The whole concept of not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone. Remember that song you used to hate hearing and now 20 some years later, you’d wish we’d be back to music like it because music today is too artificial and AI-powered? Remember nearly a lot of things you criticized and now have a soft spot for because everything now has gone to shit?
Yeah, that hits hard. What sucks is that sometimes, you don’t know for certain if you’re experiencing the best of things. But once it passes you, give it 1 - 5 years, you’ll know it.
that assumes they haven’t been a burden.
the best thing that ever happened to me was my dad dying. a huge cloud of anger, hate, and bitterness lifting out of my life.
same with the loss of some ex girlfriends, or an ailing parent who has been slowly decaying and sucking out your time, money, and emotions with nothing coming back to you. my mother has dementia it has no redeeming quality and has been nothing but a black hole on my life for years now. the sooner she dies the better. when she passes there won’t be a void, the void is her being alive.
A tad fucked that you only think of the current and not the length of their impact on your life. Yes, the current can be bad, but you have think about the impact they have - especially if someone has dementia.
you assume the impact on my life was positive instead of negative.
Not all people are loving and kind. Some people have very limited redeeming qualities. Like, wow my mom bought me some nice presents for Xmas… doesn’t really make up for the 20+ years of verbal abuse and resentment and her taking out of her lack of happiness in life on her child. The only redeeming qualities my parents had were examples of who not to be.
The first time I ever felt safe and happy in my life was college. The first time I came back from my first break I bawled my eyes out because I’d never ever before in my life felt safe and encouraged and positive before. It was mind-blowing that adults who were open minded and kind existed, because I grew up in a shithole rural town where such adults simple didn’t exist and most adults were miserable people who were full of hate and rage towards anything that wasn’t sitting on your ass and watching TV and complaining about life.
And yet despite all the horror they forced upon me, I was a decent enough person to care for them as they die. Not because I love them, because I refuse to be as shitty, selfish, and awful to them as they were to me.