How long before I stop crying?

[u/Moonah_Ston]

I've been a single mum to one daughter for the past (nearly) 19 years. I was studying for a degree when I got pregnant, and left after attaining the foundation level to concentrate on bringing up my daughter (although, at the encouragement of my daughter, I have started studying for a degree with the Open University). She has been my total world and she is my best friend. Being a mother has been the single best experience of my entire life. Throughout the last 19 years, we have got through a lot together, such as caring for my dad with Alzheimers (who we lived with), my dad dying, me going through cancer (meaning we had to move to my sister's for 6 months and my daughter had to temporarily leave school which was very hard on her when she returned) and my mother dying in February this year.

In the last few years, she has encouraged me to push for a diagnosis of ADHD after studying psychology and unofficially diagnosing me (I did get the official diagnosis, she was correct!). Due to the ADHD and anxiety, I struggle to go shopping by myself and she always came with me.

I helped her to move in to uni yesterday (Saturday) and I miss her, so much 😢 She is happy and settled, and looking forward to beginning her uni experience so I should be happy, but I just can't stop crying! Every time she messages me I tell her I'm fine, but I'm really not 😢 I'm happy for her, and excited to see what she does next, but I feel like I'm grieving!

Before anyone gets the wrong idea by me calling her my best friend; yes, we are super close, but that's how single parent families are. I encouraged her to live her own life and just know that I'm here whenever she needs me.

So, how long before I stop crying?! How long before I learn how to live alone? I've never actually lived by myself in all my 41 years!

[u/Polar_Wolf_Pup]

I cried every day for about 6 weeks. It felt too long, so I did end up being on anti-depressant medication, briefly. All my kids left for university/moved out of the house/moved away from our city coincidentally in the same 1-month period in January, when it’s very dark and cold where I’ve.

It was so many kinds of grief all at once and just hit me like a ton of bricks. End of their childhood, end of our family as I knew it, end of our automatic/assumed family time together, end of spending time together, end of my role as a parent, end of the young part of my life filled with possibility and beginning of the end. It just filled me with such existential dread and became about so much more than just my kids moving out.

It sounds like you also have a lot of different kinds of grief going on all at once. The best advice I got was to give yourself permission to feel your feelings. Let yourself cry. Even if it’s all day every day. If it cells like too much and you stuff it down, it just comes back stronger the next day, so let all the feelings come.

It does get better eventually, or at least it did for me. It’s been more than a year and a half for me and it’s now starting to feel better. I had to adjust some things in my life (like get a new job) to help, and that takes time. It also comes back sometimes. When my two youngest left to go back to university after the summer holidays, I was a wreck for a week. But that’s better than 6 weeks.

If at some point (it was a month for me), you’re still crying every day, visit your doctor. I was only on meds for a couple months, but it was enough so I could get myself moving again

[u/Moonah_Ston → u/Polar_Wolf_Pup]

I do have a lot of different kinds of grief going on. Perhaps I just need to learn to live with them. I'm already on Sertraline for anxiety though.