The Thing About Grief

Four years ago today.

It was sunny, warmer than it should have been for that time of the year. Summer was around the corner, not a single cloud dared to mess with the pure, bright blue sky that day. 2021, the remenants of a pandemic in our bones, I was staring at a screen in my living room with two faces nodding back at me from somewhere else in the world.

That’s when my mom calls. At 10 am.

She never calls at 10 am.

A pinch in my stomach made me pick up. She tried so hard to control her voice but it was hollow, fragile. I say, “Yes, I’m at home, what happened?”

I walked away from the screen to my couch, still in sight of my colleagues on my desk. Not fully knowing what had happened yet, panic started to creep into my cells. Words got louder, “What is it?” when my mother weight lifts the words out of her that had already torn her into pieces earlier that morning.

Car accident.

Lethal.

I collapse.

Adrenalin hits my body. I don’t remember a word that was said by her or me after it had sunk in.

My cousin, except he was more like a brother - gone.

Whatever systems my body had to keep me alive, kicked in. I paced, I cried, I was free falling, into what, I wouldn’t know.

Minutes pass and the screen with the two faces was still there I realized, strangers witnessing the most vulnerable moment of my life. I didn’t care. I slammed it shut.

I wish there were words to describe what happens inside when the outside is just completely shattered, every sense of reality, let alone safety ripped from beneath your feet except you don’t really know what that even means. Every alarm goes off, every system is on overdrive, every inch in your body pumped full of blood, but there is not a single clear thought.

Is that what true fight or flight felt like until our society fucked it up? But there was nothing to fight anymore, nowhere to go. Just shock. No comprehension. Just survival. Survival of a moment so intense it actually feels like it could easily kill you too. Ironic, isn’t it?

So, I found myself sitting on a pillow on the floor, sunrays hitting my face. This is when I remembered I had the ability to breathe on my own.

It’s also moments before I had to do what would make this day even worse.

He had a girlfriend. She didn’t know what happened.

So I spoke the words that would do to her what they had done to me.

How could I? How could I not?

If anyone asks me today what the worst thing was I ever had to do, it’s telling another woman that the man she planned on having a family with got into the passanger seat of a car and now she’ll never see him again.

Right now, I am sitting on that same couch. My uterus is screaming at me as it often does the first day of that time of the month, a mild reminder of the ache that still lives in my body.

The sun leaves a square on the wooden floor but today clouds make it disappear now and then. It’s colder than it was four years ago. Seems appropriate.

Back then I knew it would take me a long time to process, that this is a big thing to “digest” - how stupid of a term that is. Part of me also knew I would never fully recover, not get back to normal, not really. What does that even mean? I was forever changed, that I knew too, but I didn’t really know what it meant just yet.

For weeks, I was afraid to sleep alone, cross a busy street, would break out into heavy sobs at uncontrollable times. This last one wouldn’t go away for much, much longer.

I don’t know if I had had the courage to show up for my life as it was, if it hadn’t been for friends who just sat there and listened, who took what I had to say with nods instead of judgment, who were just there to hold my hand and figure out where it goes from here.

Life goes on, they say.

FUCK THAT.

But it’s true.

So I tried, to go on. I did, go on. Now four years later, oh my, if I had seen the mountain in front of me I was about to clilmb…

On a hot summer day in July that same year my best friend came over to help me build a piece of furniture (I’d be a hazard to myself if I tried to do it without help). I told her that I had decided to go to therapy and I will never forget her response: “I’m glad to hear that, because I would have probably told you to consider that pretty soon.”

I thought, 'wait what? Was I still that much of a wreck?'

(Yes, the answer is yes, I was. Today, I know I was trying my best to show up for myself but there was so much I didn’t know. Gosh, thinking about my 27-year old self brings me to tears as I am typing this. She was so strong, so courageous, and poor thing, she had no idea how much she had left to learn (and still does), how could she..?).

