Where Do I Start And Where Does It End

[casmil226]

i feel almost silly posting this, because it's been 12 years since my mom died. she died in 1996, suddenly, when i was 14. i was never close to my dad growing up, he traveled alot and we always fought. i was with my mom the whole day before she died, and i called the ambulance. it was in august. i had to start school about 4 days later. my dad started to see someone in november, and they were married in may. we moved to where my step mom lived, and i had to leave all my friends. my step mom told me off the bat she already had raised her daughter, and that she married my dad, not me. before my dad remarried, he tried to take me to counseling, but i didn't want to go. when he got remarried, we all went, until the doc told them something they didn't like and then i wasn't allowed to go anymore. it was a constant battle for one reason or another in that house until i moved out when i was 18. i never really talked to anyone professionally about my mom dying, i never thought i had to.

i know she is not going to walk back in that door. i know that i would not be where i am today without her passing away. the thing is, i am not happy. i haven't been happy since she was here. she was a stay at home mom, so i was with her all the time. and then i lost her, and all my support system. i am not close to anyone else in my family except my dad's parents. i didn't even meet some of my mom's family until the funeral. haven't heard from most since. there is so much i do not remember after her death, about anything. my dad and i are doing better, but we will never have that father-daughter relationship really. my step mom and i, well, we fake it for the holidays. i do what i'm supposed to do, functioning through each day, but never really there.

i still have dreams with my mom in them. in the dreams, i know she had died, but for some reason, she has come back like she wasn't ever dead. sometimes i am so very angry at her, and other times i sit with her and talk or just lay my head in her lap. sometimes they are very real.

a friend suggested that maybe i have not gone through the grieving process after all. that maybe subconsciously i am stuck, thinking she is going to after all come back through that door, and make everything ok again. make my life happy again. and he suggested that maybe the reason i do not allow myself to be happy is because of that. i have no one to talk to about these things that understands. aside from when you tell people your mom is dead the predictable "aw, i'm sorry, how did she die?" and then you automatically explain the story like you always have, there isn't anyone.

i do not know what to do, or what to say. how to figure this out or get past it, if it still lingers. i don't know what i'm supposed to feel like, if i'm still supposed to cry, if i'm still supposed to talk to her, to miss her. can someone please help me?

Cass