical music but I enjoy orchestra concerts. I always pay close attention to the violin, to the flute. How amazing is to be able to play an instrument. It's an unique talent. The world would be a better place with more musicians on it. Ciao Ana

Yes!!! The look was a smashing hit. Very good times back then. Listen to your heart is super. All of the songs from that album in fact

I love Roxette!!!! What a great band! There is a very beautiful yet unknown song, Never is a Long Time (from the album Tourism). Marie sings at her best. One of my favs

Surely Roberto was very young as I have been and let me assure you that you don't say a word because the outer world is dealing with wedding planners, birthing and honeymoons while us have directly reached to the end of the journey and you are dealing with something soooo painful and soooo devastating. Because you start to understand what grief entails. I fainted when I found out the thing of secondary losses. I was yet going to loose more and how long this pain would last? A bitter pillow to swallow is a mild metaphor. I write these lines and I cannot believe I have survived. I'm glad to read that your friend made it too. But as you said we all have been clueless before. It takes time to "forgive" that others don't/can't/want to understand. As you Gwen, I can be genuinely glad for others and cry later alone. Sometimes I don't cry and I feel sad. Other times I'm fine. It took me a lot of time to reach to that """better""" place. I was angry frustrated and envious. If anyone could have read my mind OMG! Young people simply don't have tools and the despair is very big. You are left alone, silenced and you feel like those players who are sitting on the bench looking at the others playing the game. Your match is over. It is. A new way has to been found. It's not easy. This forum is so very special. Ana

It's been his smile and a kind of bright in his eyes. But when I met him by purely chance I rejected all of it with all my strengths because I was about to quit my job and move to a new city and I didn't want to meet anyone in between. I told our mutual friend please don't mention his name I can't risk my plans for the future. But I "knew" that it was the end of my plans. It was my choice. I took the plane to go to the new city just to cancel everything and travelled back. One of my most vivid memories is from my very young SIL she was waiting for me at the airport and she hugged me and cried because she couldn't believe that I was back to be with his beloved brother and start a new life together. It was like in the movies. The rest is history. I don't regret it.