Month: October 2023

I have an important language assessment at work today. I am ready for it, I know the material, I should do well. Except I am sitting in my apartment sobbing as I try to study, because I know the topic of family is going to come up, and innocuous questions like “how many people in your family?” are going to kill me.

I’m also sobbing in my apartment because a few days ago it felt like a lot of major pieces of life were slowly shifting into a good place, and now several of them no longer exist.

I was entirely incorrect about the crush I had before, and the sting of rejection weighs heavy on me now. I was wrong again, and the repeating pattern is somehow more painful this time than the last five.

A different friendship I thought I would have indefinitely imploded in a small, quiet, but irreparable way.

The holidays are creeping closer, and without warning, I started pre-mourning the fact that my sister would not be sending me a hailstorm of gifs on my birthday in December. I then started worrying about Christmas and her birthday and all of the other first things coming down the path, still.

I should be studying for this assessment, but I can’t.

I have decided that today I’m going to have to accept that I am not okay. As trite as it sounds, I have to also convince myself that it’s okay to not be okay. Just because in some ways I now live normally doesn’t mean I am not still grappling with immense pain and loss. I will probably show up to this assessment with red eyes and lacking my trademark smile, and this is my prerogative. No one can tell me otherwise.

And when I’m ready, I’ll put the smile back on, and give it another shot.

It’s been five months since my sister existed in the only way I have ever known her. Five months since a phone call shattered the reality I used to live in and drew a line down the middle of Who I Was and Who I Would Become. Five months since I had the luxury of taking people, experiences, or time for granted.

I remember in the earliest days of the grief, I desperately wanted people further along in the journey to tell me when it would be okay. I wanted to understand what was to come and prepare myself for it. So let me offer what I can to anyone who has found themselves here because they’re now facing those first days and weeks.

It doesn’t necessarily get better, but you will change.

You will find some good metaphors⁠—I personally found the “ball in a box” one useful⁠. You will read way more uplifting (and depressing) quotes on photo backgrounds that all seem to speak to something you never had experienced before. You will probably take stock of who and what you have in your life, finding that your preferences dramatically change. You will cry. You will get angry. You will sometimes wonder if there is any future for you besides the hollow, bottomed-out place you’re in.

And then one day you’ll realize you made it to the surface for air. It might only be for a second, but you will. Hopefully you’ll find it becomes easier to get back to that air, and maybe you won’t even think about it as an active effort anymore. But you’re still in the dark, deep, cold water. You’ll find yourself breaking down in class in front of people you met mere weeks before. Or you’ll fall apart doing a mundane thing in public, because something reminded you of them. There will be days you fantasize about just not trying to get back to the surface and seeing what happens when you reach the bottom.

You will have to figure out whether you’re the type of person with the instinct toward life or away from it.

Five months ago I couldn’t imagine feeling happy at all, let alone consider the possibility of starting and succeeding at new job training or having an intense crush on someone, but all of these things are now true. My values have shifted in ways both big and small, and the pace at which I want to live my life has, too. But everything I see in myself is tied to the fact that I want to live. I don’t want to just breathe, but I want to be alive and present in my own life. I have not embraced a full YOLO lifestyle⁠—I still grapple with insecurity and doubt and aversion to many risks⁠—but the most brutal reminder of how fragile life is has also freed me from some of the ways I held myself back before.

I don’t have all the answers. As holidays, her birthday, and then the first anniversary of her death loom on the horizon, I anticipate there being days that I wish to return to the bottom and huddle there. But now I know exactly how good it can feel up here on the surface, and I will make it back up for air.

I have been back and forth to this house she called home a handful of times since my sister’s death. I had never been to this house while she was alive⁠—she and her partner moved in while I was working abroad, and when I came home, we all went to our parents’ house for holidays.

I have only known this house as I walked among the things that constituted the life she built. I only projected my thoughts onto the physical realities I saw in throughout the rooms. I could only take in the circumstantial remnants of what happened that morning. I was unable to fully imagine her when she truly occupied this space.

I have sat where she sat, eaten where she ate, handled objects she held, and lived in what is left in her wake. This trip I got to unbox her lovingly purchased Halloween decorations and help deck out the house for her favorite holiday. This house has allowed me to commune with my sister through her physical world, when I no longer can have her presence.

This time I came back to a house that, while still filled with reminders of her, has far less of her things than it did last time. It’s like her presence through her possessions is waning. I know her partner will get rid of more of her things in the coming months… the man was content to have way too many of her favorite gnome decorations in the house when he saw the happiness it brought her. Without her, they’re just painful clutter.

And here I sit, hours before I fly away from this town again, and without a next trip on the horizon. I do not know if I will ever be back here. That is a painful sentence to write, because it was not that long ago I was figuring out the optimal way to get here from my next work assignment, because I was anticipating a 2024 wedding I would absolutely need to travel for.

When I leave this town, I don’t want it to be hard, but I can’t imagine it will be easy. It feels like another reminder that at some point, whether know it or not, we do the last of anything⁠—someday will be the last day we hug someone or speak to someone or see some place. I never appreciated that fully until I lost my sister. It’s hard to stop thinking about it now.