Grief

The intention for more character backstory writing was there, but it didn't exactly go as planned.  Oh sure, it's still swimming around in my head, but I'm finding it hard to get the words out in an eloquent manner.

So instead I lie here, yet again bathing in the cold light of the electronics in my room, whilst my head spins around and around in circles.  The general theme for tonight seems to be grief and jealousy.  I struggle to even write about these.

It's been almost 9 months since one of the most important people in my life passed away.  He died the morning my girlfriend had to leave... that was a fun drive to the airport.  Watching the last few episodes of House has brought back a lot of suppressed emotion and hurt.  I know that grief is a healthy thing, and something that we all have to go through and deal with in different manners but... easier said than done.  I almost relish it sometimes.  It gives me a reason to cry when I can't let myself demonstrate weakness by crying over something more petty.  It's a deep ache.  It's not depression.  It's very easy for me to identify between my normal depression and sadness, and the wrenching inside me caused by the loss of a loved one.

Complete and utter loss.  There is no upside to it, apart from the fact that he's not living in agony any more.  The space left behind can never be filled, no matter how cliche the saying is.  He will never see me get married, never meet my children, won't be at my graduation, visit me in hospital when I'm relapsing.  I don't want to tell my kids stories of my amazing godfather when, god damn it all, he should be alive to tell those stories himself.  He wasn't even 60.  Every fibre of my being is currently thrumming with the deep, tense pain of loss right now.  There's so much in life that he is now going to miss.  When I now think of my wedding, I see an empty chair in the front row where he should have been; in between my father and his widow.  How can I look at this from a happy point of view?  I'm not religious, I don't believe in the afterlife.  All I see is that the world has lost a great man.

Grief is an odd thing.  We all know that it goes in stages, but no-one warns you that the stages can loop back on themselves, or randomly crop up at little triggers like music, places, sights, smells, people, even jokes or just a single word... I can be in the middle of something every-day and normal when suddenly something inside me cracks and I remember that he's not here anymore.  "It gets easier" is what we're told.  Sure, it does.  But it doesn't change the fact that he's dead.  I feel like a petulant child when I say that, but it really does make me want to stomp my feet and tantrum until he comes back.

I not only grieve for my loss, but I grieve for those around me too.  The look on my father's face the night that he opened up... the only words he managed to say were "He was in so much pain" before he started outright sobbing.  Carol goes home to an empty house every day, with reminders all around her of what she has lost and spends most nights crying alone.  Mum and I regularly cry ourselves to sleep at night.  At least I have the luxury of medically induced sleep.


House summed up his treatment quite well: "To muscle aches, spasms. To your joints feeling like they're being ripped out and replaced with shards of broken glass. Your stomach fills with bile. When you vomit, it feels like someone's forcing a white hot hammer down your esophagus, tearing your flesh. Blood's dripping down the back of your throat, choking and gagging you with the slick, coppery taste of burnt pennies.
Your white blood cells are gone, opening up your system to attack. Your temperature skyrockets. One second, your skin feels like it's on fire. The next second, it's entombed in ice. Every pain sensor in your body is firing at the same time until agony isn't even a word or a concept--it's your only reality. You hallucinate. You dream of death. And then the race begins. Can your body claw its way back in time before the hostile organisms and parasites claim you permanently?
Win, you live.
Lose, you die."

He lost, after over 2 years.


You know what my biggest worry is?  If this is how I react at the loss of someone that was like a second father to me... what'll happen when my own parents pass away?  I'm not ready to lose them.  I'm too young, too fragile, only halfway fixed, and a constant work in progress.  I would be dead if not for their love.  They have, both literally and figuratively, pulled me back from the edge countless times.  They're the biggest portion of why I still haven't killed myself yet.  I have no fear of my own mortality, but when it comes to the people around me it's a completely different story.

Please stop dying, people.  It hurts too much.



How many stages of grief can we see in this article, children?