I'm the weirdest person in the world

Sorry if you thought you were in the running

Obviously, we’re all unique.

There’s no one like me in the world and never will be again, they broke the mould when they made us, be yourself, everyone else is taken, blah blah blah.

But in the almost ten months since my mum died, I’ve discovered that I’m more unique than I suspected, also known as extremely weird.

Not long after starting this newsletter, I wrote a post asking if anyone was grieving like me:

Surely, I thought, in a world of eight billion people, there must be at least one person, alive and in possession of the internet, enduring a similar bereavement.

By that I meant someone who is living alone, grieving their mum or dad, chronically ill and Covid cautious, without siblings, children, or another parent in their immediate vicinity.

I can’t be that unusual, I reasoned. Not that weird.

I was wrong.

The responses I got (here, over email and via Facebook) varied from “I’m grieving and disabled but I’m married,” to “I’m grieving and have no family but my two best friends just moved in,” and “I’m grieving and disabled and Covid cautious but have six children and three grandkids”.

What a rich tapestry! Alienating, AF, mind you.

Since writing that post I’ve kept looking, mostly passively, for someone in my situation. The new host of a grief support group? The writer of an article on 10 things they’ve learned about loss in the last 18 months? The comments section of one of Megan Devine’s Instagram posts?

No, no, and no.

One of the mantras in support groups is that we shouldn’t compare our losses because not only is every grief different but people whose lives seem miles apart can still comfort each other. And yet it’s painful to cast about for someone whose experience mirrors your own and come up empty.

It’s easier to find other significant events reflected in our culture.

If you’re a white, able-bodied middle-class mother, for example, married to a man and with between one and four kids, you’ll find plenty of real-life resources plus endless books and films and TV shows about the specifics of your situation.

If you adopt a dog, or run a marathon, or get an illness that doctors and scientists care about, you’ll at least be handed a leaflet with advice on how to cope.

Even when it comes to death, if your grief follows an expected trajectory — you’ve lost the spouse you live with, or the parent you live apart from — you’ll likely find more people in your position.

When you’ve suddenly and unexpectedly lost the mum you lived with for more than 40 years, there’s an element of “Huh?” to even the kindest person’s sympathy and a feeling of shame in my attempts to explain it.

I want to connect with someone in the same circumstances because I want to see my lived experience reflected literally anywhere.

And I want to see my lived experience reflected literally anywhere because I want to believe that it’s possible to go through this and finally, eventually thrive.

For a while, I comforted myself with thoughts of Chrishell from Selling Sunset, who recently lost both her parents but seemingly still has hope for the future. I also remembered comforting words from a friend’s husband and a neighbour who assured me it does get better.

Then one night I was praying for sleep, going over these case studies in my mind, when it hit me: they’re all married, you fool!

The people I’ve been thinking of as role models aren’t inspiring, they just have more support on tap. If they spend a day wishing they were dead, they can confide in the love of their freaking life. I can tell a dust mote.

When we had an indoor cat, the late, great feral rescue, Pashmina Ballerina Peabody III, my mum and I would sometimes feel a surge of pride knowing that — unlike our other cats, who accrued some horrible injuries in the outside world before we knew better — it was purely thanks to us feeding, watering and keeping her inside that she’d survived.

Now I’m the feral cat, and I can’t believe I’ve kept myself alive.

I recently joined a six-week support group specifically for people who’d lost their mums. The other participants were lovely and overall, it was helpful and reassuring.

But at times, I felt like an extra terrestrial.

When we checked in at the start of each session, people would routinely have had a “pretty good” week, one where they weren’t wobbly every day, where their main focus wasn’t surviving their grief.

They had holiday plans, were moving house, getting married, giving birth and gaining promotions. Not just putting one foot in front of the other. I could only stare as they talked, my mouth agape.

Maybe, I thought, it’s just them.

Then, at a different support group, two other people in early grief uttered the phrase, “I mean, I otherwise love my life…” and I felt like I’d been slapped.

I thought we were in this together. I thought we all felt hopeless! And now I find out that some grievers are otherwise happy and appreciate their lives? Next you’ll be telling me they have a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

All of which leads me to try to unpick how much of my devastation is grief and how much is the depression I’ve battled since my late teens, and whether it matters if the split is 90/10 or 50/50.

I know, of course, that I can’t really be unique. In a world of eight billion people, there has to be at least one other person just like me, even if they’re not on Substack.

Until I meet them, though, I’m not asking for sympathy. I’m not asking for solutions. I’m just asking that we all agree I’m the weirdest person in the world.

Well, me or Jacob Rees-Mogg.