I Swear You Will Be Fine

Sometimes you look at words and somehow maybe it’s the spelling of the word or even just the pronunciation or even the way the word makes you feel but somehow sometimes words look like their meanings. For example, the word “love” looks like it’s meant to describe the feeling of affection you feel in your chest every time you see someone who you care about or maybe the word “sun” looks like it’s describing a huge reddish yellow star which provides light. To me, the word “grief” immediately looks like a sad word. strangely, it gives me the feeling of discomfort and even just reading the word makes me want to stop and look away. I find the feeling of grief to be extremely indescribable, and honestly painful. But if I were to describe it, I would probably describe it as a paper cut. Paper cuts are universally painful, but sometimes when we don’t think about it, or we have a band-aid over it, we think about it less or we even stop thinking about it and the pain goes away. But within the first 10 minutes of getting a paper cut, all we can think about or even look at is the tiny scar on the skin on your finger. After maybe the first 10 minutes or so, we begin to try and distract ourselves with other work, trying to move on with our daily lives, but suddenly if we were to remove the band-aid and wash our hands or even sanitise our hands, we would be once again reminded of the paper cut. I think this analogy perfectly describes grief. Because unlike so many other negative emotions, such as sadness or jealousy, there isn’t an immediate fix to grief, nor will it ever go away. Sometimes, similar to the aftermath of a paper cut, we learn to slowly move forward with our lives and continue going about our every day, but sometimes when we don’t realise, just like the sanitiser or the soap from a hand wash, the pain hits us almost like you’ve just pricked yourself on a needle. And unlike a paper clip, pressure to the wound via using a band-aid does not ease the pain once you’ve reopened or even simply just grazed the wound. The good thing about a paper cut or any physical skin injury is that cells regenerate, and eventually the skin will heal and your finger will look as good as new, but unfortunately the same cannot be said about grief because it never truly goes away, you just learn to live with it. You learn to deal with it, to distract yourself with work or literally anything else just so those memories flood through your mind, reopening the wound even further, and even deeper. The purpose of this article is definitely not to instruct you or teach you how to live with grief, but instead to appreciate how it feels, what my take is on this emotion and how to go on about approaching this emotion.

While a very complex emotion, grief also seems to provide some comfort. By this I mean sometimes when you’re sad, you watch a sad movie or listen to sad songs to wallow in your sadness and have a good cry, which is your brain’s response to release the pent up norepinephrine. Or if something great has happened, you listen to pop music or songs with peppier tunes to add to the dopamine your brain has produced. But because grief is a combination of so many emotions and it all rushed into your brain at once, it’s rather difficult to do anything to soothe or even immediately fix your mood. How do you approach it then? Honestly, I’m not really in a place to be giving you, or in that case anyone, any advice as I myself don’t really know how to cope or even process this emotion because on top of the emotions you feel every day, you’ve added on an extra emotion (which by the way is a mix of so many different emotions) to deal with. If you were to look up “how to deal with grief” or “how to stop feeling sad about a passing”, it would probably just tell you to distract yourself and move on with life after a while. But it feels like the world has taken a pause when someone has passed but we cannot dwell on these emotions because time still passes by so unfortunately we must learn to distract ourselves in order to be emotionally stable enough to go about our daily lives. Personally, I think that’s doing a disservice to whoever you’re grieving over, whether it’s a pet, or a loved one, it’s such a disservice to try and distract yourself when in these times, it’s particularly important to stop for just a moment and appreciate them and the memories you shared. As humans, our survival instinct will always be to protect ourselves, and maybe distracting ourselves does do that, but that’s like just putting on a band-aid on a knee wound, it just makes taking of the band-aid to clean the wound and replace the band-aid a lot more difficult. Please just take a moment to remember the life who was present in yours, the life who made you smile till your cheeks hurt or laugh till your tummy hurt, or maybe even cry till your eyes swelled up. Just take a second to remember, and when you’re remembering, do not force yourself to smile. I feel like in negative times, our first survival instinct to get through these emotionally difficult times would be to be overly optimistic, but just take off those rose-coloured glasses for a second and see it as how it is, and whatever that does, just feel it. Humans are so terrified of our feelings and our ability to feel that we disregard the ability to feel when we should be paying heed to it. Gaining clarity on your emotions is definitely not an easy task, but that does not mean you shouldn’t try. Let’s say for example, you accidentally burn yourself with hot water whilst pouring water from the kettle, and to soothe the burn, you put medicated lotion, but the first time you put the lotion on, obviously the burn is going to hurt. But each time you reapply the lotion, the burn slowly heals slightly more, and it hurts less, until the skin cells regenerate and you don’t have to worry about applying the lotion anymore and now you just have a funny story to tell your friends about your clumsiness. That’s similar to grief. At first, when you acknowledge the grief, it will hurt, the pain may become unbearable even. But once you’ve acknowledged the emotion, and you allow yourself to feel all the emotions that are grief, like anger, sadness, yearning, love and even the denial, just like the lotion when the skin cells start to regenerate, your heart becomes a little less heavy. Slowly, over lots of time and processing, just like the burn, eventually the lotion becomes less painful to put on and you won’t need it anymore. Yes, unlike skin, your brain will not regenerate and you won’t be able to forget the pain or even tell a funny story about this experience, but it slowly lessens the load on your heart, which is how to slowly get comfortable with living with grief, and eventually results in acceptance. Do things which lessen the load on your heart, like watching videos, sifting through photographs, listening to music which reminds you of them or even talking to the unknown hoping that they’re out there somewhere listening. I guess what I’m trying to say is, do not fear the emotion as it may bring you more comfort and ease than you think.

As someone who is trying to deal with grief, I guess I can’t also give you foolproof advice as everyone deals with emotions so differently, but personally, remembering helps. And contrary to popular belief, I don’t just remember the good times but instead take time to think about the harder times too, the times where the going got rough, or negative emotions were present in a situation because I personally feel like it’s unfair to only focus on the good times because that’s only half the person you’re thinking about. Remember the times where you laughed, got angry, fought, cried, smiled, chatted to, exchanged advice, hugged and most importantly, loved the passed one. Sometimes we tend to only dwell on either sadness or happiness, but the truth is that someone’s life can’t simply be determined by two emotions. And I’m not going to lie and say it gets easier, because it doesn’t, but learning to feel makes it simpler in the long run. More importantly, remember to love the ones who are still here because as humans we tend to want what we cannot have and forget to focus on what we do have. So, when you see something that reminds you of those who’ve passed, take a photo and share it with those who haven’t. or if you happen to see their name somewhere or hear a song which reminds you of them, hold it a little closer to your heart and close your eyes just a little longer than usual and allow yourself to feel the life we were lucky enough to be graced with. Don’t ever stop remembering, mourning or celebrating them, whether incorporating some of their daily habits or celebrating their special days. A life lost is still a life and that’s sometimes what we fail to remember.

And before I forget, remember to hold your loved ones a little closer today, hug them a little tighter and always say you love them more, for you never know how much longer you would be able to say it for.

missing you everyday, love you even more,

asha