Complicated Grief for Homicide Survivors

I assume that you have read my short series on Capital Punishment, or you may have not. I am a survivor. I lost my mom to the hands of a selfish, out of control man a few years ago, and the trauma from that violent loss impacts my life on a daily basis. I will never be the same since I lost her.

This is a more serious aspect to my blog. The opposite of normal is a joke in a way, but in a way it is not. My life has been turned on it's end, and nothing seems the same anymore. Nothing. I do want to spread the word about life as a homicide survivor and the impacts that complicated grief can have on a survivor. I promise this blog will not be serious all of the time, although now maybe you will be able to comprehend my occasional delirium.
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Obviously the impact of the homicide on a survivor immediately following the act can be great. Everyone around the survivor, and the survivor expects this, it is normal. Few people realize the impact that is has on a survivor's day to day life, long after the homicide has occurred, the estate is closed, and everything is handled.
In my personal experience, I can't help but wonder how long this is going to take to heal. It has been just a few years since I lost her. Of course, I don't expect immediate healing, but it is still excruciating for me, and it feels as though my emotional life just seems to be getting worse. A month after my Mom's murder, I was diagnosed with PTSD. Understandable. But, nobody told me that PTSD can easily turn into Borderline Personality Disorder.
One of the main issues that BPD patients face is fear of abandonment. I had had this in mild ways previous to my Mom's murder, yet now it is out of control. Even the slightest hint that someone is mad at me or may leave sends me into an emotional spiral of severe anxiety and depression for days, although it is usually weeks. BPD can take multiple forms, and is physiological in some ways. Basically through all of this tragedy, my neurons have been rewired. Repeated thoughts of fear and hopelessness have rewired my brain to get stuck in a loop of almost continued stress and hurt. My will to live is sucked dry 80% of the time, and I just feel like I am staggering through my life on survival mode. I will share this very personal fact. The ONLY reason I am still on this earth right now is my son.
Here is a writing that helped me out a lot. Something that made me understand my grief, and made me understand that I am not going crazy (although I still question this)...... http://www.crcvc.ca/docs/homsurv.pdf
Why is the homicide survivors grief so much more complicated than that of a death from natural causes, or say, an accident  (car, etc).?
Loss of  a sense of security. -- A homicide survivor loses their sense of security. A disbelief in and faith in mankind's ability to be good disintegrates. They no longer feel safe. This can in turn cause trust issues with survivors. They become more cautious in dealing with day to day life because "that won't happen to me/us/a family member" disappears from their vocabulary. Your view of the world will change significantly.
Guilt - Guilt for not being able to prevent the homicide. Guilt for it being the other person instead of themselves, I should have been there to protect them, etc, etc....
Isolation- Face it, this is an extremely uncomfortable situation for someone to deal with from the outside. You can only imagine the grief the survivor is feeling. Honestly, what you think they are feeling is only the tip of the iceberg  Never say to a survivor "I know how you feel", unless you have actually been through the same thing. This will only piss off the survivor. People do not know how to relate to someone after something like this. At first, there is a lot of support, and then it stops. Almost suddenly and the survivor is left alone with their grief.  They will feel isolated, and almost stigmatized.
Nightmares/Revisiting/Stimulus Sensitivities- Nightmares are common with survivors. Especially if they were in any way involved with "the scene". Nightmares about their loved one suffering, nightmares about seeing their loved one dead or in pain are frequent. I still have nightmares on almost a weekly basis. The survivor will mentally and verbally re-visit the scene, situation to try to put together a puzzle that will never make any sense. To try to understand why. Please, I urge you, JUST LISTEN TO THEM when they do this. I know it can be frustrating and hard to deal with sometimes, but the survivor NEEDS to do this! Eventually this will taper off, but when it happens, the best thing you can do is just LISTEN. Stimulus sensitivities can be a common issue for survivors as well. For instance, every time I see flashing police lights at night I almost throw up, even if I wasn't thinking of the murder at the time. It is an immediate physiological response. Some survivors will immerse themselves in these stimuli while is a "grief spasm", and/or may just totally avoid them all together  (No, I do not chase police cars around when I am having a grief spasm, but I will read the police report and look at pictures from the scene, etc.).
Legal Issues - Not in my case, but in a lot of homicide cases the murderer lives and is then involved in the judicial system which can delay and complicate grief for the survivor.