You’re welcome, Inkrid.

That feeling of overwhelming sadness for what could have and should have been when you try to take care of yourself- I think that is the sense of loss I was talking about. Maybe trying to take care of yourself reminds you of that loss enough to bring up the feelings of grief. Grief is a funny thing. We only talk about grief when we lose something physical in this culture, but that’s not really how it works. Human beings can feel a sense of loss over many things, especially something we know that we could have had/needed a lot in our childhood.

On the one hand, I’m sorry it hurts. If you’re feeling a little nuts for grieving when you try to take care of yourself, you don’t need to. I do counseling work and this is actually a very common feeling for people who have had absent parents. There are ‘stages’ or ‘components’ of grief, including denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, acceptance, and moving forward (not always in that order). You can look it up if you like, but I guess my biggest message for you is that, as conflicted as your feelings might be, it’s okay to give yourself permission to feel all of them. None of them will last forever, but they will get stuck if you keep them trapped inside and don’t acknowledge them. On the other hand, I am glad you have feelings of anger, humiliation & disappointment. These are a natural reaction to something unfair that happened in your life, and it means that a part of you knows that you deserved better.

My two cents is that this is a situation where processing your own emotions will bring you the most relief. You can’t erase what’s already happened, and you can’t 100% control the future, but you can address your own feelings in the present. I think if you process those emotions first, then whatever decisions you make might have more meaning for you.

This is just my outside perspective, so feel free to take what fits and leave the rest. I hope things work out well for you.

-Jessa