[Personal Post #2]: Grief is an Oddity

I want to start this post by explaining that being an oddity does not mean said thing is bad. With that out of the way, grief is an oddity. Yes, it is normal after the loss of a loved one/job/ect, but not a single soul feels grief the same way. Hence, an oddity in the human experience. 

Grief is not something we can continually categorize or add check boxes to, and even worse, give a time line. It is must more complicated than that. Some may grieve a month, another a life time. Neither are wrong, neither are right. It simply just is. I think once we accept the idea that grief is a state, not a "thing" to be cured, we can slowly focus on self discovery, self understanding, and most importantly, self care. 

I lost my brother in the summer of 2012. I was in a therapists office a day later, hearing what I have heard again and again. "He's in a better place.", "Follow the steps of grieving". It was all fine and good until it began messing with my head. Was I in the anger stage? I never bargained, does that means I am not doing this right? I felt like I was grieving incorrectly. The damage that inflicted was deep and endless, and I am still recovering from my own self doubt within my grief. 

Then I accepted "this is odd. This is new.". I wasn't hurting like my Mom or Dad or Sister. I was hurting as me. This is a knotted, endless, complicated mess of loss and pain and comfort that one has to twist themselves out of one by one. One string snapping at a time echoing for you to hear, reminding you "It's okay. It's okay."

Grief is not a time line. There will be days where the sun is shinning and we are able to smile about a memory of who we lost swinging on old, rusted swings with a toothy grin and bony knees. There will be days where everything hurts and the only thought you can conjure is what their last moments must have been like. And yes, that thought will follow you around like a shadow. Seeping into your skin and haunting your mind. Those, friends, are the days we can fight or give in.

Because, sometimes, the bravest things we can do is accept the pain. 

Accept the chest aches. Bravery does not mean putting on a smiling face, sometimes it means screaming at the tops of your lungs that someone very important is gone and everyone in hearing distance should know about it.

I promise. That's okay. 

Grief does not need to be silent suffering. It does not need to be free of poetic descriptions of loss, those help. Grief does not need to be quiet or hidden. Your grief is your own, and sometimes wearing it as an armor is the best thing we can do for ourselves. 

I still feel pain each and everyday. I will slip up and go to tell my brother something, only to remember he is gone. You may do that too. You're not alone. Our minds keep them alive in our realities even if physically they are now missing from our homes, our work, our schools. This grief will be with me for the rest of my life. The moment I accepted that I don't need to be "fixed" or "corrected" or "treated" for how I experience my grief, I feel so much more. I feel human again.

Grief is an oddity that will remain as such for years and years. Oddities aren't the damaged or broken, they are the fascinating, complicated middle between all that is Black and White. If we are to embrace all of our being, do not neglected the grief. You are not failing if grief has become a permanent facet of you and your personality.

You're human.

And you know what, maybe that is the best thing we can be.

As for me, I will carry my grief like a stone. My brother was my best friend for 22 years, that doesn't end at the moment of death. If anything at all, it intensifies. Grows so large your body makes more room in your chest where their name resides and beats against your ribs. There will be days where I cry, and that's okay. There will be days where I smile and remember, and that's okay. Those days I feel nothing, yeah, those are okay too. 

There is no time line when it comes to missing someone. All there are is memories on the reel of film resting comfortably right between your brain and bone. What a gift that truly is.

- Spencer