I Swear You Will Be Fine

I read a post somewhere about someone who made their partner’s favorite eggs seven years after their partner had passed on, but cried so much they couldn’t bring themselves to eat it. When I read that, my mind travelled to one evening a few weeks after you had passed, when I had dinner at your grandparents’ place. As usual, there was a lot of yummy food on the table. And amongst all the dishes, there were two chicken wraps on a plate. I remember staring at the pair of wraps, my mind picturing the countless dinners I had with you – at your place, sitting across from you at your dining table in our usual spots, watching you wolf down the two wraps in the same amount of time I take to eat five bites of whatever I was having. Your family mentioned that the wraps were prepared in the exact way you used to have them – same style of chicken, same type of tortilla wraps were used. I stared at those two wraps on the plate for the longest time, as if I could will your presence back with my gaze. The whole dinner, I couldn’t bring myself to eat the wraps. It felt wrong. How could we eat the wraps you were supposed to be eating for dinner? The ones you had been having for months? I couldn’t even look at them; forced my eyes away every time they landed on that plate. I knew that your family was thinking the same thing too. I recognized the emotion in their eyes; the longing and sadness were all too familiar. No one touched the wraps that evening – they arrived at the table and left in the same way, and we never had wraps like that for dinner again.

When I read that person’s post about making their partner’s favorite eggs and not being able to eat them, I felt so conflicted. I was torn between feeling glad that after seven years, the grief will still be ubiquitous – because to me, and I’m sure a lot of people, grief is a sign of love. But I was also feeling dreadful that the grief will still be so painful after seven years. Almost like, “What? You’re telling me that it does not get any better and I will still be crying over breakfast after nearly a decade?” The thought of that was so exhausting and made life seem so meaningless.

I have been feeling so conflicted lately. As life moves at its usual pace around me, I find myself struggling to keep up. I struggle to find a balance between doing my best to honor you and wondering, “How can I possibly go on without you?”

Nothing feels better anywhere, but it feels especially worse at school. I am so conflicted between wanting to do well for you at school, and wondering how I could be doing well at school. I want to get the best grades I can, but when I do, I find myself feeling so upset that I’m doing well when you’re not here. How could I? My boyfriend is not physically here, and my grades aren’t reflecting that.  

And as we all know, some days get really, really heavy. Everything becomes extraordinarily difficult, and everyone becomes extraordinarily frustrating to be around. I miss you more than usual, and the urge to see your face and hear your voice again is so strong. Yet, I am still conflicted. I am conflicted between wanting to listen to your voice through videos and voice notes because I miss you so much, and not being able to listen to your voice because it makes me miss you so much. It happens randomly, too. Some days I can laugh watching the silly videos we’ve filmed, and other days I can’t even get through the first five seconds of them. I get so conflicted between wanting to view our photos over and over again to relive our memories, and not being able to see another picture of you because it just hurts so much. It hurts that you’re not here, that I can’t see you in real life.

I’ve been getting more comfortable with the people most important to you, and I feel snippets of myself peeking through. I am definitely not my full, bubbly self like I was with you, but because they are people you love so deeply, I feel myself becoming slightly more cheerful, parts of my personality (aspects only you saw) leaks out, when I am with them. This makes me conflicted too because I want to be the person I was with you, but I also don’t. I want to honor you and be the person you helped shape, but how can I be that person when you’re not physically here?

So many things make me feel so conflicted. When I think about it, I find that I truly struggle to strike a balance between wanting one thing and feeling disbelief or upset that I might be able to achieve it. We saw our dearest lecturer, Dr K, the other day. And I couldn’t bring myself to answer how I’ve been doing when she asked us (I ended up looking away and tears flowed uncontrollably). The urge to say “not good” is very strong whenever people ask me how I have been doing, because I haven’t been good at all – I’ve been feeling worse and worse. Dr K is one of our favorite lecturers. We even talked about inviting her to our wedding, since it was during her class that we started getting even closer. It was her lessons and topics that led us to a lot of debates and discussions. We are so fond of her, and I think every time I see her, I am reminded of the good times we had. I am reminded of everything that could have been. Being the absolute sweetest person she is, she encouraged us to pursue further education and told us that we have potential. I wanted to tell her that we do want to; we had been wanting to. We had planned everything out – to get our Masters, and PhDs, open our own practice. I wanted to tell her that that has always been our goal, and I want it now more than ever, to do it for you. But then I feel conflicted again. My boyfriend – the person who planned everything with me, the one person I could count on in life, my partner who was supposed to do everything with me – is not here. How can I even dream of doing all that we had planned?

Dr K ended the conversation with a hug and said, “Make me proud”. That made me think of you too, because you would have done everything in your power to make everyone around you proud. So maybe that is how I should see it. I am doing everything I can to make you, and the people around you who you wanted to make proud, proud.

I think that’s the only way I can keep going. Although, it gets very exhausting…

I can’t wait to see you again. I love you more, always, and forever.

Love always,
Sha