It is a blessing and a curse to feel things so very deeply, for grief knows no time, grief has no boundaries nor limitations. It comes in waves and it comes by way of its own path. It creeps up on you in the middle of the night, reaffirmed by the silence surrounding you, intensified by the still of the night. Crippled by the words; you hear your thoughts, you hear your woes, you hear your heartache echoing.
Grief, what is that? It’s not a one size fits all category, for it is entirely subjective to the person, the circumstances and the implicit sorrows. A natural part to the cycle of life, but one of the most unnatural feelings to absorb. It has the ability to take over your entire being if you are not careful. It cuts through your world like a savage tornado, displacing everything in its path, leaving your life in pieces of debris of what was once seemingly whole.
Even after the initial shock wears off and you find the courage to let go of denial, you are left to deal with the earth shattering hole in your heart, your heart that was once whole. Taken aback by the lack of control you have, feeling slighted and betrayed even by your own involuntary emotions and physical reactions, for even your body betrays you at times. Confusion and anger stay at bay in most of your everyday thoughts, egging at you, reminding you of the pain in your heart, reminding you the hole that has taken its toll.
Time becomes a pivotal part in finding solace in grief. People say, that time heals all wounds, but does it really? For what is time? Isn’t time merely a reflection of change? What if, from change, our brains construct a sense of time as if it were flowing, a fallacy per say? So maybe it isn’t time that heals the ache, maybe its moments in between where we find the courage to let go, to smile, to continue on, to shine again that we truly heal.
What we often fail to see, though, is that grief is for the living, it is a knee jerk reaction to the plethora of emotions that follow the loss of a loved one. It matters most to us, as we are at the center of the pain that follows. For even the world continues to spin forward when you find your world off spun by such insurmountable losses. And as the newness to the loss unfolds to the lives touching you, it is then, when we often find ourselves the loneliest. For the world has continued to move forward and inevitably you are feel adrift.
Maybe your head is clear enough to see the world whizzing by, maybe not, maybe you can only concentrate on the quicksand that has stopped you dead in your tracks. Maybe you will find the strength to stammer forward, maybe you won’t. All of which is entirely subjective; completely dependent of what we want, of what we seek. Grief is only as relative as we allow it to be; its not just the wreckage of emotions that leave havoc on your world, its your lesson too. For it is in these moments that we are allowed to fall to our knees and feel the earth shattering ache that comes over us, until eventually that throb begins to lessen, and the ache no longer stabs at the heart. To be human is to feel and to feel is the core element of living. Though its in the midst of the storm, that I hope that these words find you. I hope you find the beauty in the pain, for its pain that truly allows us to grow, to heal.
Just Janke 