Tag: introspection

I’ve been dreading the end of 2023, because 2023 was the last year that held some of my sister’s joy. I’ve fruitlessly imagined ways to freeze time or turn it back or defy reality and physics to undo something impossible to undo. And now, as I write, there are approximately 14 hours until the year that will be on documents and timestamps and anything else dated will numerically separate me more from her.

I hate it.

I haven’t been able to figure out how to succinctly explain why. Recently, I settled on the notion that passing from 2023 to 2024 feels like passing through a metaphorical doorway of some kind. And I think part of me is afraid that with this doorway comes the risk of losing her more. When I was still in undergraduate psychology, I remember learning about the “doorway effect.” When we pass through literal doorways into new spaces, we’re apparently more prone to forget memories from the past space. Because they’re less likely to be relevant. Less tied to your current reality.

I can’t handle that idea.

If I could sit in the 2023 room for longer, I would. I don’t know how long it would take me to feel ready to walk out of it, but I know that today isn’t that day. Except I don’t have the ability to slow time or ask it to let me off the ride⁠—just for a while.

I’ve unwillingly already stepped across many thresholds this year. Since May 20, 2023 I’ve entered many rooms that I never wanted to. Something about this one, though, this change of scenery that will be surrounded with celebration around the world, it hurts differently. I haven’t decided where I will be or what I will do for this New Year’s Eve. In some ways, it doesn’t matter to me at all. At the same time, it feels like it matters the most.

I write this on the six-month milestone of my sister’s last night on this earth. I can’t help but feel a heavy mix of emotions as I consider the weight of my responsibility to live life well, because I currently still can. Six months ago she had a wonderful night, but she did not know it was the last one. Six months ago she went to bed, mind full of the things she would do the next day. Six months ago she was the baby sister I could hug and call and share memes with.

Six months ago I wasn’t the person I am now, either.

I was more type A. I was just coming around the corner of what I thought was a major breakthrough in openly telling the people in my life what they meant to me. I was stressed and letting work take more than its fair share of my time. But I was also looking forward to August and a new chapter; I would be back in my home country, closer to friends and family. It was going to be a great upcoming year.

And then the world fell apart underneath me. I’ve somehow stumbled forward for six months. I’ve sort of recovered a large part of the things that used to define the “me” I recognize, but she is not all back. I don’t think she ever will be. I’ve lost my little sister. And I’ve lost the big sister I was, too. I’ve lost the only shape of my family I recognize.

I no longer know how to answer simple questions. How many people are in my family? Do I have any siblings? What tense do I use when I talk about her now? It tears my heart each time.

The answers make people uncomfortable:

There are three living people in my family, but there were and should be four.

I have a sibling, and she is dead.

My sister is many things to me, but grammatically speaking, I should talk about how she was because there is no more is-ing possible from her.

In six months, I’ve made remarkable progress toward being “okay,” whatever that means. In six months, though, I’ve often found myself back in a profound pit of despair. Never quite as deep as the first weeks, but sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. People tell me the next six months will also be challenging in new ways. I am just so tired. I don’t know if I have it in me to face more challenges. But I have to have it in me to keep living each day to the best of my ability, because I can, and she can’t.

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.