Grief is something I honestly believed I had experienced in my life. Something I believe was hard to get through but got better with time. I am learning that although in the past I have experienced loss, I have never truly grieved. I have never experienced the roller-coaster of emotions that go along with the loss of a loved one. While I'd lost people throughout my life, they'd never been people I saw regularly or was exactly close to and although losing them hurt, it wasn't really grief in its truest sense. Now I have learnt the meaning of grief and it feels like with time it only gets harder.
Losing someone you are close to and talk to nearly every day is hard to come to terms with. How can it be they are no longer here? How can I just never speak to them again? It seems to make no sense. Although death is part of life, and something we all experience, when it happens to someone close to you, the logic goes out of the window and suddenly it is incomprehensible that this could happen.
Recently I lost someone that I was extremely close to and I never realised how much they meant to me, until I could no longer talk with them. I depended on this person in ways I never knew. I felt safe, because I knew that no matter what they would always be there for me, that was just the type of person they were. Suddenly losing that has bought with it a whole host of emotions that I have never really experienced in this way before.
For example today I was walking into a building with my mum and I was talking about keys, and I said that many people found it strange that I had my mum and dads house keys and then went on to say that people also found it strange that I had, this persons house keys. This for some reason bought me to the point of tears. I was just standing there trying my hardest to hold back the tears. Yet other times I can talk about this person and not cry a single tear. The longer since the loss, the harder that seems to be.
You see when you first lose someone, I think in the back of your mine, subconsciously you don't really believe they are gone, it's like it isn't real. Like it never happened in the first place. You've been to the funeral, you've said your goodbye's but it still doesn't seem in any way real. You still expect to be able to pop round and see them, have a chat with them. Tell them what's going on. For a while I think it is easier to just feel as though they're not available. The longer since they have passed though, the harder that gets. You start to realise there is nothing you can do, you will never be able to talk to them ever again. Never be able to tell them about your achievements, see them laugh, nothing and that's when it becomes hard to take.
When you do something positive, it becomes bitter sweet because you feel good that you have done this positive thing but you want to tell this person and you can't. So suddenly you're crying again. Other times you just feel generally happy. As though everything is okay, then something small will remind you of them an you begin to feel angry at yourself for smiling and being able to go on, even though they're not here. Then you start to feel guilty because you know that's not what they would have wanted. They of course would want you to be happy. Being happy in a time of grief will always be bitter sweet though.
I have found that I can go from looking at a picture of a sweet (not even one this person has ever mentioned in the time I have known them) to thinking about how much you miss them, in just a few short thoughts. It is like everything you do reminds you of them and sometimes you wish it would stop. Sometimes you don't want to be reminded all the time but then you feel once again guilty, because how can you not want to be reminded of someone you loved?
Grief and loss are most definitely two different things. I can say without a doubt this is the first time I have ever truly grieved. I miss this person every day and I would do anything to bring them back. I will always remember them and I know life has to go on. Sometimes though, it just feels wrong for life to go on as normal when someone that was so important to me is no longer here.
