watching the clouds pass.. another post on grief

Grief this season has been like,

laying on my floor and time is passing — I often don’t know how much time, but after a little while I become self-conscious of what I’m doing/the nothingness I’m doing, and I get angry at myself and wonder if anyone else just lays on their floor & wastes time.

(I talked to my sister the other day & told her that I watch the clouds pass, and she said she did it too — “wait you do that too??”)

it’s been me dodging rooms when people walk in. physically gathering my things & looking like some antisocial jerk & running to my room, closing the door when I’m having phone calls, even getting pissy with unexpected visits & when people take up my space.

it’s been like, when people are speaking to me, I find I’ve been dissociating (don’t normally do this), and I’m nodding my head routinely “yeah” so that they think I’m listening, but truthfully my head is so full of strain & mush that not a lot is getting through. I can’t take a lot of information at once, and I can only take so much information about you, unfortunately. if people are just talking at me, and not with me, I am having a hard time.

even time itself, is a freakin’ blur — I had a close friend admit to me the other day, that they were sad I hadn’t visited their house (outside of school) during the three plus years I had known them, & how on earth was I supposed to describe that for me, time is such a blur and I lost track of how much actually went by, and always intended to visit but I didn’t have the thoughts to make it happen? time is a blur… and motivation. augh, motivation is a bitch (love, mom).

it’s been drastically dropping people, communication-wise; people who I was previously making a set-goal to see on a regular basis (usual girl-dates), to new friendships I was fostering & then suddenly I disappear — though they are great people and great for me. I spoke to a close one of these people, on the phone (unheard of for me), and he so kindly asked what I needed of him. it all sort of rushed out, but I ended up explaining that I needed people not to be offended with me if I disappear for weeks sometimes, or just can’t answer that right now, or am able to talk on the phone one week but am not feeling up to it the next. if I have periods where I don’t want to go out. that legitimately, my needs and what I feel I can handle changes from minute to minute, sometimes. I had the strength & motivation to call my own sister & that took a lot, & when she didn’t pick up, I wasn’t ready to talk when she called back. I explained that I just sort of have to do things at whatever pace it comes at, but a lot of people will take that offensively or that I don’t love them — and I totally get it. because who wants a friend who is so unreliable? who is there one moment, but gone the next? well unfortunately — that is just who I am at the moment. & he told me he’d never be upset for those tumultuous, unpredictable needs. and I said, “that’s what I need”.

grief has been someone asking me if I’m going to look for jobs, since I just recently discovered I lost mine (that I intended to return to this month), and me thinking right back that I don’t even know what I’m going to do to get through the next day — or going to do the next few hours. I’ve let go, currently, of quite a few things I was working really hard for: a cool leadership position at a young adult youth group I got, the youth group itself, my faith, itself…

sometimes I feel like I’m going to melt through the floor. I feel my body & its weight and I think I’ll just sink; I’ll just sink. with every normal expectation people ask of me — the “what did you do today’s?” and “what’re your summer plans?” to “what jobs do you want?”. they don’t realize that I crawl to bed at the sound, the overwhelm of those things. that they are asking almost impossible tasks of me, as I mourn the death of my second sibling, and their upcoming birthday (the 23rd, mind you). what I crave is something strange — but it’s actually a person to hold me, like, spoon me like a baby, because psychologically I feel like nothing can get me in that place and their body is essentially a “shield” from all evil — or they’re “squeezing” all the “bad” out of me and replacing it with safety. because in my grieving head, I am 22 years-old, and that means I may have 60+ more years of traumatic, life-altering, heartbreaking, shattering events & sometimes I don’t know how to not let that just crumble & kill me inside. that I have all these years left — open, vulnerable, to be hit with suffering.

grief, is unexplainable, though I like to try. I like to try because I want it to be understandable. because if people don’t understand grief they won’t understand how to support those grieving; because, inevitably, we’re all going to grieve something, it’s going to happen to all of us.

I heard something — to go back to Time — about grief the other day. it was by Dr. Zoe Donaldson, and she spoke in this profound TedTalk that I had to share with my mom, to my sister, to my Instagram. People, hear this, I thought. she said, so truthfully, “We have a tendency to talk about grief in terms of time. We say things like “time heals all wounds”, or “they are just moving through the stages of grief”, but I think this fails to give credit where credit is due. And that’s because time isn’t doing anything. Time is passing; and while it’s passing, your brain is working really hard to heal itself.”

“Your brain has to take all of the moments of joy from that [lost] relationship — — everything that was good about it — and it has to separate it just enough from the pain of the loss until you can get to the point of describing it as bittersweet. And this is crucial. You need to do this to move on, and reengage with a meaningful life.”

“Despite the fact that we tend to conflate grief and depression, they’re actually different things. If you give someone who is grieving antidepressants, it won’t do anything to alleviate the core symptoms of grief. When we talk about those core symptoms of grief, we use terms that talk about the heart. We talk about a broken heart, a hole in our heart, words that give us a sense of yearning for that individual. And yearning, quite frankly, is not part of depression.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4n1hKvT2CM

Yearning. Time passing. all of this struck such an intimate cord in my heart — because this was true. we are yearning for those people, that person. I yearn for the dimple on Caroline’s cheek and to watch Miyazaki with her while she doodles on the whiteboard perched on her lap. I yearn to hold Juge’s hands again, in the hospital room, and listen to that chipper, rising-high-pitched laugh of theirs to well-up the room.

Time passing. all I want, some days, is for this obnoxious life to be over with. for the time to pass — because sometimes I actually want it to go away. other days the desire for time to pass is for the deep, gut-wrenching emotions to pass — I utter “just get through another day”. in a sense we’re waiting for the “grief” to pass — though it won’t, but maybe it’s a hope.

here is a big grief thing I am experiencing, as a slight side-note, but I think significant to what’s going on in my life. significant to mention, because it was significant/heartbreaking enough, to me. I lost my job that was really important to me. I went through heartbreak while I was there. I persevered & pushed the management until I was a busser/server’s assistant, a job ordinarily readily offered to men — yet I had to jump through two interviews & demand pants (yes, I said pants.) I went through the death of my second sibling there, & received an outpouring of love. I met some UW basketball celebrities & pushed myself ‘til the point of almost crying in the back multiple times. I ate some really good desserts. and I made some very sweet, very humorous friends. and it became quickly like a family, a fish family, and I lost a little fish family of mine. I won’t forget the sunsets glistening in the water when I worked in the summer evenings, or the sports shows on as I swept the bar-floors riddled with fish n’ chips. it was a place I felt so comfortable in, after so much discomfort, & to have it ripped has been gruesome. a thing with grief is, once you have become accustomed & happy in a place, those places suddenly mean a whole lot more then usual. it applies with people, too. they mean that you don’t have to be thrown off with surprises; you know the ins & outs, they are yours now & you can breathe easy. well I lost one of those places. and I am upset and grief-ridden in another way.

so friends — don’t forget, grieving doesn’t always occur after you’ve lost a physical being. it can also happen when you’ve lost that space where you perched outside your window in the apartment room with your morning coffee; the taste of a beloved restaurant, moving away from a family home, a pet’s caress, and more. don’t forget the “little” big things. and remember you can essentially grieve for all of it — because inevitably change is a part of life, thus grieving those changes should be embedded in life, too.

I hope you give yourself space to remember the people/places/things you love, & talk about them constantly with your beloveds so they never go away from memory. I’d love to hear about them sometime. tell me about what you’ve lost — and recount the love/memories you gained before they were gone.