Funerals

Anxiled · Blue Jay Joined: Mar 10, 2005 Posts: 91

Two weeks ago, my father passed away at the age of 75. I'm 35. At the viewing, about a dozen of my dad's colleagues and their wives, almost none of which I've met before, came. Only one white doctor showed up. Everyone else were from the same country of origin.

Well anyway, it was extremely uncomfortable on different levels. Since I have zero social skills, I could barely greet anyone and eventually I was on one side of the room all by myself and the other men, almost all doctors except an engineer and a computer business owner, were on the other side , having their own sort of party. THe wives were sitting on chairs against the wall away from me. One guy asked me how I was, and I answered "not good' He said his son looked like me and I tried , very unsuccessfully to make a joke by responding " That's unfortunate". Well he responded with a very strange look in on his face, and took my joke the wrong way. Last I saw of him until the end .

ON another level, this viewing was a nightmare because I dropped out of college long ago and never worked. My mom has been lying to people all these years telling them I was in business. I was terrified that someone was going to ask me what I did for a living , which is the typical question that adults ask of each other, I guess. Pretty much all of the children of these doctors were doctors, lawyers, MBAs, or highly successful people.

I had graduated first in my clas in HS and went to one of the best colleges in the world, but the severe anxiety , avoidant personality disorder, and constant thoughts of suicide, and extreme depression finally did me in. The straw that broke the camel's back were a couple of bad grades, including my first C ever because I was too depressed to take the final exam.

One of my dad's medical scholl chums did ask me whether I was in school or had graduated. I told him it was a long story, so he left me alone.

Two days before, the morning of my father's death at the funeral home, the wife of one of my dad's colleagues asked me what I did for a living. I simply said, with great anxiety, I don't know. What the hell am I supposed to say. I felt like a big failure. My poor father was crushed by my behavior. However, he neve understood me and never seemed to like me as a kid because I was the way I was.

The worst part of my father's death is not that I will miss him. It's that my mother will be alone. I can't be a substitute husband. And all this denial about me can't be healthy. She doesn't believe there is anything wrong with me either. Both my parents thought I was just a little bit shy!!!!!!

I don't hink I can take living with my mom. Now I am entertaining thoughts of suicide again, How the hell am I going to learn social skills as a minority at my age? White people have it so easy in this regards.