These days, I am grieving the loss of things that were never mine to keep.
Rejections. Close friendships. People.
I am having to let go of relationships I so wanted to keep close, and wrap my head around changed ones. I have faced rejections from dreams that I have seen since I was a child. I have felt lost, increasingly, in the way I define myself and my life.
Adulting has been what it promised - hard.
But what, perhaps, I wasn’t prepared for, is just how heavy grief feels as we grow. How each strand entangles into deeper knots, branching out into different directions, making you wonder if it can be contained, at all.
The other day, all I wanted to do was to curl up in my bed and cry. I wanted sleep to come to me like a drug, and I had no bandwidth left in me to deal with whatever fate, or absurdity, had in store for me. But I had a call at 7pm with my US stakeholders, so I had to repress whatever I was feeling, in order to put on a face that was convincingly intelligent, with a voice that was admirably confident. At a 7pm call, nobody cares about what you went through at 6.29.
As someone who believes in talking things through, and processing what one feels, this culture does not fit right with me. I want to understand, and feel, whatever I’m feeling, till I am strong enough to get over it, in a way that I do not feel it the same way again. But in these past years, especially since I joined work, such coping habits have been difficult. What it has resulted in is my brain being an absolute mad-house of what-if-s, whys, how-s, and “what is it that they could not see in me?”
DISENTANGLING MY GRIEF
I am writing this article because I want to know what grief looks like. I am bad with pictures, so I want to know how it appears in words - in metaphors, or stories, or paragraphs. How it breaks into smaller promises, and recollects in painful memories. How it carves literature, and sits as an article on my blog, fluttering around like a butterfly, trying to fit in.
If you’re here for a solution to this feeling - to why grief feels so heavy, monotonous, and a little too familiar - I have none to offer. Grief has been as much a friend to me as it has been a foe, and for the most part, it has sat with me until I was ready to finally to ignore its presence and move on with life.
What I did learn though, every time it visited, was to remind myself of how I did it before. How things are never as bad as I think they will be, and that each time I thought my life was over, I jumped right back up, finding my way (albeit a little wounded) through all that traffic.
I have also learnt to be grateful for all those who are there for me. Each time I sought social support, I found it - sometimes in those who I call my friends, and sometimes in people I had least expected it from. I suck at asking for help, but if you can, if you’re strong enough - it exists. And you most definitely should.
So while I have no solution to offer for grief, I offer you my understanding. To wake up each morning to the doorbell of a house-help, the ticking of an alarm, the stress of a job, an exam or a broken relationship, is tough. To wake up to a mind and body that you no longer recognize because of how space-less and purposeless it appears, is nothing short of fighting a battle every second. Grief is difficult, sticky, and stubborn enough to stick around till you learn to get used to it.
I get it - and I’m sure many do.
All I have to say is, grieve all you want - but NOT for however long. I am aware of how out of control grief gets, but I am also aware of how each of us have it in us to not let it get the better of us. Rummage the internet for all kinds of techniques, listen to podcasts, spend some time with yourself - but after a while, learn to snap out of it. Establish a process, and hopefully, with time, we’ll all learn to trust it.
For now, grief feels like a roller coaster, but I’m learning to fasten my seat belt, if not enjoy the ride. There are more meetings, mocks, emotional traffic, doorbells to conquer - and more dreams to run behind till we fulfill them. Grief now feels like a tag-along umbrella, not an all-embracing coat, and for now, I count that as a win.
Comentarios