#grieving Tumblr posts

I do miss you so much Sarah… I love you

And miss you. In 5 days your birthday is coming up!! Honestly I don’t know what else to do without you! Hopefully we will meet again!

you know you really don’t want to

associate with someone

when you tell them

you went to a party,

lost your phone

and caught the rona.

oops.

You can grieve the loss of a sentimental item or picture, a job, a missed opportunity, a friendship, a person (related or not) that you never even met or knew about until after their death.

You can even grieve your own childhood if you grew up in a situation in which you were forced to step up and take care of others even though you were still a child or teenager. Or if you were in an abusive household. Or if you grew up without a mother or father or both. Or if you weren’t able to participate in common childhood activities - sleepovers, running around with other kids your own age, maybe even going to school - because of illness. Whether it’s physical or mental.

You can grieve over being no longer able to - permanently or temporarily - do certain things because of chronic illness, pain, or mental illness, or this pandemic going on right now. 

You can grieve over the realization that you may not be able to have a healthy relationship with someone in your family - parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, extended family - because of their actions or beliefs if they’re abusive, violent, refuse to respect your identity, consistently lie to you etc.

You can grieve over the realization that someone you loved dearly is objectively not a good person.

You can grieve the loss of any relationship - healthy or abusive. Just because the relationship might have been toxic and abusive and something that you’ve made the incredible, difficult decision to get away from and will not go back to - you can still grieve it. It doesn’t mean you miss the toxicity and abuse; it just means you lost a connection that you had for a period of time and sometimes that’s hard and grief doesn’t discriminate. So it is okay to grieve it.

If you don’t then that’s perfectly valid and normal. But if you do then that’s still valid and normal and nothing anyone should tell you that you shouldn’t feel. And that sentiment goes for all of these and all forms of grief.

And sometimes you don’t grieve right away. When my great-grandmother passed (she and my grandmother raised me and she passed when I was 18) I didn’t grieve at first. I didn’t feel anything at first. I didn’t grieve for her until her birthday came around the next year, which I happened to be born on the same day so it was my birthday, too. Which was… almost a year later. 

And sometimes you, or people around you, may feel like the intensity of your grief is disproportionate to the loss that occurred but it’s not. No matter what it is or how strongly or weakly you feel about it; your feelings are valid. Your grief is valid. Your lack of grief is also valid.

When I lost my job a few months ago, it felt like my whole world shattered and collapsed around me. Not necessarily because of the loss of income - I was already getting unemployment because I had been furloughed previously and I knew I could find a similarly paying job - but because I liked the job and my customers and my coworkers. I’m still grieving over the loss of that job. And, when it first happened, I would compare the feeling of that to the feeling of losing someone close to me. 

Yet, no one understood. I was told that the loss of a job wasn’t that big of a thing. That it’s just a job. But I’m here to tell you that they are wrong. If anyone tries to tell you something like that - that you shouldn’t grieve something or shouldn’t grieve something as much as something else; they are wrong.

Your feelings are valid. Your grief - whether you have a lot of it or a little; whether it’s immediate or takes several months or even years to hit; whether it’s over something someone else may see as ‘small’; whether you don’t have grief over something people think you should have grief over; whether it’s been several years and you are still consistently grieving - is valid. 

At the age of 22 when, unpacking boxes from the house that my family used to live in and had since been torn down, I found out that the stuffed animal I’ve had since I was 3 was not there - I cried and grieved over it. 

But, when I was 10 and my great-grandfather, who I’d lived with my whole life up until that point, passed away I didn’t grieve. I never have. I loved him dearly but towards the end he was falling deep into dementia and would become violent because he was confused. For the last year of his life I lived in constant fear of him despite the fact that prior to that he was my most favorite person in the whole world. So when he died; I was relieved. And I’ve hated myself for that for a long time until I entered therapy and started studying psychology and realized that that response is normal.

These things are not talked about nearly enough. Grief and the types of grief is not talked about nearly enough. At least not unless it’s in relation to the death of someone close. 

And there’s hardly any validation or affirmation out there about having a lack of grief in the face of an event that people think you should have grief over. 

Just know there’s nothing wrong with you or your reactions or emotions or lack of certain emotions in certain situations. They are all valid. You and your experiences are valid. 

You can find my poetry for sale in my Etsy shop. 

Do I need therapy?

So I’ve been watching One Tree Hill today and I’m on season 7 and there’s everything going on with Haley’s mum and then good things with Victoria/Brooke. My mum died like 8 years ago and every time I watch something on TV with mums being proud of their daughters or mums dying or anything mum related, I just kinda spiral? I’m currently sitting in bed hiding away from the people I live with and I think I’m gunna stay here until I need to leave for work in the morning.

This doesn’t feel normal but at the same time it totally is because it’s how I’ve always done things.

What the point having friends if they’re not going to be there for you? That’s whole point of a friend…

I guess you gotta be the friends they wanna be there for.

🤷‍♀️🤦‍♀️😔✌

from ‘Twelfth Night’

“A young woman in love always looks like patience on a monument smiling at grief.”

[William Shakespeare]

I resent my heart for still beating after yours stopped. 

