Grief hurts. It hurts from the tips of your toes to the hairs on your head.
It feels like someone peeled off your skin inch by inch, searching for something good, only to find what is inside you is ruined too.
Grief is physical pain and disappointment in a dry cocktail that tastes like poison and it neither cures your thirst nor softens the hurt. You just keep feeling it and drinking from it. Even when you’re not thirsty you take a drink because you think you should. Grief is in control, you’re just it’s unwilling vehicle.
Grief wants to be felt. You think you can ride a wave of grief and be done with it for the day, but you can’t. It has a mind of its own and when you feel okay it reminds you that you are not. It tells you:
You are broken.
You are cracked.
You are scarred.
You are alone.
Grief is an abusive relationship with a dangerous person. It tells you:
You’re not strong enough.
Your not smart enough.
You’re not sad enough.
You’re not mad enough.
It throws old songs at you.
Old pictures at you.
Old memories at you.
Even the daily mail at you.
You can’t protect yourself because it tied your hands behind your back. You’re it’s victim and it likes to publicly humiliate you.
Grief needs attention all the time. It is an employer who doesn’t know your worth. It is a difficult employee who needs to be managed. It is a manipulative coworker who wants your job. It’s constantly testing you, wanting you to say and do something wrong so it can say, “I told you so!”
Grief is my worst enemy, but it knows I need it like a best friend.
I need it to show how much I loved someone.
I need it to show how much I miss them.
I need it to feel the loss.
I need it to remember the love.
The deeper the grief the deeper the love, it tells me. If I don’t have enough grief did I really even love enough? The mind games are constant. It is endless.
Grief. I hate it. It is in control. It is so in charge of me that I am blind to its strength and manipulation. It just occurred to me that it is even in the title of this stupid blog and has been in control the whole time. It demands so much from me. I didn’t know that I would hate the word and the feeling for so long, so strongly, So much.
It tricked me.
And, I’m told, this is just the beginning.
