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Language:
English
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Published:
2023-11-30
Words:
1,003
Chapters:
1/1
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2
Hits:
8

Grief Restrained

Summary:

A pretty heavy and sad piece I wrote about two months after my grandmother, my Nana who was a second mom to me, passed away suddenly. To be honest, I wasn't in the best state of mind when I wrote this, and I finally broke down in front of others about a week after writing this. Grief is hard, and trying to stay strong for others will eventually backfire. I'm fortunate to be in a much better mental state now, but I have to say, this piece of writing is one of the most visceral, moving, emotional, and tear producing things I've even written. I felt like something this raw, this powerful, needed to be shared.

Imagine the feeling of pulling back the messy emotions of a broken heart, slapping on a brittle smile each day, and going through the motions of acting fine, acting like you're doing better, like you're healing, like you're moving past your grief. All while you go home and scream into your pillows at night in rage, anger, grief, despair, hopelessness, and exhaustion, all before getting up the next morning to do it all over again. This is what that feels like.

Work Text:

We all have a small part inside of us that never grew up. A figment of a child to wonder and gape at the world in joy. To relish in small trinkets and take innocent joy at the beauty of nature. But as with every child, any negative feelings can cause a tantrum. And the worst feeling of all is grief. Loss of a loved one. An unending ache that has no cure. As adults, we have a life; we have expectations on how to act, talk, dress, and go about our routine. A week can be allotted for a close family member’s death, but that is all the time given before expectations are returned to normal. As if a week of scrambling and planning and calling people to inform them is all that is needed to get over a loss. As adults, we strive to meet these goals. We have a week to grieve, then we try to return to our lives. We go through the motions, putting up a farce of normalcy and say that we are fine.

But inside, there is a storm brewing. That small part of us that is still a child doesn’t understand. Why are we suddenly acting like everything is fine? As if our world was not just torn asunder and we are left stumbling around the ashes of what used to be? As if there is not still a gaping hole in our hearts where They used to be? The child resists, protesting the adult way of moving on, but the child is ignored. The child starts yelling, protesting, crying, screaming at the injustice of it all. We refuse to listen because that is what is expected of us: take a week off then move on, get over it, stop moping, start living again. So we restrain the child, bound and gagged behind iron bars of willpower as we go about our daily lives.

But the child is not restrained so easily and does not go quietly. The child thrashes and starts festering like an open wound that was not cleansed. What used to be a child becomes a beast, clawing with bloodied fingernails against chains and irons, against bars and locks. The beast roars in rage, screaming it isn’t FAIR and I want Them BACK and why is everyone acting like everything is NORMAL?! The beast screams and howls and tries to escape the cage we’ve stuffed it in. All while we, as adults, ignore it and go about our day.

We go to work, eat meals, talk to people, and sleep as we try to go back to normal. We ignore the immeasurable gap where They used to be. We turn to pick up the phone to give Them a call, but stop short, take a breath, put the phone down, and smile a broken smile as we try to move on. The whole time we try to continue fulfilling our responsibilities and live up to the expectations that are held for us, the beast is raging. Every time we take a breath after forgetting They are gone, the beast snaps a chain. Every time someone says they are sorry for our loss, the gag loosens. Every time we see something that They loved, the bars of the cage crack. Every time we are put under more pressure to meet deadlines, the beast’s binds are loosening. Eventually, there is one last push that sends us over the edge. That makes our restraint break, our iron willpower bend, our mastery over our emotions falter, our facade b r e a k.

And the beast is free. This ugly dark thing is howling and tearing our heart to shreds from the inside out. We are lost under screams of They are GONE TheyAreGoneTheyAReGOnETHEYAREGONE and nonononoNonoNONONO and bring Them BACK and pleaseGodNoPLEASE and I can’t do it I can’t keep acting like everything is FINE it’s NOT fine They are GONE and It’sNotFairIt’sNotFairIt’sNotFAIR. Desperation, loneliness, aching, shock, anger, injustice, and fear all combine into a nauseating miasma of GRIEF that cannot, will not stand to be denied any longer. We want to rip something apart at the helplessness we feel, the anger that this is something that cannot be fixed, cannot be solved, cannot be cured. Our very souls scream and thrash and rend scars into our heart as we ache in a way that is incomparable to any other hurt in this world.

But, we, as adults, cannot express this childish urge to rip and tear and make others hurt as much as we do, so we cry. We sob and choke on our tears until we make ourselves sick. We wail and cannot find words to express how utterly devastated we are. We scream into our covers at night and throw our pillows across the room. We pour our sorrows out to the darkness and exhaust ourselves into a restless sleep. Then we wake up in the morning, take a deep breath, drag the chains off the ground, and lock the beast back up deep in our hearts. We muster up enough willpower to roll out of bed and face another day with a smile that hurts to make.

We, AS ADULTS, must go on and show improvement each day. A smile to this coworker, a quick chat with that friend, a friendly greeting to the cashier. We say we are doing better when asked how we are, we walk around with a cheer that feels brittle and a smile that is two degrees off from normal. We do what adults do best: we pretend. We pretend we are getting better, we pretend that everything is fine, we pretend that we don’t go home every night and sob in bed. We pretend that grief only lasts a week rather than years. We pretend we know how to live without Them in our lives and we keep pretending until the pretense becomes our new normal. We pretend that we are okay until we believe it.