LIVING & GRIEVING

06. grief counselling

I had formed a good connection with one of the teachers in school, Mr. Moran. He was our head of year and the person I had to contact first to let the school know what was going on at home. I had never spoken to him before, as I didn't take any of his classes. But I turned out to be very lucky it was him. He shared with me how his mother died when he was in school too. He said he wasn't trying to start a dead parent club but gave me a few names of people in school who have been through similar trauma. While I knew I would never talk to these people about how I was feeling, it was a nice gesture.

I did let Mr. Moran set me up with the school counselling service though. He even managed to get me seen straight away, without going on the waiting list. It might be easier to talk to someone who wasn't part of my everyday life. Someone who I didn't have to see outside of these conversations. So, I began seeing Lorna weekly.

Every Wednesday, she would get me to rate my feelings on various aspects of my life: friends, family, school, relationships, and my overall mood. Almost every day I would rate them the same. Friends always got a 5. I loved my friends. All of them, even Sean. But I didn't want to talk to them about how I was feeling. I knew they would listen and they would try their best to understand. But I still didn't want to talk to them about anything.

Lorna suggested this was because I was brought up in an emotionally distant household. If you could call it that. I had thought this anyway. I knew it was because mum never talked about her illness. I knew I was wired the same. But today, I rated my friends a 6. The sleepover last week helped me relax, I wasn't being treated any different than before. For some reason, I had always been terrified that people would only feel sorry for me. My friends weren't like that though. They were still going to tease and make fun of me. But they'd be there for me too if I chose to share with my grief with them.

My family were always rated a 5, for similar reasons to my friends. I obviously loved them. But the dynamic in the house had changed. I was the only girl now, and Connor had so much more in common with dad than I did. They were boys. They could watch the football together and talk boy things. I found it hard to include myself. They weren't good round the house either. Which is partly why I rated them a 4 today. I had been doing three peoples washing for months now and it was getting exhausting.

School stayed the highest rating of them all at 7. I loved school and learning; it was finding the motivation to get out of bed and go that was the hard part. My attendance had always been perfect and now, it was mediocre at best. But Mr. Moran assured me I was getting out of bed on days where most people wouldn't at all. That made me feel better. I was still doing okay in my classes too, which almost frustrated me more. I knew I'd be doing great if I didn't have a million other things on my mind.

Relationships was an odd one to think about today. Usually, I just put a zero. I already asked Lorna if we could just stop rating relationships because it was always going to be zero. I wasn't interested in boys anymore. Though she had insisted that we keep it, that was just a phase of grief she'd say. She went on a tangent about how grief can kill your sex drive and I politely reminded her I'm only seventeen anyway. I wondered if I should tell her I lost my period months ago.

Anyway, today, I proved her half right. I rated relationships a one. I still wasn't interested in any boys. But I'd be lying if I said the idea of Quinn having a soft spot for me, wasn't a little exciting. I hated him. But it was nice to think he might not hate me after all. Despite how ridiculous of a thought that was.

I hovered my pencil over my overall mood. I usually rated this a four because I felt just less than alright. I was totally and utterly devastated every day but like Quinn said, I was still living. It was more than fair to say I was doing well for myself given the circumstances. I settled on a five, since two of my stats had gone up. I decided to ignore that one of them also went down. Lorna was happy today.