Grief is lying on the couch scrolling on your phone when all of a sudden a random video, photo, article on the internet pulls the floor out from underneath you. You’re plunged back into the dark canyon of sadness and longing that you spend every day living on the precipice of. It’s back to feeling like you’re 17 again collapsed on the floor of the hospital and the sobs won’t stop except you’re 28 and lying on the floor in an apartment she’ll never see in a city she’ll never visit in a life she’ll never know.
And the overwhelming pain you fight not to consume you shakes your body and the tears mix with sweat and your breathing turns to gasps. The tears morph into blinding screams that no one can hear because you are alone in this in ways people will never understand. As you sink deeper you think, “how can I spend another 12 years and another 12 years and another 12 years after that feeling like this?”
Because the hole in your heart you tried to fill stays open. Your heart has grown around it and is filled with love and joy and laughter but that hole will always be there and it will be the canyon in which you learn to enter and experience at your peril. It’s where those feelings that make you want to hide from the world and drown in grief dwell.
Then in a moment that knows no specific time or duration it stops. The tears cease flowing. Breathing steadies and your body stops aching. You can drink some water with slightly trembling hands and reach for a tissue. The overwhelming sensations melt away and the floor returns and lifts you up out of the canyon. You think about what to eat for dinner. Her voice says to breathe and wash your face. Another moment has passed and you survived it. That’s what reality is now, learning to survive the grief until surviving turns into to living. Knowing that there will be other videos and articles and photos and moments that won’t always bring you back the same way. Believing that each time will make you a tiny bit stronger and a little less afraid to grieve. To allow yourself the chance to sit in that canyon and feel what needs to surface. Those feelings will rise, but so will you.
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