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

THE GRIEF EDIT: THINGS NO-ONE TELLS YOU ABOUT GRIEF

T/W: Death of a parent, grief

Grief is something I’ve been lucky enough to not have too much experience with - grieving the loss of a loved one that is. at 8 years old I lost my great-grandma, one of my best friends at a young age and a loss so awful that I had counselling sessions a few year later (mixed with a different type of loss in my early years), it was terrible but she was 91 years old and it felt more of a kindness to her than anything. For the next 23 years I was lucky, there was the passing of a family friend that hit hard but more so because he was someone still so young that I’d known since I was very small, it hard to comprehend his children were now without their father. But that was all the loss I’d dealt with.

At the end of June I lost my mum. Those words still don’t seem real, they seem fictional, like they are someone else’s words and not mine. But at 31 years old, I lost my mum, my best friend in the world and my protector. There aren’t words to describe the grief and the pain and the anger at what feels like an injustice to the world as I know it. But there is a lot I need to get off my chest about how I’ve been feeling, I need to vent out my thoughts and feelings whether anyone reads this or it’s just an exercise to help clear the clouds that hang heavy in my brain. 

1. Mentally making it all about yourself

Maybe this is me outing myself as a more selfish person than I ever realised, or maybe this is a more common feeling than I’ve seen others share. In mourning the loss of a loved one, I’ve found myself constantly thinking about how it’s going to change my world, how I’m going to move forward without them, how I want everyone to stop asking me how I’m feeling whilst simultaneously not wanting them to stop because if they stop then who do I have left to worry about me? I’m so busy in my grief that I forget to really check in with the people around me who are also grieving, or checking in with my friends like my pain overpowers any other responsibility I have to others. I keep letting myself off for not doing things when really I have to keep going and not allowing that to be my excuse.

2. Walking down the street feeling like you have a neon sign above your head

Especially during the first couple of weeks, when I took solo trips out of the house, just walking down the street I felt like everyone knew I’d just lost a parent. Like even though my face wasn’t blotchy, my eyes weren’t read, there must have been something obvious about me that just screamed ‘GRIEVING CHILD’. I’ve never seen anyone explain this feeling, but I wanted to scream at everyone I walked past, I wanted to shout in peoples faces that my world has turned upside down and how are they going about their day as normal when I’m a broken wreck inside? I wanted to stop people in the street, actual strangers, and tell them to hug their loved ones tight and tell them they love them at every available opportunity.

3. Who will love me unconditionally now?

Losing my mum is like losing 10 people all in one. First and foremost she was my mum, the single parent who raised me and did everything she could to keep a roof over my head, kept me clothed and for a long period worked 3 jobs to keep me fed. She was my bestest friend in the world, she was my travel buddy (both summer holidays and city breaks), my gig buddy, the person I’d spend 3 hours on the phone to, my biggest cheerleader, the person who would literally drop everything if I needed her and the person who loved me more than anything in the world. She was my person, and I was hers. After a week or so, following her passing, it dawned on me - who will love me now? My favourite person in the world is gone and now I’m no ones favourite person. It’s such a painful thought and shakes me every time I think of it. As an only child, there were just the 2 of us, we were our own little family for 28 years or so, and suddenly that one person going can make you feel so incredibly alone despite being surrounded by people who care about you.

4. Feeling guilty for carrying on

The guilt I felt the first time I smiled or laughed, after I heard the news, knocked me sick. Or rather it knocked me sick that I was able to do it so easily and freely. How dare I laugh and crack jokes when the bottom has just been ripped out of my world? Every time I laugh with family or friends, I feel like my brain feels the need to remind me of what has happened, like it wants me to know that I shouldn’t be too happy because why should I be when there’s no reason to be?

One thing I’ve struggled with the most over the past 12 weeks is how I’ve coped, it seems truly bonkers that I’m angry at myself to coping well and cracking on, but I feel incredibly guilty about it. Whenever mum threw out like comments like oh I’ll be long gone by then when talking about 20 years in the future, it used to knock me sick and make my eyes brim with tears immediately, I couldn’t fathom what life would be like and I didn’t want to because even the vague idea of it would tear me apart. So being faced with the reality, I expected to stop functioning, I expected to be in zombie like state, to barely eat, sleep, communicate, I thought I’d regress into my darkest time and be a shell of the Sam everyone knew. Don’t get me wrong, I’m so incredibly grateful that my body and mind didn’t allow that to happen, that they have allowed me to cope really well given the circumstances, but it doesn’t ease the guilt I’ve felt for it. Why am I not crying every hour, on the hour? 

We all grieve differently, that’s been the recurring theme whenever I’ve mentioned this on the odd occasion to people recently, and it’s so very true, it’s just a strange concept to come to terms with when you grieve differently to how you expected to.

I can openly talk about about her passing, speak somewhat nonchalantly about it, and not be phased, but then I’ll hear a song or smell her perfume or catch sight of a photo and I’ll be so overcome with grief I’m struggling to breathe through my tears. Washing the dishes earlier, I started crying because for a brief second I questioned if I loved her enough because what if I’m coping okay because I should have loved her more. I gave myself a stern talking to immediately because that was such a cruel thought, I know full well (and so did she) that I couldn’t have loved that woman any more if I’d tried and I tried so hard to be the daughter that she deserved (I could have done the bare minimum and she still would have told the world I was the best thing to ever happen to it). 

If you’re in the early stages, or really any stage, of grief, I need you to know now; there is no right or wrong way to grieve, a lot of how your body may react is self-preservation, it wants you to keep going for both yourself and for the person you lost. You already lost someone you love, you don’t need to lose yourself too in the process.

Sending so much love and strength to anyone going through similar right now and anyone struggling.

S xo