Month: April 2024

What I need

What I need changes daily, sometimes hourly. But a constant is the need to be truly heard.

I’m precipitously close to finishing the year of firsts, which will be capstoned by facing the first anniversary of her death. I feel in a lot of ways like I’ve just done my best to survive this year, making peace with all of the ways I’m a diminished version of who I used to be and occasionally having the clarity to see the unexpected ways I’ve grown. I’d undo it all in a heartbeat, if I could.

So now, as I look at stepping into this second year of The After, I am trying to figure out what it is I need. What do I need? As a person who goes out of her way to smooth out conflict and who diminishes herself if it creates peace, I can’t keep doing that. I’ve wasted decades of life not fully making choices for me, and haven’t I been shown in the worst way that there’s no time to waste?

I need to find the words to articulate this loss and I need to use them. I need know they’ve also been heard, been read, been felt, maybe even been understood. Because the most isolating part of grieving, in my experience, is when you’re convinced that you and you alone feel what you feel, miss what you miss.

She’s everywhere even though she’s gone

I am trying to prepare to move, take a final exam, and say goodbye to the city that I consider my second hometown. I’ve got a lot going on, and I am busy. I don’t have time to open Facebook and meltdown because a memory from 11 years ago reminded me of when I was assistant coach for the team I had been part of and my sister was then captain of.

This opened up the whole can of “now the only productive thing I can do is sob.” In this process of packing, I am evaluating every object I own and determining if everything comes with me to the next home. Except with this emotional overlay, I am now also considering every item through the lens of how it relates to my sister.

If it was a gift she gave me, it’s coming with me no matter what.

If it was part of my unwanted inheritance from her things, I can’t bear to part with it.

If it was something I happily showed her or she complimented, I can never let it go, because it’s the final bridge between me and those moments of affection I’ll never get again.

If I bought it after she died because it reminded me of her, I have to keep it.

Unfortunately for me, in this temporary home I’ve had, the vast majority of my objects fall into those categories, because the less-important-to-me things are sitting in temporary holding, waiting for my onward move. And so I am in this apartment, made chaotic by the preparations for movers to come, on the precipice of yet another huge change in my life, sobbing as I sit cross-legged surrounded by what, to other people, is “just some stuff.”

I’m completely encased in a sampler of things that relate to her, but the only thing I want⁠—her actual presence⁠—escapes me.

Countdown to the first anniversary: 40 days to go

“Is it just me I just do not want to even want to acknowledge May is coming?”

It’s been quietly haunting me for at least a week now, the nagging reminder that we are fast approaching the one-year mark. I’ve been trying to keep my mind at bay. I have an important exam in a week, plus a lot of life admin to take care of before I have time to have a total breakdown.

Except today a friend⁠—someone who was my sister’s close friend long before I ever met her⁠—messaged me. Her message was short, just saying, “Is it just me I just do not want to even want to acknowledge May is coming?”

I pretended not to see this message until I was alone, because I knew it was going to pull me back under and unleash something I’ve been trying to keep under wraps. The message was a stab in the chest but also a comfort, because I had been over here wondering if it was just me. 326 days ago my life as I knew it, as I planned it, as I expected it to be, ended with two missed calls and a 6-minute video chat. I was so fucking thankful to know, as I have been at many points along the way, that I am not alone. That I do not carry the sole torch of my sister’s memory.

I’ve been quite absent for the past few months from this blog and from the online grief communities I frequented both because I’ve been busy and because I was sort of living in a fake moment of peace and separation from my sister’s death, but I think you and I both know, reader, that I am back now and will be for a while longer.

40 days to go.