Grief is weird. It’s different for everyone but mine is always sporadic. I know I’ve talked about my emotional disconnect before. I’m pretty sure my inability to grieve ties into that. When I lose someone I care about, truly care about, I don’t grieve like a normal person, if there is normal person grief. In a lot of ways, my grief is like a canker sore in your mouth. I’m constantly poking at the loss, checking to see if it hurts. Sometimes it does, most of the time it’s just numb. Sometimes it hurts so much I find myself gasping for air and unable to even breath. This last for 30 seconds to a minute until I can squash the emotion and then it’s gone. Other times, it just feels sad, but it’s always there, just under the surface. I know some people think that sounds like a nice way to handle grief and maybe it is. There have been very few things in my life to truly devastate me. It’s happened twice and both times were caused by the betrayal of someone who I loved and thought loved me. For some reason, when I trust someone with my heart, the barriers are down and I can’t block the emotions. Other than that, most grief is as I described. Brief and very intense and monumentally sporadic. And the problem with this approach is that it’s always there, waiting to pounce and bring me to my knees. But I don’t know how to fix it. I can’t force the grief out. I’ve tried. It only works a little. My grief gets felt in its own time.
It matters today because a very close friend of mine, one of my very best friends in fact, died unexpectedly a few days ago. Out of the blue, shocking us all. And I’m truly devastated by the loss. The lack of him in my life is going to reverberate for years. He was so important to me. A confidante and friend I could always count on. And now I have to let him go. And because life is busy and I can’t just stop everything, I keep forgetting that he’s gone. I keep thinking, oh I need to tell him about this later. And then I remember I can’t. And I’m sad. And sometimes the grief hits but sometimes it doesn’t. But I’m sad all the time now. It absolutely kills me that he’s gone and it makes me so angry that he died so young. But I will survive. I will move on. And I will miss him so very much.