Random Experiences - 2022

Grief - 14.03.22

Reading through some notes by C. S. Lewis, 'A Grief Observed', I silently let a few tears stream down on their own accord.

This feels like compounded grief. No. This is compounded grief.

Letting go of a much-valued relationship, letting go of a much-cherished job, the loss of my phone and very important projects, and now the loss of Queenie's mum (including the 'micro' losses experienced in the same time frame - secondary losses as experts might define it).

There's this subtle blandness to life I experience from time to time. When it hits me, it leaves me seeing life in shades of grey. I lose my appetite for food. I lose the need for self-hygiene. I can stay for days in the same cloth. I stay in bed for the whole day sometimes without food and drown myself in music or movies.

It's how I know that these are not sounding like healthy choices but I make them all the same. I have window periods where I go out to interact with people and meet a few friends, but my room is my comfort den. I always return to it no matter how stimulating the outside world is.

I'll be travelling for the burial ceremony of my lover's mother. It's ironic how I'll be visiting her family place for the first time to mourn with her. It's a paradox, the bitter-sweet feeling I have as I anticipate this journey. I'll be seeing my beloved's face again but the meeting is borne of great heaviness and deep sadness.

And knowing how people grieve differently, I don't know how best to support her in this period of grief. States apart, the best I can do is to keep the connection via calls, but the conflict arises when silence is comforting to me and engagement is comforting to her, I think. Or when it's reversed, when she wants quietness and I want engagement.

There are the associated feeling of helplessness, loss of control/balance, pain, sadness, emotional, mental, and physical apathy, and a host of others as my journal would bear witness.

I feel like putting myself back into the world of work. Work was usually my coping mechanism for grief. I think it's also why the number of books I've consumed within the first three months of this year is more than what I read throughout last year. The courses I've registered for and declined are also rising steadily. I'm subtly overloading my brain with work even when I'm officially out of work.

Grief is like rain. It falls when it wants to and doesn't ask us if we took an umbrella with us while stepping out of the house.