Today is the one year anniversary of my oldest brothers death and last month made it 5 years since my 2nd eldest brother died. I realized it last night as I tossed and turned and ultimately did not sleep. Time passes so fast I feel like I had just talked to both of my brothers… I miss them a lot. I’m the middle child but youngest girl in a group of 6 siblings so I was often babied and admittedly smothered by my two oldest brothers. I used to be embarrassed by it but honestly now I miss it so much it was sometimes over the top but it was their way of showing they loved me… I miss them… I took time for granted and I can’t apologize for sometimes being a brat I can’t say goodbye both of their sudden deaths stole that opportunity. I missed my eldest brothers phone call a week before his passing, I was so busy with work I never got to call him back. I feel so guilty, I know answering the phone wouldn’t have changed anything but I would have liked to talk to him one last time. I often wonder was I a good enough sister ? We didn’t grow up close with us all being split up in foster care and different homes we saw each other on holidays and some weekends but when we became teens we built stronger bonds. I hope they knew how much I cared and how much I wanted them to be happy I really do.

I’m in a very weird stage in my life. I’ve always been independent and okay with being by myself. But since my mom passed a month ago, I feel like an abandoned child. I want to feel love and I feel like I’m not getting it. More so, I feel like the kind of love I’m yearning for is the one I’m not getting. I want a mother’s love. I want my mother’s love. She always wanted me happy and wanted to protect me from anything that would conflict with that. After the funeral, everyone went about their own lives and I’m just left feeling empty inside. I just had to delete IG off my phone because I’m watching my friends get together with each other and I’m just here grieving. In general, I’ve always felt disconnected in my circle of friends. Around anyone for that matter. Now, I just feel more excluded. I feel like a big ass baby right now. All of these emotions I’ve never felt and I don’t know how to deal and it’s bothering me.

- James Patterson

This holds true

Today, my grandma went up to the gates of Heaven. Rest in paradise mommie 💜. I will forever love you and miss you.

The Ghost Detective - Ep. 16

“We will meet again. No matter what. I’ll wait for you.”

The Ghost Detective - Ep. 15

In order to kill an evil spirit, he has to invite it into his body and then get his friend to take him off life support so the spirit can die with him.

Unstoppable

I want to die. This isn’t a threat but a statement. This works is a disaster, this country is a disaster and I’m a disaster.

Drunk, stoned, tired, and pissed off with myself for being this way.

I hurt myself. I pierce myself because I want to feel and to “look better”. I took out my newest ones because for some reason my ears are the worst to be pierced. They constantly get infected and I got fed up with the bleeding and took them out. Bought some expensive ointment and put that on and I might try to do my ears a 5th time because im stubborn and depressed.

I can’t kill myself but I can’t live anymore. This is a special kind of hell.

I have everything.

If I were to look at myself through someone else, I’d say I’m fucking lucky. There’s so much I have going for me and yet I feel like I have nothing. Maybe it’s selfish or ungrateful of me. Maybe it’s wrong to feel how I feel but I feel it.

I’ve been drinking for nearly 5 hours and I hope that I die in my sleep. I hope I wake up somewhere else. Somewhere better than this shit. But im not going to. I know my time won’t come for another 50 years. I’m fucked.

This was inspired not only by my own difficulties, but by the confessions and comments from others close to me — some of whom are hurting terribly. Feel free to share, if you find it helpful.

I can’t tell if I could’ve done anything to save you, or if I could’ve said something that would make your head spin a little slower. and it’s just one of these endless nights where I find myself thinking and going through all of our memories together and all the things we should be doing right now. I guess it’s that thing about not being able to let go completely. sometimes it feels like letting it all go means forgetting, and that’s something I’m so, so scared of. I wish I could hold every little thing about these years we’ve spent together, without losing any piece of it… but it’s quite hard, and every day that passes by I feel like I’m forgetting more and more about things I used to know by heart about you. and I’m fighting against my own memory and I’m defying it, I want to not be able to forget. but more than that, I want to not be able to lose you again. inside my mind.

sweet baby, you have no idea how hard it is without you. I feel like I’m sinking down, drowning in so many uncontrollable emotions and thoughts. it was easy with you. our minds were always aligned and we always had those dumb inside jokes. I used to be able to read you, to look through you. so I can’t help but wonder, what did I miss? what passed me by? where have we grown so apart I couldn’t know what to expect? you used to say that my thing was to irritate you till we hug, and it’s something that always runs through my mind. right now I wish I could tickle you till you hug me.

it’s so hard to move on from you. I know I have to, I know I need to, but it’s the hardest thing. I love you. I love you endlessly. I hope that wherever you are, you know this. you are loved. I know it seemed like it wasn’t true. I know love is one of the hardest emotions to let grown inside, but you should’ve known it. I’m sorry for not being able to tell you as much as you needed. I’m sorry for so many things, but mostly, for not reaching you when I should’ve.

I miss you like hell today, but I’m glad it doesn’t hurt that much anymore. I’m glad it hurts less everyday… and I know you’d be happy that it’s getting better. thank you for being the big brother I’ve always dreamed about, and helping me through everything. you are missed. I love you still and always will.