humans crave to be understood.
me most of all.
I feel as if no one will ever truly get me. maybe that’s how it’s meant to be.
maybe I distance myself too much from people and don’t make it easy to let them in.
maybe I’m meant to spend a lifetime alone begging people to just get me, to please, just look at me and not see someone who’s strange and weird but someone who has a system built against them and struggles to fit in.
I wear a mask everywhere I go to protect myself, not literally (at least not as often anymore). sometimes it physically manifests itself as an accessory, like sunglasses or a hat. I’ll never be caught without one. It’s my way of hiding from the world, letting people see me, but not truly all of me. not really.
I don’t think the people around me understand how much I change myself to fit in, how truly good I am at squeezing myself into boxes and attempting to be ‘normal’, or at least what society deems as such. I don’t think anyone will get me, understand me, know the scars on my soul and the ridges in my heart. the grief that never seems to leave, but comes in waves. the tears that are always present, or the thoughts that plague my mind.
maybe some people aren’t meant to be understood. maybe I’m one of them.
the last few weeks I’ve been waiting for a call that’s never coming. for my phone screen to light up with a message that the logical part of me knows is never going to arrive.
I’ve spent 2 years grieving and coming to terms with my grandmother’s death. as every occasion passes, I’ve struggled with the fact that I’ll never hear her voice again.
my grandfather, bless him, was like a cat with 9 lives. he probably should’ve died in a freak accident 20 years ago, but he always made it through. I always thought out of the two of them, he’d be the first to go, as dark as it sounds logically, it seemed like the way it would be. he was riddled with health problems and his luck for escaping death surely had to catch up to him, so although it seems vulgar to think that he’d be the first to go, logistically it made sense. but he wasn’t.
he survived so much, that a part of me thought he’d always be there, because he always made it through. two years since my grans death, and he made sure that we knew how much they both loved us. he called every occasion and sent messages to check up on us, making up for two people. he was good like that, a bit of a hippie and believed in the funniest things, but he was fun to talk to. I miss our chats.
two days after his death, in the midst of a panic attack, I hastily scrolled through my phone, desperate to find anything with their voices, just to know that I could hear them. that I had this part of them I could keep. I didn’t even finish the voice notes when I eventually found them later that day. I screamed and I cried and I sobbed ugly begging for it to be some sort of sick prank from the universe. I don’t think I’ll ever come to terms with it. To think of them in the past tense is something I’ve yet to grasp.
grief has been embedded in my soul since I was born, and it’s never left.
I want them back. It’s not fair. I don’t deserve to know pain this deep and grief this vast at such a young age.
It keeps me up most nights how I never got to say goodbye. did they know I loved them? did they know how much they meant to me? I hope they do, they did. I don’t think I’ll ever know peace or the comfort they gave me.
I’ve known death since the minute I was born, and though the fact is somewhat dark; I think of death as an old friend. He provides a comfort to those I have loved so dearly that living could no longer give them. I choose to think of death as a positive thing, rather than something to be feared. It is inevitable, and one day I will meet him too.
I’ve been to more funerals than weddings.
For a long time all I could think about was, “please dear god, don’t let me have to bury anyone else. I can’t handle it.”
but I did, somehow. for the eighteen years I’ve spent alive, I’ve buried loved one after loved one with no reprise wondering when would I ever catch a break. The answer is.. well never.
I’ve always dreaded funerals, I’ve never been good at saying goodbye. It’s too permanent, too real, and some part of my brain cannot comprehend that I won’t see this person again.
It doesn’t feel real, I wonder if it ever will.
I try to think of funerals now as a way of celebrating someone’s life, rather than losing them to whatever comes next. It provides little solace for the hole they leave behind, but a small comfort nonetheless.
I look forward to the day I can think about them and not have my breath hitch, the panic setting in, and think of them fondly without breaking down. maybe that future will never come for me.
grief is a funny thing. It hits you at the most unexpected of times. its soul shattering and steals your breath in an instance.
grief is an old friend, worming its way into my heart and wrapping its tendrils around my ribcage. sometimes it is a comfort, to know I loved someone so dearly that the remnants of it still lingers.
sometimes it threatens to swallow me whole and weigh me down, it makes me want to scream to a higher power that it’s not fair, that they deserved more time. the answer never comes, and the silence that follows leaves me empty and hollow.
I fear this feeling might never leave, and I will be forever burdened by grief.