On Grief

Grief is such a multi-faceted experience. You might grieve the loss of a lover after a break-up or the loss of a friend once the friendship fades. You might grieve an experience that's long buried in the past or an experience you never even had. You might grieve opportunities missed, choices that should not have been made, and possible futures that never grew into their potential. 

I have experienced all of these types of grief: deeply, passively, and somewhere in between. I imagined, that with the fullness of the way my heart grieved for the people, places, and hopes that were once in my life, I knew grief. I knew where I feel it acutely and where I don't. Grief for the broken relationship between my ex and I, for example, lies next to my bedroom window, when I look up to find the stars at night. Grief for the future I wanted two years ago sits somewhere on a train, in a window seat. Grief for my best friend, who is no longer my best friend, rolls gently with the waves on a beach.

Grieving a loved one that has passed into death feels different. For me, this grief is coated in confusion, a type of unmoored, desperate, childish hope to know where she has gone. It feels bigger than losing what I loved; it's losing the confidence and understanding I thought I had over life. It's losing control and doubting my beliefs and understanding that I really have no control over the important things in my own life, all at once. This grief is about confusion but it's also about acceptance, and it's not in my nature to accept things easily.

But ironically, this grief is also about validating my biggest insecurity. It tells me I was not wrong like I thought I was, all those times I loved deeply and cared wholly--and was shamed for being too emotional. Too sensitive. 

This grief is perhaps the only type of grief out of all the different experiences I've had of grief that reminded me a simple truth: there is never a time in which I shouldn't be loving deeply or caring wholly. Because, in the grand scheme of things, I don't have that much time at all.