Letting go does not happen all at once. People say: let it go, let it go.
Oh, okay, that’s done now, then. I feel better. I’m cured.
That’s not how it works.
For some, there is an unreasonable expectation that that is how it happens, if only to provide convenience, a good time, an easy co-existence.
For others, there is appreciation of the wave-like process that is grief.
Grief isn’t just a thing that we go through when somebody dies. It is grief for time lost. It is grief for the relationship that you put everything into and put your hopes on and that you allowed yourself to open up for. And even if you open up for somebody else, there is still a huge chasm where something else used to be.
It leaves these gaping holes.
People are so eager to try and fill the space with positivity and reminders to let it go, or manipulation, and sometimes utter crap because they don’t want to see you empty, but sometimes, I think I need a while to simply process the emptiness.
Filling it up with ‘stuff’ does not repair the loss.
It doesn’t bring back what was lost.
It doesn’t make it feel any easier.
It doesn’t stop hurting.
The emptiness does not fill just because we want it to.
The hole grief leaves will close in its own time. It is, to me, more like a body wound.
The hole it leaves cannot be closed shut like a mechanical vault, and even then, mechanical vaults, have their faults anyway. Anything can be cracked.
Even when we believe ourselves to have achieved closure, there is also the very real possibility that with (what seems to be) the slightest scrape, our wounds can reopen.
It is a mark of both a good relationship and individual capacity when we are able to allow space for someone else’s wounds. When there is understanding and endurance.
And sometimes it is too much. Sometimes it really is too much. We each have our wounds.
And I know that sometimes my wounds have been too much for people but it is also why I insisted on having as much time alone as I needed, and generally, we are not always given that time.
When that time is intentionally disallowed or stolen, it is disrespectful. It reinforces the notion that I am not worthy of respect, which, to put it bluntly then makes me feel like shit, which makes me feel like a piece of shit, which makes me act more like a piece of shit.
As vulgar as it is to put it this way, it remains true. t is kind of vulgar to put it in those terms, you know?
And I could certainly dress it up and make it more palatable.
But the truth is simple.
We sometimes are how we are treated, sooner or later.
I became quite terrible because I was treated quite terribly.
But I was not always terrible.
I spent most of my life being ‘not terrible’. And that terrible phase was just that: a phase. I am back to being not terrible, most of the time.
So I guess, you know, ‘yay, me’. But I am grieving the time lost, on top of it all… layer upon layer of grief. And for God’s sake, sometimes, all I’m asking is: give me some fucking room to grieve.
I can see the rainbows in my grey sky just fine.
