Ooof, this is a lot to take in. I'm sorry about your father and your uncle. I hope in regards with your father you got to spend some time with him before his passing. I hope your grandma at the very least can spend time with her grandchildren. At least in your father's case, it seems like bad fate, and not like suicide. She can find solace in the fact that your father, her son, produced you and your sister, and I hope that your relationship with your parents has been nice enough.MaxRebo320 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 4:52 pm I guess more "what ruined my year/past few months", but times have been quite tough on my family since last Summer or so.
I guess things technically started in late-April, when my grandmother suffered a massive heart attack. She managed to recover, but the whole thing took a serious toll on her already-declining health.
Fast-forward to mid-July (where my mom also lost her job, though she fortunately found another soon enough), and my uncle (her son) basically commits suicide via sustaining a urinary tract infection and refusing to seek help for it. He wasn't a bad person, but someone who messed up at life in just about every way imaginable (hence why he was living with her). Still, the whole situation was a complete clusterfuck, resulting in grandma's mental health going down a serious downwards spiral. We moved her into an assisted living facility, where she's managed to recover remarkably (both mentally and physically). My sister and her boyfriend took the house that was theirs.
Around September, I find a girl I thought shared feelings for me (after us getting together numerous times over the school semester and summer) has been going out with another dude for a couple of weeks. I guess I use that as a "wakeup call" to tell her how I feel, and she more or less friendzones me, while insisting there's nothing going on with the other guy. We promise to still be friends, albeit we sort of stop talking. I'll fully admit that I should have tried harder to remain friends with her, but that results in a heated, moronic text message exchange on Thanksgiving that has her completely breaking all contact. And come December, I find she's made it official with that idiot she claimed was "just a friend". On the plus side, they've apparently already broken up.
So 2022 was a pretty shitty year, and I was certainly hoping 2023 would be better. Well, on January 1, my dad decides to go to a minute clinic after feeling crappy for a few days (he had to sit out New Years', which sucked), and it turns out, he has Stage 4 Colon Cancer. Being that late into it, there wasn't a whole lot he could do. With much contemplating, he mostly decided to just let it take its toll, not wanting to burden us like my uncle (his brother) did with his nonsense.
About a month ago, my dad passed away. I'm certainly glad his death was fast and painless. We're still in a state of half-disbelief over the whole thing given how fast it happened. But at the same time, given all of the crap that occurred last year, it's almost like we were prepared for this.
We're pretty worried about grandma, given she lost her only two sons barely 6-months apart from each other. But I mean, if she passes this year, it's not like we won't know how to handle it.
I'm not much of a believer in fate...but I feel all of this misfortune that's struck us HAS to mean something. And surely with all we've been through, there's gotta be a silver lining to it all somewhere (we did get a pretty nice life insurance check out of this whole thing with my dad...).
Jiro Dan's passing likely hit extra hard coming after all of this crap, too. A true childhood (or teenhood, anyways) hero now gone.
I think in regards to the woman, it's best to just let it go. Hard to, mind you, but there will be other people. I've been in that exact same frustrating situation before, and what I've realized is that when people start playing emotional games with you, then it's time to bounce. Friendzone, and the concept of it, can lead to very toxic mindsets, but I agree it's wrong for people to emotionally lead people down paths of thinking they are romantically avaiable or there is still a possibility for intimacy. Although I'm married now, I think as I've gotten older I sort of feel like the idea of longish build-ups to romances are outdated. You either know if you're going to hook up or be with someone after 3 dates/hang out sessions or not. All of the long-term romantic situations (more than 3 months), were quickly sparked. The idea of "wooing someone" or getting to know someone long term, before entering a relationship is a bit of an outdated notion in this current time we live in. People might say, "well you should know more about them before getting together with them", but really during the relationship that's how you truly learn about someone.
Moving to the top of death, strangely, or unstrangely, it feels like a lot of people are dying recently. There's countless names of people I respect here, and famous actors/people I like that are gone. My grandfather has cancer and dementia. He's in a weird state where he can't really think, but also hanging in there despite death seeming to come far sooner. He lives in Florida, and my mother, who was estranged from him, has spent a lot of time going down there to see him. I can't go. It's not financially feasible for me to leave for a couple of days (tickets from Japan to America are in the thousands) and also leave my wife to take care of our 1 year old daughter alone for a while. I feel immense guilt, and I try to rationalize not going, but everyone I talk to says seeing him with dementia is just sad and difficult. My mother repeats to me it's okay not to come, but it still feels all just like excuses. I just don't know what to do.
We're the same age MaxRebo, so I think it's possible we are entering the depressing state of life, where people start to die all the time. I don't mean to rolll everyone's personal experiences into one, but there's been many users on here that have shared experiences of losing a grandparent or loved one very recently. It's a process that we are all entering, an uncomfortable stage of life. People we look up to, mentors, grandparents or mentors are all reaching the age where death becomes more and more likely. I don't intend to be so dark or depressing, but it's important to spend time with relatives and recognize that our time together is very finite. It's happened to you already, but my own father's mortality is something I think about regularly. I feel like I need to save up and go back to NYC for a few weeks between jobs. It feels like since Covid-19 began, the world has become increasingly dark, on both macro and micro levels. I wonder how much of this is just us getting older, and moving out of young adulthood into defintivie adulthood, combined with rampant instability in the world. It's all very strange.
In any case, I wish you luck and hope you can find joy in things.