It’s Okay To Not Be Okay
Chrysanthemums… first time hearing about them? same here. Apparently, they are very special and colorful. The funny thing is they’re known as the flower of death because they have been used in European cultures as gravesite decorations.
The first time I saw them I didn’t know what they were, I just knew they were beautiful and felt safe to be around so I bought $10 worth.
When I got them, I was in a sad place, but they made me smile because I was enthusiastic to buy flowers and take pictures with them for the first time. But they didn’t last long — maybe it’s because I didn’t have the knowledge to take care of them, I don’t know lol, but I put them in a vase with water and sugar close to the door so they could get a bit of sunshine during the winter period. They wilted over a few days though and their beauty deteriorated.
You know how a flower wilts — the color begins to fade, it loses its cells and tissues, respiration slows down, its petals start to fall off and they start to leave off a decaying smell instead of the pleasant one when it was first gotten. The decay may take a while but at the end of the day, it is inevitable and it dies off. A dying flower symbolizes a different meaning from an alive one. Decay, sadness, negative energy, and death — all similar to grief.
You know if someone older had told me how grief is like a normal occurrence of life, especially in adulthood, I would not have subscribed because it is pure undiluted ghetto out here.
To live is to grieve.
Everything you grieve — loss of friends, loss of family members, loss of pets, personal failures, illnesses, divorce…. Mine was a family member in November 2021. Sanity has fluctuated from stable to unstable because I’ve lost a huge part of myself. The grief pangs, tears, and insomnia are still a staple but reduced as time goes on. The journey has given me a new light on life because I now truly understand the saying — Tomorrow is not promised.
“When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time — the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes — when there’s a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she’s gone, forever — there comes another day, and another specifically missing part” — John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany.
What hurts the most is the sudden piece-by-piece loss, like the petals beginning to fall off — it starts to lose its beauty. The beauty of a person or a pet is their body, smile, and their expressions. You start to notice their body reducing into thin air, the smile they always had no longer there because the little joys are now replaced by pain, the decrease in their expressions because they feel too tired to react as normal — The pain driving them into shadow of themselves.
There is also piece by piece loss of yourself — It sucks away your joy around them, your smile, and your health because you pay less attention to yourself and more to them. It leaves you feeling disoriented — personally, most of my days began and ended on a cloud nine feeling where I couldn’t remember what I said or did properly but they flashed through my sleep; I’ve never felt higher lol. I had been so drawn away from reality that something as simple as taking my bath was so hard to do — I was a wreck. Tears everywhere all the time. Walking, thinking, and talking felt overbearing. Going outside came with a façade of jokes and little smiles; but as soon as I was alone, the emptiness set in…
If I was asked about what I could remember from my experience, I’d most likely say the feelings and the words most friends and visitors said to me.
The feelings I felt were craaazzzyyy!!! Some days, I hallucinated because reality was upside down; I cried daily; I had constant pain in my chest area for almost six months; and I had a heavy sad aura on me.
During the first three months, the main words were usually “ I’m sorry for your loss, you’re now the woman of the house, don’t cry too much, and stay strong “. After a while, it became ‘give it time’. Some people eventually asked if I was doing okay or fine; all I could muster was I’m okay with a half smile. Was I fine? Was I okay then? I don’t know — even till now if I am being honest.
I don’t even want to go into details about how confusing it is to tell someone that you shouldn’t cry too much or how ‘you’re the woman of the house’ is appropriate to say at that time but it’s a story for another day lol…
…people sympathize differently…
The pain it brings also brings patience, gratitude, and comfort. Patience in the amount of time involved, gratitude in getting to appreciate more of what you have left around, and comfort from the playback of the memories.
Only a few things and people get to stay during the process which seem to be the ones who matter as the journey continues.
“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.” — Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler
After a while, you feel like you’ve gotten better at handling the process, but something random like a picture or a familiar smell pulls you back to the beginning with the grief pangs and the tears, and you ask yourself ‘what’s going on?’
…The feelings rushing back like never before, and there’s a pang of underlying guilt because it’s been a long while since you’ve remembered them…
It’s fine.
It’s normal… It’ll never be the same and it’s completely okay because that’s the process. It changes you into a whole new individual, sometimes similar or farther from the person you once were because that’s what it does.
Tomorrow will never be the same again.
“It’s painful, loving someone from afar.
Watching them — from the outside.
The once familiar elements of their life reduced to nothing more than occasional mentions in conversations and faces changing in photographs…..
They exist to you now as nothing more than living proof that something can still hurt you … with no contact at all.” — Ranata Suzuki
PS: I decided to post here too so enjoy ❤.
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