griefjournal

[griefjournal]

2/10/21

I stopped visiting this page. I know it was meant for me to write my grief, to process it somehow, but like any other journal I’ve kept, it’s simply too sad to keep looking at. It’s a reminder of sadness, a graveyard of sadness if you will. Just now, I reread some of my words and it’s too sad to see how sad I was. But that’s the wake narcissists leave you in, I suppose. They love you, leave you for the same reasons they initially admired about you, and leave you sad and alone questioning your sanity. 

But that’s not why I’m here this time. I’m here for real grief. Real grief over someone actually worth it, over the only man that ever truly loved me. The only man that never would have left me if he didn’t have to. The man that said I was the best thing he ever did. The man that said he would continue to love me until I pass on and perhaps even into infinity. 

I’m here for real grief over real love.

I’m here for my daddy. I lost my daddy. Lost is a strange sentiment isn’t it? Doesn’t being ‘lost’ imply being ‘found’? Does that mean I will find him again? His leaving has made me question all my prior beliefs and now I have to believe I will find him again. I have to because I have to go on. His loss is so incomprehensible in me, trying to understand it is like trying to understand the universe. It’s unfathomable and wholly unreachable. His loss is unreachable, but he is not. He cannot be and I need to believe that to continue on. 

Grief over anything before this seems trivial. But maybe it prepared me for this? 

[griefjournal]

11/21/16

“I miss you. This is a mistake. I miss you, this is a mistake. I miss you this is a mistake. Imissyouthisisamistake.” I woke up the other day with the sound of your voice in my head repeating this over and over and over, “I miss you. This is a mistake. I miss you, this is a mistake.” I thought it was real and that familiar panic in my chest rose to meet me as I lay paralyzed in sadness on the mattress you bought me. I thought it was real, I thought you were real. But it wasn’t and you aren’t. Now I just repeat those lines in my head hoping to make it real again, to make you real again, but I know it won’t. “I miss you. This is a mistake. I miss you, this is a mistake. I miss you this is a mistake. Imissyouthisisamistake.”

[griefjournal]

11/18/16

I thought I’d be there with you on days like this. On days you had a major accomplishment or even a silly minor one. I thought I’d be there to celebrate with you or at least be on the other end of the phone to share in your happiness. I thought I’d be there to know all the little details of your night and know the real story behind that photo. Who showed up with whom? Why did so-and-so think they could get away with wearing that? But instead, all I get is a glimpse, a snapshot on social media of you seemingly happy, and me, three-thousand miles away with a heavy longing in my chest. This is what I get now. All that time together and this is what I get now. All that time I invested in us and this is all I get now. An outsider’s view looking into a life I no longer know anything about. Either way, I am still here. I am still sharing in your happiness, even three-thousand miles away with a hole in my heart.

[griefjournal]

11/17/16

I did my best It wasn’t much I couldn’t feel So I tried to touch I told the truth I didn’t come to fool ya And even though it all went wrong I’ll stand before the Lord of Song With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

I heard Kate McKinnon sing this on this past weekend’s SNL and I’d never heard this version of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ before. Every word seemed so fitting, it brought me immediately to tears. I don’t even feel mad at him. I should be, but I’m not. I’m just sad. I’d like to think of this verse as his explanation as if they were his own words. It doesn’t make me feel better, but it makes me feel less shitty.

Maybe he’s right. He didn’t love me. I said I loved him and I think I do, but a week later, he seems so far away. Did I love him? Or did I love the hope he gave me for a better life? Did I love that he was a way out? I love how he treated me and how he made me feel loved. So, yes, I must love him. Right?

[griefjournal]

11/10/16

Grief is the price we pay for love.

I am sitting here alone in my office at work crying, trying to figure out a way how to make it through this moment and anxious at the thought of how to get through the next. On a recent desperate call to my best friend, she told me that I’m not going to feel better. Not yet. And what I need to do is anything to make me feel less shitty. Which is not what I just did. I read through our last text conversation and our last email exchange in which the man I had fallen head over heels for in the past seven months, and I were figuring out how to say our goodbyes. In a conversation I had been putting off for months because I felt so happy with how things were going, he told me that, in fact, he was not in love with me. He was “incapable of loving” me, in his words. He was broken and empty from his last break-up which was only a short two weeks before he met me. I knew that was a red flag, but as the months went on, I thought we were falling in love. I felt loved in a way I had never felt before. If he was incapable, he put on the best show of his life and mine. He lives in Los Angeles, but we talked and texted everyday, multiple times a day, and he flew me out there at least once a month. The distance only started to become harder when my feelings for him got stronger, but we did really well with the distance for a long time. Sometimes we would go to other places and discover new cities together. We’d have adventures all the while falling deeper in love, or at least I did.

