u/suminorieh77

hey, ladies. i know many of us are going through perimenopause/menopause, and the symptoms are *crazy*. however, i don’t know if i can tie what’s going on with me right now to hormones. perhaps it’s just getting older. anyhow, i’d like to know if any of you are going back to their teenage years and taking a hard look at some of the things that went on and dealing with that trauma and pain *now* versus when it went on.

for example, a very good friend died when i was 16. he was the older brother of a guy i dated my 8th grade year and we hung out at ballgames and ran around together. he worked graveyard at a plant right behind my house and would call me almost every night from the plant pay phone before his shift. we had feelings for each other, but i wasn’t allowed to date until i was 17, and he was 22 at the time of his passing. big ol’ teddy bear of a dude; hilarious, loyal, and unbelievably sweet. he sent me half a dozen yellow roses on Valentine’s Day my sophomore year, something that never happened before or after.

he had been missing for almost a week when they found him in his car, which was down in a ravine. drunk driving. i got the phone call at 1am from a friend and halfway through it, my mother picks up the other phone and starts screaming about who would call so late. i tried to explain what was going on but she made me hang up and then came to my room to bitch at me some more. i was crying and telling her my friend had passed and she showed no empathy (quite normal for her). told me to go back to bed. when the word traveled in our small town the next day about what happened, she came home and said some very rude things about him. i went to his funeral only under the guise that i was at a friend’s house that evening. and then, i guess i tucked it away into my subconscious, although he has always been in my thoughts.

when i look back at that whole scenario, i realize i never processed any of it. i, of course, was devastated about my friend, but i never looked at how shitty my mother was about a young person’s death. she was shitty about *everything* and i just rolled with the punches, but, i mean, this *now*, is hitting me harder than it did 33 years ago. i literally sobbed like a baby this morning thinking about this and how i had to lie to go to a funeral.

i have had so many memories flood my brain lately of my childhood and formative years, good and bad, but the bad ones are clutching to me like grim death. is anyone else here going through something similar? how are you handling it? feel free to share some stories and thank you for reading 💛