My best friend WeeGee passed away in 2020. For four years, I couldn’t fully accept that WeeGee was gone. I survived by pretending she was still out there, living her life — a form of denial born out of love. Love for my son, and a need to protect myself from the unbearable weight of everything I endured in 2020.

In different ways, I lost my mother, my father, and WeeGee in 2020. This was so much for me to bear that at the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024 when I was faced with the reality that WeeGee was gone forever, I fell into an ED relapse. But it wasn’t just about WeeGee, it was about everything that happened in 2020.

This anniversary feels like the first anniversary of her death, because due to the denial and avoidance of grief for 4 years, for me, it is. Grief is never a straight line, and it’s never aesthetic. It’s messy, tangled — a force in the Universe, just like love. It defies the physics of space and time. If love is order, grief is chaos.

This isn’t a neatly wrapped story. It’s a tangle of emotions, memories, and moments I’m still unraveling. Grief doesn’t end and has a tendency to stir up even more.

The Mother That Never Loved Me… And Never Will.

WeeGee died January 13th 2020. I don’t know quite what I was expecting by telling my mother about it, given she has shown little care about anything I’ve been through my whole life. But I was really upset and I just wanted someone, anyone, to show me comfort and care.

For so much of my life, I convinced myself that, deep down, there was a kind person inside my mother — that one day, she would change, and she would love me the way I needed. At the time of WeeGees death, I had been wrestling with the fact my mother had started being awful to my son too and her behaviour was escalating. Her treating my son horribly meant that, maybe I didn’t deserve to be treated so badly either, because I know my son certainly didn’t.

Her blatant hatred and jealousy of my son, hurt me like nothing else. Imagine someone hurts your child, and then, imagine that person who hurt your child is your own mother. It is the worst kind of betrayal.

We had already gone low contact at the time of WeeGees death, and my mother was unable to accept any of the boundaries I’d put in place to protect both my son and I. When I told her about WeeGee, she couldn’t even fake care or comfort. I was instead confronted by her coldness and disdain.

I was sat there in the emptiness of my mothers “If Craigslist was a place” house thinking of how, if WeeGee was here and I told her I had just lost someone, how much care and comfort she would have given me. She would have showered me in it, given me meaningful gifts, and she would have made sure I knew she was there for me.

WeeGee has always given me and my son more care and comfort than my own mother ever has – WeeGee was our family. And now WeeGee is gone, and I’m left here confronted by the void of where my mothers love should be.

The stark contrast between who my mother is and who WeeGee was made me finally realise and accept that my mother does not love me or my son — certainly not enough to even fake care or comfort — and she never will.

My son and I decided we had to go no contact, we both started not being able to bear being in the same room as my mother. I was so angry that she hurt my son that it was severely affecting my mental health to see her – I’m still angry now. So that’s what we did.

Today, I am still grieving for the mother she will never be, and the mother I always wish I had. I am also grieving for the grandmother she failed to be for my son.

After realising my mother would never give me or my son the love we needed, I turned to another familiar coping mechanism — the same one I’d used for years with my dad.

My Dad Lives On Neptune

I have spoken about my dad and his escapism before in this post. It was around April 2020 when I saw him last. I do not know where he is. I do not know where he lives, if he is okay, or anything. He has several medical conditions and the thought of if he is even alive or not enters my head often enough that I have googled his name checking for obituaries – I doubt I’d even get notified if he passed.

My dad disappearing to Neptune for years at a time, allowed me to deny my grief for WeeGee in the same way I grieve for my dad. I convince myself he is out there somewhere in space, and he will come back, eventually. I convinced myself WeeGee would be the same.

It doesn’t work, though. The grief for my dad is a superposition of grieving and not grieving. I feel both — ‘He’s fine, he’s just out there in space, and will return soon,’ and, ‘I really miss him, and I don’t even know if he is alive’ — at the exact same time.

That’s what happened with WeeGee. I fell into the superposition of grieving her and not grieving her at the same time.

For four years, I existed in both states. I loved her deeply and missed her every day, but I also told myself she was still out there somewhere, living her life. She was just hiding, and she would eventually return.

Grief is a wave function. And when you finally observe it, it collapses. I’ve been too petrified to open the box, for 4 years now. In fact, even now, I still am too petrified to observe it fully, evidenced by my ED relapse after 12 years of recovery.

