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[dokoyukuno]

grief

on sunday night i found out my friend died. she was in the hospital for an extended period for treatment regarding a mass in her lungs. it wasn't cancerous, but she still needed radiotherapy and was getting better. excited to go home soon enough, tweeting less but the last time was just like any other time. and then, sunday night, our friend recieved the news from one of her relatives that she passed away. i was in my kitchen making a grim microwave meal, looking at my phone to waste time and then my eyes flared when i saw it.

i closed twitter, took my food to my room and ate it while watching a youtube documentary about typography.

everything anyone has ever said about the stages of grief is real. i thought i wasn't in denial because i didn't think "no, that's not true", but i was denying my feelings because of the sheer shock. how could anyone read that and just take it in instantly, as if it was any other fact? i didn't know what to say. i didn't know what to do either, so i finished my food. i could feel the synapses in my brain changing shape, twisting around one another and just whittled out an "i don't know what to say" while others around me were breaking down.

even though it's only been a few days, i don't really remember the specifics of what we all said at first. lots of people said they were crying, lots of people were asking questions and lots of people were trying their best to support one another. i thought i was handling it well; in spite of the sinking feeling slowly dragging away at every cell in my body, immediately thought about something nice. myrna always had amazing hair and would dye it bright colours, so i thought maybe i should do something like that, even if i won't look as good as her. i didn't say it but i thought maybe she'd go on a small rant about dye brands if i asked her too, and a friend said something simililar.

what tore me asunder was when her favourite idol replied to one of her tweets saying rest in peace. i looked at her likes too, and she had to have searched the phrase "myrna" to find a lot of the tweets she intereacted with. i started sobbing. i couldn't stop and all i could feel was anger and sadness together. i haven't stopped feeling them, even if i'm more stable today than i was then.

i had maybe 4, 5 hours of sleep because i just kept refreshing twitter to see what people were saying. even if a lot of us didn't talk to myrna one on one that much, she was so loved as a person. her adamance and enthusiasm about every little thing she did was so infectious, and when she wasn't jumping right into things, she would just keep talking about them until that new thing became apart of her. a lot of people just... loved that. even in a small way, it was just nice to be exposed to. our interests are niche, so finding somebody that absorbed into them was like finding a rare bird.

i had to go to work the next day. i didn't want to. i work at one of the roughest convenience stores in south london, so the prospect of dealing with every crackhead carl and coked up cathy in addition to my shitty coworkers was... less appealing than usual. i felt catatonic. everything about me was made up of pain and anger, but when i wasn't sobbing, i wasn't anything. my eyes were glossy, my face was blank and my gaze lowered. that evening i had to deal with an old man throwing a tantrum over me giving him a scottish £5 ("i don't want this" "why, they're legal tender" "i know, i just don't want it. give me another one" "what the fuck is wrong with you?" and then i handed him 10 50p coins out of spite and he left), a drunk man who kept changing his mind about how many bottles of cheap cider he wanted, and my coworker that's just all around a nasty guy. i felt like a shambling corpse.

i got out at 11pm and walked to the train station in silence with my shift manager. "you were so bad at your job today, what happened? you were fine the last time we worked together." "i'm thinking about many things right now. i can't say the same for the other people that work here." when we got there, i said that i was going to take the bus to save money tonight instead of going with him. not technically a lie, but the second he couldn't see me, i just sat at the construction site next to the station and started weeping. a friend messaged me and we affirmed one another, but for about an hour, all i did was cry and chainsmoke (vaping).

i walked to london bridge, messaged my singular friend (romantic interest who i'd stopped speaking to for a while because after we agreed to be just friends, he said some insensitive things) in town. i wasn't expecting him to drop everything to come see me on a monday night but... all i wanted was a hug. just something from a kind person. no more text, no coldness or venom from the general public or coworkers, just a hug. of course, we just texted while i sat on a bench. he tried his best, but everything that he said was just cliche and unhelpful. shambling corpse shambled home, shambled into bed.

i slept almost all of the next day. i had work today and felt like shit but could maintain the facade of being a person instead of just being unreactive.

you could say that i'm more stable, but i'm not better. i'm still mourning. i'm still angry. i don't want to say that it's not fair because fairness has nothing to do with it. the sorrow and rage inside of me are obviously over her, but there's also no meaning to them. they just simply exist. i'm proud of everyone around me for maintaining themselves, even if they're all hurting, some in ways i can't comprehend. but... well, like i said, everything anyone has ever said about grief is true. i've been reading about it more, just trying to understand how long i'm going to feel like this for. and well, forever it seems. i won't always be jack-knifing between catatonic and hysterical, but apparantly, it never leaves. i've changed. we all have

currently, i am cold and shorter with people. i don't know if that facet is one thing that will just be apart of me now and quite frankly, i don't care. the cold i feel isn't like i've just held ice up to myself, but shock from a warmth ripped away. a warmth that i didn't even know was there. a warmth that, while she was alive, i wouldn't describe as such. the warmth of contentment, a gentle heat that you experience every day, because there's a positive person in your life. one that has now left.

i've said goodbye, i've left condolences and i've cried endlessly, so i don't know how to finish this writing. i don't know why i wrote this either. i don't think it's selfish to talk about myself and my experiences because no shit, we all experience things through our own lens. but i don't want sympathy, i want people to think about myrna instead. i want people to carry her passion with them and not look at the trapped animal gnawing at it's cage. a cage i now live in. a cage that is now part of me.

i myself want to carry parts of her with me with greater importance. i'd always wanted to emulate that passion of hers, but now it feels like i have to! so with as much gusto as i can, i'll do my best. we didn't speak much one on one to begin with, so maybe the way i'm acting, if she could see it, would weird her out a little. maybe that makes it a little funny. but if nothing else, i think seeing how much she's touched everyone and made our lives better would make her happy.