5 Things People Don’t Realize You’re Doing Because You Lost A Parent At A Young Age

Losing a parent when you’re young is one of those things that nobody can prepare you for. It’s something that happens and flips your world upside down and there is nothing that you can do about it. The worst part of all- none of your friends and people of your age have any clue what you’re going through. They try to understand and be supportive, but they really have no idea. Therefore, you’re forced to face this horrendous nightmare on your own. Ultimately, this makes your thoughts, feelings and actions very difficult to understand to the people around you.

1. You have trouble letting people out of your life.

Even when someone is no longer bringing you happiness or any positivity, you cling to these relationships because loss terrifies you. It’s no longer as simple as removing people who don’t make you happy, but instead it becomes a fear of losing anyone else that is important to you. It brings back the loss of your loved one all over again.

2. You take a lot of pictures.

Pictures and memories are all you have left of your parent. It’s only normal for you to take that into the other areas of your life. You have learned how short life really is and the way in which anything can be happen. Someday, these pictures may be all you have left of these people. Not everyone will understand that this has manifested from the major loss that you’ve been through.

3. You’re often negative.

You are often negative about potential outcomes before they even happen. You have had to deal with one of the hardest things someone your age should ever have to. At this point, it’s difficult to be positive, especially about something that ultimately could end with a bad outcome. Often times, it’s easier to expect the worst and hope for the best to avoid getting hurt even worse if something does not happen the way you had hoped for. It’s difficult for those who have not been through something tragic to understand the negativity that you attached to things.

4. To some people, you may appear “cold”, or “bitter”.

You don’t cry as much as you used to. It now takes a lot more to get you to show pain or emotion. You’ve had one of the most terrible things happen to you and not much compares to that. To the people around you, you may appear as cold hearted or bitter, however, it just takes a little more to get you to show your emotions these days.

5. Death becomes normalized.

It often freaks your friends and loved ones out how comfortable you are with the conversations surrounding death. It’s something that society does such a great job trying to ignore that you are overly familiar with. This has become your life. This is the hand you’ve been dealt and its normalized to you. To you, it’s normal and it’s your life. To everyone else, they can’t understand why this is such a simple concept to you.

Of the many things that we have control of in our life, the time that we lose a parent is not one of them. We’ve officially become part of a club that we never asked to join and it is now a club that defines us. We aren’t the same person that we were before this, and we will never be that person again.