Today, 23 years ago my life changed in a radical way.
I was with my sister and friends and we’d gone to a rather seedy student dive to watch a local band. My sister and I just weren’t feeling the vibe and we sat, removed from the noise, and wondered why we were both feeling so low.
Then, out of the blue, a close family friend messaged us to find out where we were. We were delighted he was coming to join us but surprised by his serious mood when he arrived. He asked us to please follow him outside and, curious to see what was up, we did.
Outside we saw his father and another family friend. It slowly dawned on me that perhaps all wasn’t well. I’m not sure at what point the fog crept in. I think, on some level I already knew what I was about to hear and I’d already begun to shut down, even as early as a few hours previously. My sister and I have spoken about how we unconsciously sensed that something had fundamentally shifted in our universe which is why we felt so out of sorts earlier in the evening.
All I remember was that once I was outside it was surreal, blurry and disconnected. My sister was approached by the other family friend while my friend’s dad (whom I’d known for almost my entire life) took me aside and spoke the words that altered my reality so profoundly from one moment to the next, “Your dad had a heart attack. I’m so sorry Kerry. He’s dead.”
My first instinct was to shout at him, “Stop f%^ing lying to me”. A strange fight response that only a threatened amygdala could come up with. He took it with grace and held me close which I fought with every ounce of my being. I just didn’t want to surrender into this truth that he’d had the heavy task of sharing with me.
It took many months to surrender to the truth of my dad being gone but, in time I came to see there was a tremendous gift my father had inadvertently given me. My freedom to be me.
You see, I spent most of my lifeforce as a child and teenager either desperately seeking his approval, acknowledgement and presence, or stepping on egg shells to avoid detonating his mood which meant either a fiery and unpredictable temper or emotional withdrawal that felt like a door being shut in my face.
My father had many demons and he was never good enough for himself. While he was hard on those he loved I think he was probably double as hard on himself. I could feel it and sense it and see it. It affected me profoundly
My nervous system became finely tuned to read him, which I became very good at – whether I was an empath before or whether I became an empath as a result, I still don’t know.
Nonetheless, it left me with a nervous system that spent very little time in a rested, connected and content place. Instead, my fight/flight response was like a hair trigger and my people-pleasing/rescuing persona became my second skin, and one I never questioned.
It’s no wonder I eventually crashed and burned.
My exhausting, trauma-informed nervous system and self was not just formed because of my father. My temperament, trauma and other factors added to it. But all I knew was I was angry with him. I never understood why or let myself go there as anger would have only served to push him away or light up his temper.
So, when he died, I was set free to finally look at all that lay in the shadow that I spent so much energy trying to block off. I finally started to feel the anger. A reluctant agreement to attend therapy helped me a great deal. I realised how I’d tangled myself into knots to be who I thought I needed to be, to be loved, enough and to possibly, just maybe, save him from himself.
I’d never individuated or rebelled as a healthy teenager so even into my early 30s a number of years after his death I was still trying to figure out who I was when I no longer had him around as my omnipresent compass.
But the false parts of me slowly started to reveal themselves and fall away as I felt safe enough to be my true self with him gone. There was no way I could lose him now. Or save him
Then, finally, I started to crack under the pressure of the delicate balance of falling apart and desperately trying to maintain the version of me that I’d known my whole life. It was only through my experience of burnout and then Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome that I fully realised how far I’d strayed from my truth and how much of a toll that gap and my dysregulated nervous system had taken on my body and wellbeing.
From there the journey towards my truth and health was amplified and I’m a profoundly different person now. I don’t think he’d recognise me. I wish he was here to see.
It hasn’t skipped my awareness that some of my most positive strengths that I’ve finally embraced now were actually many of his beautiful gifts and strengths he mostly wasn’t able to own. I’m truly grateful for the gifts he’s passed on.
I honestly believe that if he’d not died when he did I’d not be where I am today. Our survival depends so deeply on connection and acceptance and it’s insane the extent we’ll bend, blind and abuse ourselves to receive that. Sometimes we need to be set free by the endings of those relationships to rediscover ourselves.
Or we need to face chronic fatigue to be pulled to our knees so that we have to be with ourselves in a different way and see the truth again.
Thank you for reading this far and hearing my story. Let me know yours. Can you relate to this in any way? Could your fatigue have come about through the gap between who you unconsciously adapted yourself to be and who you truly are, and/or the nervous system dysregulation caused by being a sensitive being who just didn’t feel safe enough to be yourself?
And, of course, I send my deepest love to all of you who have experienced the loss of a loved one.
