Why We Catastrophize

The catastrophizing.  It is so hard to get others to understand why we do it.  We do not want it, either.  I was 19 when my mother was murdered by her second husband.  She was 42.  Her own mother died suddenly, tragically, when I was ten months old (my maternal grandmother was 41--it is still unknown if she was murdered, if it was suicide, or if it was an accident), at a time when my mother needed her own mother the most.  She was young, alone in a new area, newly-wed, but essentially raising a child alone.  She had no family here, limited resources, and married a man that was emotionally unavailable.  I was raised by a motherless daughter engulfed in her own grief.  A mother wrapped up in a depression that often led to suicidal tendencies and statements, a mother trapped in her bipolar manic depression, and a mother with numerous added health complications (lupus, a stroke with her last pregnancy, diabetes, and more).  Our mother often spent days in bed between the health complications and her own mental health issues.  I was raised by a mother that expected the worst in life.  I have fought hard to overcome that with my own thinking patterns, but I am working on it.

My father was never interested in being a parent and shared anger towards me in response to my grief at the loss of my mother and matched my heartbreak with his own special brand of rage.  My brothers were 9 and 13--they were not permitted to express grief, either.  The night that we found out--our father woke them up, told them their mother was dead, they went to school that morning as if nothing happened.  That was the extent of our discussing it.  I was too lost in my own grief to even reach out to them--I didn't function, myself, for the next three years--I couldn't.  Turning to our father for comfort was never truly an option.  My brothers may have developed relationships with him, I never was able to.

I have lost so many loved ones to sudden death throughout my life.  Vehicular accidents, suicides, additional friends murdered at the hands of domestic partners, heart attacks, aneurysms--the list goes on and on.  The people that I love most are typically whisked out of my life without a warning.  Worst case scenarios and catastrophizing are so wrapped up in my thoughts that I struggle with just being "normal".  That fear of losing the most important people in your life becomes second nature because life has already shown us that it happens--over and over...  It reaches a point that sirens, ambulances, late night phone calls stir terror in the heart until all loved ones are marked “safe” and accounted for.

Since the age of nineteen, I have often felt that I only had myself--that I have been wandering the world, lost and alone.  My mother was that one person on the planet that "got me"--that understood me.  Without her, what was left?   Thankfully, a year after my mother's murder, "Motherless Daughters" by Hope Edelman was released and I have since bought more copies than I can count and have shared them as needed with others.  It was my shining light that I wasn't crazy or broken--I was grieving.  I am so thankful for the others that have shared their stories and that have since helped me to know that I am not alone.  I am beyond thankful for such books, articles regarding grief/loss, and support posts in my motherless groups.  They have all helped me to heal.  Thanks to the other motherless ones, I now know that what I feel is 100% normal and that I am not alone. 

I am now 45.  I have outlived my mother by several years, now.  Her murderer is still behind bars, but we are regularly forced to relive his actions, our loss, by fighting his attempts for release.  My brothers have long since moved away--created their own lives--they rarely come back.   I hope that they are okay and have still found happiness within their lives—but how do any of us really know what lies in the true hearts of others?  Despite all of these things, I have created a good life for myself.  I have good friends.  Most days, I am happy.  Despite all of the "good-natured fools" out there that have never experienced their own loss, those ones that insist I should have since filled those holes and empty spaces and moved on, some of us know better...  There is a hurt that always hovers, and I will always miss her.  We catastrophize because we learned early that life is not fair.  We don’t want to catastrophize, but we have been caught off-guard before.   We learned early that bad things do happen to good people.  We learned that life can and does stop on a dime… These things are hard to fight—our inner thoughts will always be filled with those fears.  This is simply another life lesson.