So obviously being sick in and of itself sucks. Not what I’m asking here.
I am actively sick right now so if this isn’t super coherent forgive me please 😭
For me, every time I get sick, especially since my parents officially disowned me (long story, they basically went “you can’t fire me, I quit!”), I just feel horrifically alone. I cry a lot because of it.
My parents never really took care of me when I was sick to begin with. Usually they would tell me to take medicine and suck it up and send me to school anyway.
But one time, when I was maybe 7 or 8, I got the flu for the first time. I was throwing up a lot. My mom had me camped out in the loft on our futon couch, watching the MASSIVE box TV they’d probably had since 1999 and just refused to get rid of for some reason. She fed me saltine crackers and half flat 7up in tiny doses so I wouldn’t throw them up. She made me vanilla yogurt with Splenda in it so I could actually taste it. She petted my hair and rubbed my forehead and she sang to me while I watched Go Diego Go and Wild Kratts.
I know this sounds pitiful and ridiculous but it’s the most cherished memory I have.
When I was really little she used to sing me “you are my sunshine” and the one with the gifts that get increasingly absurd as you go on (I think she only knew the first few verses because it was slightly different every time), the only verse I vaguely remember off the top of my head was “momma’s gonna buy you a diamond ring, and if that diamond ring don’t shine, momma’s gonna buy you [something else that rhymes]” if any of you are familiar. Anyway, I can’t hear those songs without breaking down into tears now, even when I sing them (people always told me I sound like my mom so that probably doesn’t help).
The problem though is that every time I got sick after that I would hope and pray that I would get this version of my mother again and it never happened. She went back to being annoyed every time I was sick and telling me to deal with it myself.
Now when I get sick I just cry and cry and cry. I’m the sickest I’ve been in a long time right now. It’s awful. I just want to be taken care of, but I live alone and there’s no way I could ask my friends to take care of me and risk catching whatever I have. And it’s almost finals week and my professors are being kinda awful about me being out and I’m freaking out because I have a ten page paper due next week that I haven’t even started because I’ve been sick since Friday. I’m sure the lack of sleep isn’t helping either.
I just wish I could call my mom, but the worst part is I know she won’t care. I had bronchitis a couple years ago and when I begged her to take me to urgent care she said she was “too busy” and it was “just a cold” even though I told her I thought I was dying — a friend from school ended up taking me and the doctors gave me a really intense antibiotic course and told me if I didn’t go to the doctor it never would’ve gone away and only would’ve gotten worse.
And thinking about it, where was my dad in all this? He lived with us but I basically never saw him. He never took care of me once when I was sick. I think he only took me to maybe two doctors appointments and he had to call my mom for everything because he didn’t know any of the answers (neither did I on account of being like 12).
It just really sucks because I spent so long thinking she was the “good” parent and that she loved me, but now I’m realizing that people who had loving parents don’t have exactly one memory of their parent loving them and spend the rest of their life trying to recreate it.
Probably doesn’t help that I’ve been being slowly ghosted by a guy who told me “communication is the most important thing to me in a relationship” for 8 months. He promised he wouldn’t do that and he did it anyway. It’s funny because abandonment is his biggest fear too, so we both promised never to abandon each other unless we absolutely had to and I kept my end of the bargain and he didn’t. Yay. And I thought I was gonna marry this guy! Lmao!!
I just wish someone would take care of me. I’m in so much pain and I can’t get any sleep and everything hurts and I can’t breathe and I just want someone to take care of me. But I’m 21 now and I can’t just expect people to care. Have to do it myself.