Dealing with Grief

From the age of eight, I’ve had an understanding of what ‘grieving’ was. Unlike my classmates who had only ever experienced death and grief in a film, I was hit full force with it. The hardest part about it all was I knew it was coming. Even though I knew what was only around the corner, you weren’t what I expected at all. You broke me.

As a child, you feel as if life is never ending and the parents you adore so much are like some invincible heroes from a book who are going to be around and protect you forever. But I soon learned that this wasn’t the case. Life is a cycle and I was harshly learning the end of it. As a child, I had no idea what grieving was, but that soon changed. Up until this point in my life, I had been told exactly what to do. But all of a sudden, no one had an answer on how I was supposed to grieve. This made me so angry, I didn’t know what to do. I watched as others around me broke, while others carried on like nothing had ever happened. And me? Well, I did both. I broke, but on the inside. While on the outside it appeared as if I was doing okay.

At the start you consumed every part of my life, I couldn’t get through a day without feeling your presence. I felt as if no matter how hard I tried to be happy, you would always be able to steal it. I feared happiness because with happiness came the guilt that you brought. Throughout the past ten years, I’ve struggled with the concept of still ‘grieving’ as I often feel people judge me due to how long ago my world broke, but that’s the thing, grief isn’t five simple stages or something that gets better overnight. Grief stays with you forever and creeps up on you when you least expect it. Grief creeps up on you just as you're about to go to sleep at night, or just as you're about to go out with friends. It’s a presence that lingers, it’s always in the shadows. There isn’t a step by step guide on how to grieve or the best way to and that’s what makes it scary. As humans, we study and analyse every part of our lives. But this is something we cannot do and why? Because everyone goes through grieving differently. Although you may be grieving for the same person, the way in which you grieve is completely different and that’s what’s hard.

One of the hardest parts about grief for me is watching everyone else around me ‘move on,’ as I still feel stuck in all of this. I question most days why I’m the one left still struggling to come to terms with this. Why I’m the one silently hoping that one day she’ll walk back through the door. But I guess eventually people go back to ‘normal’ or they learn to create a new type of normal. For me, that’s still something I’m trying to get my head around, I guess I just need more time. Death is scary, as is grief. For me, admitting the fact that I can no longer hear my mum’s voice is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to admit. Because the voice that used to bring me so much comfort, is now gone and I long for the comfort it used to bring.

It’s okay to feel confused, it’s okay to not understand how you feel. Eventually one day you will. One thing I have always told myself throughout my good and bad days is that I have to live the life my mum would have wanted me to have, go to places she didn’t get to travel to, and be the person she would have wanted me to be.

Grief is an ocean and sometimes it hits you with massive waves when you're least expecting it. Other times the ocean is calm and you can just float. Whatever the sea throws at you, just know it’s only temporary and this too shall pass.