I don't know what to do. [View all]

I spent two hours in tears last night. I was watching family reunion videos from 1987 and 1988.

All my cousins, aunts and uncles...all alive. They're all dead now...most of them. My mother too...she was in there...her big laugh and gorgeous smile.

I have a lot of unresolved trauma. I've had it since my dad passed in 1970. I should have taken care of this years ago via intensive therapy...but I didn't, and now I'm paying the price. I'm living in a particular kind of hell right now.

My parents made me go to funerals when I was a kid. I've probably been to 200 funerals, and they never bothered me. Now? I start blubbering when I even think about someone dying. I try to do the right thing and go to funerals, but when I do, I end up ugly crying and having to walk out. But I go anyway, out of a sense of duty and respect.

My mother died in 2012. I watched her die. I watched my in-laws die. I held my father-in-law in my arms as he passed. I was the only one with him. He was in hospice that morning, and it was the same month and day that my father had died, 39 years earlier. I had a premonition and rushed to the hospice...

I took that "like a man" (sarcasm) and watched my mother die 3 years later after having been her caretaker for years, with no support from my siblings. From that point on, I have not been able to handle death at all.

I'm typing this because...my dog's back legs are giving out completely now and I think it is time to put him down. He's panting in pain. The Gabapentin did not work. He's 15 years old in a few weeks. There is no vet available around here until tomorrow, unless we drive him an hour away up to Cornell. I'm praying for a miracle that this is temporary, but I don't think so.

I'm a fully grown man, and I can't handle this. The death of pets hits me harder than the death of humans. I feel like I'm losing my mind and will end up in a mental hospital.

I haven't been around much here, and probably won't be. I'm trying to stay strong for my wife, and there's no one in my real life that is going to listen to my whines and comfort me.

So, sorry for the trauma dump.

I feel like I'm 12 years old again.

If i knew before I was born that life was full of so much suffering, I would not have wanted to be born at all.

I feel like my life has been a performance, and I feel like I'm weak.

Please say a prayer or spare a thought for my good boy.

Thanks for reading.