Not knowing what to do

I have always been a very helpful person. If someone is sick, I constantly check up on them to see if they need anything. If someone is in the hospital, I am by their side visiting with them. If someone needs help with something, I am always right there to help them. I have always loved helping others. It gives me a great feeling like I am truly helping them out. When you think about it, there are endless amounts of things you can do to help someone when they are in need. But something that really effects how you help someone is your age.

I had never really thought about it before. When I was younger, if something happened, I would always just go with my mom to do it. Ex: Take food to people, take soup to a sick person, bring flowers to brighten someone's day. I didn't really have a choice, I just went. Now that I am older, I do these things on my own. I had a friend who was in the hospital from a car accident, I spent 6 hours a day with him just hanging out in his hospital room. If my grandma is sick, I take her flowers and throw in the microwave food.  These things help the person and what they are going through. But when you're younger, you really just go with your parents when they help, you really don't do all of the helping.

We talked about all of this in therapy. Being 12 when Ian died, it was a very traumatic experience for me. I didn't understand what I was suppose to do or say. I tried to block out what happened because I didn't want to have to deal with it. When someone dies, you can't make it better, no matter how hard you try. And especially being so young, what are you suppose to do. Feeling so unhelpful, I think, made Ian's death a worse experience for me. I couldn't make things better. I couldn't bring them flowers to make it all better, I couldn't bring them soup or food to make the pain go away. There was nothing that I could do, and being the helpful person that I am, I just didn't understand.

I know that this is a lot of sentences randomly put together, some repeatative, but it's so hard to explain this. I could always make things better, but this is one situation that I couldn't make better. Whatever my parents were doing at the time for the family, they couldn't make it better. Not one person could make it better.