My father and I had a complicated relationship. Absent for most of my childhood, present in the ways that caused harm, not present in the ways that mattered. When he died last year I expected grief. I waited for it.
Instead there was nothing. A hollow, quiet nothing. Not relief exactly. Not sadness. Just nothing.
And the nothing frightened me more than crying would have. What does it mean to feel nothing when a parent dies? Does it mean I'm damaged? That I'm in shock? That the relationship was so absent that there was no attachment left to lose?
People around me were gentle in ways that didn't fit. "I'm so sorry for your loss," and I kept wanting to say — I'm not sure I lost what you think I lost.
My therapist says emotional numbness is a valid grief response, especially in complicated relationships. But I'm still sitting with this months later, wondering when the feeling — whatever feeling — will arrive. Or whether it already came and left without me recognising it.
Has anyone experienced grief that didn't look or feel like grief?