No, I’m not talking about a Facebook relationship status (though that would accurately describe pretty much all the romantic relationships I’ve had in my life). I’m talking about the term “complicated grief” which is a term I learned 6 years ago.
Complicated grief is grief that lasts 6 months or longer. Geez what the fuck is 6 years then? Rubik’s cube grief? Pythagorean theorem grief? (just read an article that some high school kids recently solved that theorem, so nix that.)
Am I still crying everyday over my loss from 6 years ago? No. No tears on the outside, well, once in a while. The teary days have grown farther and farther apart with the passage of time. The tears on the inside though are a permanent fixture.
“You’re the tear that hangs inside my soul forever” – Jeff Buckley. Best song lyric ever.
Tears are simple. Tears = sad. The undulating ebb and flow of all the other emotions = ?
It’s complicated.
Anger, rage, confusion, betrayal, regret, despair, hope, resignation, gratitude – all still gently swirling around in the undercurrent. Which emerges when? Well, what day is it?
Why is some loss so complicated? Hey, people die. We get sad, mad, get all the feelings.
But sometimes those feelings blur so much and last for so long that the so-called stages of grief don’t mean shit. Tends to happen with a loss that seemingly defies explanation.
My boyfriend died 6 years ago. He didn’t die from an illness, old age, a plane crash or even an unfortuitous run-in with the grizzly bear from The Revenant. Nope, none of that.
He killed himself.
Why?
I just don’t know.
Fucking complicated.
Sometimes, these many years later, I think “should I be over it?” But what does that even mean?
I’ll never be over it. I got through it.
Well, the tough part, or at least what I thought was the tough part. What everyone else told me would be the tough part–the first year.
But I don’t even like the term “through it”. You get “through” a rough night at work. You get “through” the day of the funeral. You get “through” the fog of the first couple years just trying not to be a complete alcoholic.
But you’re never through or over someone’s death.
It’s just a new thing you’re perpetually…in.
In a new reality, a new awareness, a new life (if you’re still lucky enough to be here and have held on this long). Everyone who told me about the tough part was right, partially. But no one tells you the other stuff, the after after, what you’re still in, even 6 years later.
You’re in a new you.
It’s complicated.
I think about death a lot now. I think about life a lot now. I think about a lot of things a lot now, maybe more than I should, more than I ever have before all this.
It’s exhausting.
I’m also very hypersensitive now (yeah, that’s a thing). I mean, I’ve always been sensitive, I’m a hopeless tomato after all. But these days I’m like an entire crate of that soft fruit that everyone thinks is a vegetable.
*Squish*
I think it’s called getting in touch with your emotions. Look at the big-girl pants on me!
Extraordinary events emotionally dissect you. You get picked apart and broken down into tiny little pieces, so fragile that the slightest breeze could blow you into nothingness.
But with a lot of work and a little luck, the pieces eventually go back together again, but never exactly the same as the way they started. They go back together in the form of a new you.
A you that is more acutely aware of life and death. A you that sees everything, feels everything. A you whose soul is now branded by the harshness of life. A you who has learned the hard way to truly value what most take for granted – time and people.
Time takes on a whole new meaning. I’m constantly thinking about what I’m doing with the time I’ve been gifted here. Am I wasting it? Am I doing enough “constructive” things as my mom would say? Am I doing enough in general? Do I even want to?
And people, well, what can I say? New you sees everyone differently, even the cashier at Wawa. Have they gone through something like I’ve been through? Have they been lucky enough not to? I wonder what their story is. We all have a story.
And the people you already know in your life, their importance becomes crystal clear. And you’re just grateful that your story with them continues.
Work, chores, hobbies, vices, fun and games, they’re all just distractions from these continual existential thoughts that are now ingrained in the new me. Thoughts that always stay on a low simmer in my brain.
Now I know where the term “burned out” comes from.
I thought I was burning out, burning out from the weight of hypersensitivity, over-analyzing, incessant questioning of the meaning of life. Isn’t this shit too heavy to carry around?
It isn’t. Because now this isn’t just shit I carry with me, it is me.
I think I finally realized what to do – stop fighting it. This new me has been fated by the Universe and when you try to go against the flow of the Universe, when you resist, that’s when you struggle, that’s where you get stuck.
The grief-stricken often say, “but I just can’t cope. The loss and the pain, it’s just too hard go on”. They may say they don’t believe that moving on is possible. “That is why you fail.” – Yoda (new me and old me will always try to squeeze in a Star Wars reference where I can.)
Writing all this shit down is an embracement of sorts. Instead of pretending I’ve not been permanently altered and hiding behind distractions, I pour all these complex feelings out here in the hopes of helping someone else going through the same thing. You’re not alone.
“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” – George Eliot
Stop pretending. Start embracing. Start believing.
Death is simple, final (well, as we humans perceive it). But death also brings clarity. We go through life so blind, blind to our true selves, blind in our relationships with others. Blind as fuck.
What’s complicated is what’s left behind in the aftermath of loss – us.
We get one time around. Open your eyes and open your heart.
This here right now, is all there is.
And that, my friends, is not complicated.
❤️
CM
5/18/23