Denial As An Act Of Love

My son had to go through all of this too. I care about him so deeply, I have always put him first — above my feelings, emotions, and needs. I firmly believe it is what I signed up for when I chose to have him.

My son was 15 in 2020. The ages of 15 to 18 are such important years for developing personality, goals, and emotional resilience. There are exams, choices about the future, University applications — the list goes on. It’s a time of intense personal growth.

And without telling his story — because it’s his to share — I can say this:- He went through so much.

I wasn’t going to be a parent who expected resilience, independence or responsibility without teaching it first. I wasn’t going to expect him to handle the pressure alone. I had to be strong, I had to be calm, and I had to summon all the patience I could muster. After all, watching your son traverse the minefield of his teenage years is stressful for parents too.

As hard as I could, I denied everything I had been through to be the best mother I could be. This has been my mission long before my son was even born.

All that kept me going as a child — hiding from my mother in the wardrobe of my growing up house — was the thought that, when I became a mother, I would never treat my child the way I’d been treated.

My child will know unconditional love. And they will have a home – not a growing up house.

Whenever my grief threatened to surface, I shoved it down. Whenever my anxiety about their exams crept in, I hid it. I focused entirely on them and my mission.

I left little gifts by the coffee machine before his exams — a bear with a four-leaf clover saying ‘Good Luck,’ a ‘Hang in there’ cat necklace. He struggled with anxiety and needed high grades for Uni. I couldn’t fix his anxiety, but I could offer comfort.

One day, I tidied his room to make it cosy for when he got home. He looked at me with such relief.

‘You tidied my room for me??’

‘Yes, of course. You deserve to come home to comfort.’

And I meant that, with my whole heart.

At the end of 2023, when my son had finished all his exams (and did brilliantly), won a place at his first-choice Uni, and decided to take a year out, I was finally confronted with my grief. I had helped my son through his important years and now he was on a break.

And triggered by therapy that I was having at that time, was the moment it hit me.

After three years of running grief as a background app, the wave function of grief — and I — collapsed. My brain, my body, my self — everything I had been holding back for so long finally caught up with me.

Superpositions can’t be held forever. Sooner or later, the wave function collapses itself.

The Superposition Unexpectedly Returns

Even though the superposition was supposedly no more, my brain fought so hard to bring it back that I didn’t see the warning signs of my impending ED relapse. I didn’t see that my brain — desperate to avoid the unbearable weight of grief — would try to stop time again, the way it did before.

My eating disorder stops time. It freezes everything. I cannot progress in my grief, or feel it fully, while I’m here.

In fact, my eating disorder didn’t just freeze time, but transported me backwards through it. I’ve gone back 12 years — back to a place I thought I’d left behind. And that’s where I am now, stuck in a time loop of grief and fear.

The sadness of this, too, is that I met WeeGee here. We met in ED recovery, 12 years ago. It’s like I used a time machine to take me back to The Night We Met*. To lose my ED now would be to lose her again, and to confront the person I have become without her – I am scared of who I am without her.

At the same time, I know the weight of feelings I have will continue to feel raw until I have the courage to collapse the wave function completely and move forward through time — by getting better from my relapse.

But I’m still petrified.

And I absolutely hate that the mother trauma is tangled up in my grief for WeeGee. It’s like a virus, infecting even the pure love I have for my best friend.

WeeGee loved me fully, without conditions. My mother never has. It feels wrong that my grief for someone so loving is intertwined with anger toward someone who couldn’t show love at all.

I’m petrified of the full weight of everything I’ve been avoiding. It’s like standing at the foot of a mountain of grief, knowing I have to climb it but not even knowing where to start.

I don’t know where to begin sorting through this mountain, because — and this is the hardest part to accept —

This isn’t even everything.

I’d Do It All Over Again… For You.

Everything in this post is why this anniversary feels like the first — and a cautionary tale for grief avoidance.

If you run from something long enough, more things start chasing you. And eventually, you get tired and have to stop. I stopped when my son started needing me less, and I was completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things chasing me.

Well, I say cautionary tale, but at the exact same time, I’d do it all over again. I’d do it all over again to be the present, caring mother I was through my son’s teenage years.

I’m glad I didn’t fall when he needed me most — like I fell at the end of 2023, when I was finally confronted with the full weight of grief.

* This song feels perfect for what I’m feeling. :-
I had all, then most of you, some, and now none of you,
Take me back to the night we met,
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do haunted by the ghost of you
Oh take me back to the night we met.