Dear Andromeda,

I am sorry for losing your beloved nephew, and now feeling hopeless, exhausted and like a burden. I’d like to offer a different perspective, hoping that it might help a little.

In your previous thread, you said about your nephew that he was a beacon of light:

He was special, very popular, funny, intelligent, spiritual, quirky, his friends and family described him as a beacon of light.

He was very popular in his home town and also when he moved away.

On Sunday evening, all his friends held a vigil at a special place he used to visit, which was high up on a mound overlooking the city. … There was an area carpeted with candles and flowers, surrounded by so many people, so much love.

He was loved and appreciated by his family and friends, surrounded by so much love, and radiating much love too… but he didn’t believe that, he felt alone and abandoned. At some point something shifted in him and he stopped replying to your messages. He alienated himself. When he lost a place to stay, he didn’t take up your offer to help him with accommodation. He told your other sister (his aunt) that “he didn’t want to come back home, said he would rather kill himself.”

He was sinking deeper and deeper, and he probably felt alone, although he wasn’t alone. You were reaching out to him, he had friends around him who loved him. But he didn’t see it, or it wasn’t enough to soothe his pain.

His pain was overwhelming, and it seems to be related to his early childhood, growing up with an ill mother, who couldn’t properly take care of him. In the last conversation he had with his mother, he spoke about that:

My sister told me the last conversation that she had with her son, it was painful to hear. He was clearly distressed. He talked about growing up, how bad he had felt, not living with his own family.

His mother couldn’t take care of him, she had her own cross to bear with MS. But I can imagine that in his childhood brain, this lack of care, this inability of his mother to meet his needs, meant as if he was not lovable enough. And I can imagine that this feeling persisted into his youth. And no matter how loved and popular he was, this feeling was probably eating him up. The pain was too big.

Add to that his health issues (he was fearing he might end up with a debilitating disease), and the situation with his housemates moving to a different place… he probably felt completely abandoned and unloved. It only solidified the feeling he had from his early childhood, his false belief that nobody loves him or cares for him.

Whereas the truth is that so many people loved him and cared for him, including  you. And that he was so lovable, so worthy, so appreciated.

But he didn’t know it, he didn’t believe it…

I would like to draw a parallel here with you, Andromeda. With you feeling like a burden, feeling that your presence has no positive impact on people:

I struggle with my mental health and my negativity pushes people away. My presence has no positive affect on people.

I’m dragging my husband down and I am a burden. I know he would be better off if I set him free.

This sounds like the same kind of thinking that your nephew got caught up in. Believing that he is unlovable, while being loved by so many. Believing that he is a burden, while he was actually a beacon of light.

Dear Andromeda, I want to tell you that you are lovable and that you are loved. And needed. And that you matter. And that you have the light in you, which you believe you don’t.

I sit outside and listen to the songbirds, I feel the sun on my face and breathe in the scents of spring. It’s my favourite time of year.

I hope you can open yourself to this idea: that the sun is not only outside of you, where you feel it caress your face, but it is also inside of you. Beautiful light is inside of you <3