Shortly after that, I started showing up at my therapist’s office every week for many months, maybe over a year, I don’t remember, but as long as it took until I was ready to only go every few weeks. What happened was interesting. Unexpected? Obvious to everyone but me?

We did talk about death, but not for long. We, or I should say I, I started to peel back layers of myself that I didn’t know were there, and I for sure didn’t know I had to peel them back.

I got to know my 5-year old self. My 9-year old self. My 12- year old self.

I cried, collapsed, wept, slept - on repeat. It was hard. It still is hard.

I got to know my 16-year old self, my 18-year old self, and boy they were angry.

I love all of them. I learned how to.

But my world was turned upside down and inside out. Somehow I thought things should just continue as normal, what else is there to do other than pursuing the things I’ve always wanted? Climbing the career latter, meeting new people, going on dates, thinking I am fully in control. In a way doing all these things was proof that life indeed did go on, and at the very same time they were reasons to question whether I was doing any of it right?

If I could go back to tell her one thing it would be this: “Honey, have self-compassion, look at your story! There’s nothing you can’t be but just be who you are now, and who you want to be will follow.”

So here’s the thing about grief: First, it wrecks your life. Then it transforms it. And it never goes away.

Two months ago I was standing in my bathroom getting ready for a normal day when I heard myself think: “I can’t believe he’s gone.” Big tears ran down my cheeks and I let it happen because I knew it would pass. Once it did, I just went about my day. I learned that this pain lives in me, it will forever show up in ways I don’t always understand. It will never let me go and at the very same time - over a lot of time - I realized that death has a way of teaching you about life.

Look, had I gone to therapy and pulled out all the drawers in my heart and my mind if it weren’t for having been paralyzed by a phone call? I don’t know, maybe not.

But I do know that this is what made me go, and that I am grateful for discovering all these layers of me. Would I still give everything I have to make him come back? It’s insulting to even write the question…

I remember the first time gratitude showed up. A random moment in a bus on my way to the city.

There’s this gradual thing that happens when someone dies where people go from saying, “I’m here if you need me”, to “life must go on”, to “it just shows us how much we have to be grateful for really.”

You know what?

LIARS.

But also, it’s true.

Heck, I’ve probably said it myself, and I’ll probably say it again but sometimes when I hear someone else say it, I swear part of me just screams:

BUT ARE YOU?

ARE YOU GRATEFUL?

DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS OR DO YOU JUST WANT ME TO SHUT UP?

Gratitude is an exhale. It’s self-reliance. It’s knowing you can’t have the good without dealing with the bad, and being ok with that.

I fought for my gratitude, and I am still not grateful every moment of every day. Sometimes, I am so wrapped up in the stories in my head even my coping mechanisms get tired of me.

But then I remember the mountain I climbed, the one I didn’t know how high it was four years ago. I remember the jobs I took and resigned from, I remember the sparks that flew and the breakups that followed, I remember the people who were there through it all and still are. Those who knowingly and unknowlingly witnessed my unraveling into the human I am today. To the one who stuck with me even if staying meant wading through a muddy road not knowing where it will take us, more than once.

Grief was a flesh wound. It tore me open. So in a way, I would have never known all the things I really needed to heal, if I hadn’t taken that bullet I never wish upon anyone.

Hindsight is 20/20, maybe hindsight is happiness - to quote one of my favorite musicians. Hindsight comes with awareness, like that stunning view we would have never had if we hadn’t climbed the mountain.

Awareness of who I was helps me understand who I am and trust who I will become.

And guess what, I fell in love with who I was, I really like who I am, and I can’t wait to meet who I will become. Whether I like it or not - it’s not like I had a choice - grief helped me get here.

While I don’t know how high this mountain really is, how much mud I still have to crawl through, how many endings will be disguised as beginnings, I know there will be flowers on the way. The real challenge is to see them, to still feel grateful even if your bloody knees are covered in dirt.

Maybe gratitude is on the other side of grief, even if we’ll hold on to a little bit of both for all our lives.