A cry, a response

What I read: 

My mom divorced my dad in 2007. I never talked to anyone except him, at that time. She got cancer in 2008, and fell into a state of alchoholism to escape her depression, her actions affected everyone. By that christmas, my dad killed himself, he blamed it on her, but we don't know if that was true or just meant to hurt her. I spent one week losing my mind, and when I came out, I was alright. I lived my life. I grew up, I found reasons to live, and even though I'm terrible at socializing, I began to do it.

I went to college. I liked it here, it got me away from that "Home" I had that had now become a home only to the shell that remained of my mother. My last memory of her was her showing up at my apartment unannounced to collect $20,000 my dad left to me, a fact she found out about by going through my private bank letters. She brought me straight to the bank and then right back to my apartment and then only remembered to save she loved me right before she drove away. And two weeks ago she died. Losing a second parent so early on is a completely different kind of pain than I can articulate, and it hurts to think about how she saw me as a person, if she still even considered me a son when she died. And now, I might be losing that house, but I don't know.

Every time I go home, I don't know. I don't what what of my "home" I'll still have. A brother, my papou, my grandma, and some plaster walls on foundation are all I have left, and I don't know which of those I'll still have in a year. Loss is all I feel like I have left to look forward to.

So, I might seem a little unstable in the coming weeks, and I'm sorry. I'm trying to be "admirable", but all I feel is betrayed, by everything I have ever loved or trusted. I don't want to learn any more life lessons, I just want someone for just one god damn second to hold me and say that it's okay to feel the way I feel. And not judge me when I can't stop screaming.

What I wrote back (edited for his privacy):

Hi Xxxx,
You don't know me from Adam, but I'm a cousin of the Xxxxs, which is how I ended up seeing your post. (To be precise on the relationship: xxxxx and xxxxx were xxxxxxx.) What I already knew about your family can be summed up in one sentence: your family is precious to their family. But that by itself would not have caused me, as an utter stranger, to reply to your post.

I don't know how public you intended that post to be, but having read it I find that I cannot just ignore it without responding to your anguish. You've had more to deal with than a young man should have to in a lifetime, let alone by your tender age. Just surviving it with the good sense intact that drives you to rail against it rather than just shut down is a small victory in itself. When such severe emotional trauma happens to us, whatever mechanisms we have in place by that point have to suffice to help us survive it, and we are rarely equipped for it. How wise it is that you have reached out to the people around you for support, in such an honest expression of your frame of mind. Lean on them, and get through it together. Eventually . . . well, "eventually" is pretty meaningless right now; you'll figure out "eventually" later, with the people you have in your life. But don't dismiss them. Everyone who responds to you is offering you support in the ways they can; please find a way to accept it from them. As for me, I have two specific reasons for writing:

1. Yes, in response to your reply (I don't know why my fingers typed "reply" instead of "plea"), what you're feeling is completely okay. Your parents have hurt you unspeakably deeply; express that hurt as you need to. Your feelings are a normal response to highly abnormal hurts that the two people who should have most protected you instead have inflicted on you in their own brokenness. You deserved - and still deserve - way better. However, don't learn from their example and despair in the midst of your own pain. Instead, reach back out to those friends and family members who are offering to support you. Put them to the test, and the ones who prove faithful in response will be your support network, your shoulders to cry on and to lean on. 

2. If you didn't intend your post to be this public, you might want to change its access settings.

I myself was a son of alcoholism and of suicide, and more. The way you're dealing with it is so much healthier than how I did. Acknowledge your hurt, for there is no other path to being healed from it. Dealing with it now is way better than burying it for later; such profound hurts don't rest well.

May you find the peace and healing that you need, in the loving arms of those who reach out to you in your need. And know that there is a stranger in Ohio who is praying for you.

In heartfelt respect, 

There were a number of other things that I maybe could have addressed. No, no amount of his mom being screwed up makes his dad's suicide her fault. He seems to know this, but perhaps fears that cutting his mom any slack on any front is the road to letting her off the hook. But there is plenty for him to be angry at both of his parents about even without mis-attributing blame. I think he could benefit by taking a few months to talk all of this through with a professional, but that wasn't the purpose of my reply, and I couldn't think of any way to say that without it sounding like "Geez, you need a shrink," which would have been the opposite of what I wanted to convey in response to his plea. Maybe I could have found a way to say, "Yes, what you're feeling is normal, and a good counselor can help you process all of that." Then again, maybe I'll still get a chance to . . .