I think I realized today that I’m afraid of my grief. And it doesn’t take me long to figure out what, exactly, I’m afraid of: I’m afraid that my grief will consume my life. I’m afraid that I’ll get stuck, and everything I’ve worked for will slip away.
My brother completed suicide the fall after I graduated college. I really struggled after I graduated. It took me, I’d say, seven years after that happened to really feel like I’d found my place again in my own life. I distinctly remember feeling like I graduated, he died, and my life fell apart.
The truth is that I was struggling before he passed. I think those years of struggle were going to happen even without that grief. The lessons I had to learn about myself had nothing to do with missing my brother. On the flip, however, grief was a tool that resistance used against me. Resistance used that deep darkness to erode my resilience, my joy, and my vision.
I’m far from okay. Genuinely. The sadness comes in waves, and when it’s not crashing, I’m mostly numb and detached. Today, I had a panicked spell. I took a nap and that helped. It was thinking about the panic that made me realize it wasn’t quite the same thing as the actual grief. The panic was the fear.
So…man. I don’t know, really, how much that helps me. I’m going to try tomorrow to be productive, and I’m planning to use meditation to do that. Really lean into the meditation part of my writing. Start back kind of at zero, and then build back up again.
I miss my dog so much, it literally hurts my chest. I recount the way that she declined and then died on a constant loop in the back of my mind. It’s accessible at any instant, fresh and bleeding. There’s sadness, there, regret and anger, and despair. Will I ever experience love like that again? It was so perfect. I don’t know. I really don’t.
But…I really just want there to be a “but.” I don’t know what it is yet.
I’ll see if I can find some of it tomorrow.
Night night.