THE GRIEF EDIT: ARE YOU OKAY?

When you’ve lost someone, everyone checks in with you, and I mean EVERYONE you’ve ever known, or so it feels like. It’s lovely, I truly appreciated everyone who messaged or called me to check up on me, but it’s so overwhelming. In the early days you have everyone around you, you’re constantly surrounded, but what about when the dust settles and you’re trying to adjust to normal everyday life without the person you’ve lost, and the contact from most people actually stops? You feel the loneliness more than ever, it’s a strange feeling. Like it’s all or nothing. 

I’ve never felt so lonely surrounded by so much love. That’s what the effect of losing one person in your life can have. 

With that being said, I don’t cope with a lot of contact. I don’t reply straight away (although I’m learning to do so with family and friends so as not to worry them), I’m constantly tired, and talking feels like more of a chore than it ever did. 
I broke down in front of a friend a while ago, he was grieving and his emotions made mine pour out too. He asked me how I was doing, the first time I’d properly been asked that for a while, and I answered honestly. 

I’m okay, I think. I didn’t tell him what I thought I should tell him I’m fine, I’m getting on because we all have to don’t we? Because for once I was tired of telling everyone, and myself, that I’m okay. 

Most of the time I do feel fine, until I fall apart over something small, washing the dishes seems to be where I cry (although I guess that’s just what being a dishwasher does to us anyway, right?) and I can’t explain it. I’m trying to feel fine and normal all the time, I hate to give anyone a reason to worry about me so I’ll smile and pretend until I have time to myself and then I let myself fall apart.

I’m not saying that if everyone asked me how I was doing, and didn’t just mean on a surface level, I’d be really honest and say I’m not doing great because I wouldn’t. But maybe I’d feel like I didn’t have to hide it as much. The hardest thing I’m finding at the moment is that I was so busy after the loss of my mum that I didn’t have time to grieve, and people warned me that 3 months down the line it would probably hit me. Here we are, 7 months on, and it’s hitting me the hardest. Everyone has seen me acting pretty much the same, still lively, sassy, always laughing, so they must think I’m fine. 

How do I turn around all of these months after the worst event in my life and tell people honestly that I’m struggling and constantly feel on the verge of a breakdown? I’m a no-fuss type of person, I’m a lets not worry anyone type of person, I can’t give anyone reason to look at me differently.

Grief is a such a personal, strange, abstract process to go through, no 2 people ever encounter it the same way so we never know how others are coping when they go through it.

I guess that what my long-winded, bizarre ramblings here are trying to say is, please check in with people when they’re grieving. You don’t need to make a big deal out of it, just check in with them later down the line when everything has quietened down and their lives are supposedly having to go back to ‘normal’, just ask them how they really are and let them know that you are a safe space for them to be honest. You can’t change what’s happened for them, like they can’t change anything for you either, but knowing you both have someone there to just be yourself in your grief is such an important step in trying to keep yourself moving though the process.

S xo