That’s something that’s going to take me a long time to come to terms with. I believe I’m still in actual shock at hearing him say he doesn’t love me. He admitted he was a coward for letting things go on like they did and he’s so so sorry, but that doesn’t take this pain away. It doesn’t stop me from waking up crying in the middle of the night. It doesn’t stop me from waking up with sheer panic in my chest or sobbing to the point of hyperventilating. All at the fact that I’ve lost my best friend. I’ll never talk to him again and hear his voice or smell that stupid beard balm of his that smells like pine cones. He won’t be there to support me or be there when I’m having this horrible day. I had never connected with someone like this before. I know that’s so cliche, but it’s really true. He is everything I could have possibly asked for and more. He’s tall, so handsome, extremely smart, he makes a good living doing something I admire in a city I’ve longed to live in, he inspired me and believed in me; if there was a perfect man for me, he was it. Only he doesn’t love me, so isn’t that perfect?

Today, like the past week, I’m just trying to get through each tiny moment. Sometimes, I do, but most of the time, I do not. I am depressed, I know that. I am anxious and panicky and I can feel it in my bones. I haven’t eaten much and I look as tired as my spirit feels. But I am trying. It’s hard to believe that I will get through this, but I am reminding myself that I’ve felt this before and while I was over people that mattered less, I got through it. I can’t see the light yet, but it is in my ability to therefore I know I will.

[griefjournal]

11/10/16

With all the reminders tattooed on my skin, you’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now.

[griefjournal]

03/11/16

I think people focus on the pain of lost and broken love because it’s actually easier than dealing with the pain of everyday life.

[griefjournal]

01/22/16

I was 15 when I lost my independence. Or rather, when the idea of it was taken from me. I lost it the moment I let myself get heartbroken by a boy. The pain was so overwhelming, I lost myself in it. Ever since, I’ve let each one take something from me. Every time, I think I’ve pieced myself together until someone new comes along and unravels everything. I’ve been “recovering” from some sort of heartbreak for 13 years and I’ve never just lived for me. I lost myself in them and I still haven’t found me. I think it’s time to change that.

[griefjournal]

01/14/16

To be young and heartbroken is such a curse.

[griefjournal]

01/08/16

The bathroom was just a bathroom. After you, it became that room that I had once gotten ready in to meet you for the first time. Butterflies dancing in my stomach while I curled my hair. My car was just a regular car, nothing special. It had four doors and four wheels. But then it turned into that vehicle that brought me to the restaurant where I first laid eyes on you. Remember? You went to shake my hand as I laughed and gave you a hug? The sunset was especially beautiful that evening. My clothes were just clothes. That $10 pair of jeans and denim shirt I never thought too much about. Now, they remind me of the time I first spent the night at your house. I wasn’t sure how many buttons were appropriate to leave open. It didn’t matter anyway when you finally drank up enough courage to unbutton them all, and for me to let you in. My phone was just a phone. Just a rectangle that emitted sounds. Then one day, it transformed into a medium in which you could make me smile. I could read your words and see your face in the palm of my hand. It became the sole tool I used when I wanted to see you in real life.

Now. That bathroom is still just a bathroom; a place where my makeup lives. That car just gets me from one location to another and back again. Those clothes continue to take up space in my closet. And my phone is just a phone that doesn’t receive your messages anymore. All simple things disguised as reminders that you’re no longer here.

[griefjournal]

01/06/16

Maybe this is better. These words. These fragments and sentences. They can last forever even though we didn’t. I can hold onto them and reread them over and over again to feel something. You, on the other hand, I can’t even picture anymore. Your eyes–were they blue? Your lips–how did they kiss me? Your hair–how did it feel running between my fingers? Your voice–did it have that Florida drawl? They’re all unanswered questions now; they’re all a blurred image dissipating in my mind. Maybe you were never real to begin with. But these words, they’re real. They’re as real and permanent as my hands typing them. Yes, maybe this is better.

[griefjournal]

01/05/16

I want to fall in love this year. I want to fall in love with every rising day and falling night, and each star my eyes are capable of seeing. I want to fall in love with each new experience and fleeting face. I want to fall in love with every friend and lover that chooses to stay in my life as well as those that opt to leave it. I want to fall in love with their time and their goodbyes. I want to fall in love with my body and all its beautiful scars; proof that I have already come this far. I want to fall in love with the earth and the adventures it brings. I want to fall in love with each moment, both deliriously happy and cripplingly painful, and every damn moment in between. Especially those lonely and desperate moments I think I’m not capable of overcoming. I want to fall in love with each tear that falls down my cheek and each smile that sneaks past my lips. I want to fall in love with the goals I have yet to reach and the lessons I have yet to learn. I want to fall in love with each obstacle, fear, and failure that comes my way. I want to fall in love with life and every–single–thing that comes with it. I want to fall in love with you.

[griefjournal]

01/04/16

If I love you, I will take something from you. Not physically, but I will take a fraction of your sense of adventure or that way you always say ‘y'all.’ Maybe I’ll even take your passion in the gym to help me feel strong again. By the time you leave me, I’ll have a renewed love for motorcycles and the thrill it brought you. Or maybe a sense for camping to reconnect with the earth. Maybe I’ll even hike the Appalachian Trail to feel close to you again. I will take my favorite qualities of you and add them to my own. I will not let you leave me with nothing; I will not let you leave me empty.