did I make you leave?

(typed on a phone without punctuation or capitalisation. apologies to the reader, these are vulnerable, fast thoughts accumulated over a long time just spewing out. not the most articulate either, a deeply personal experience at best) 

when friends and family left, ignored, stayed silent, didn't clarify their position, vanished, never started a conversation again after mum died, it all got self directed inwards. it's piled up now after almost 1.5 years and I still find myself not being able to hold it in. I still have dreams where they approach me, we talk it out and I get closure. I still have dreams where I approach them and have an outburst of anger and emotions. I still have dreams where I feel immense rage towards people and circumstances that I thought I had forgiven or settled for myself. (all a result of post grief life, thanks death!) Mind you, actual dreams. 

in the end it all makes me feel like I had to take the onus for all of my relationships. even though it was MY mother who died and my world that was broken and shook, I was responsible to make space for everyone else despite the immense pain that I carried everyday. I was expected to hold friendships and connections with the same grace as I had as a non-griever. I was expected to find more strength to teach, clarify, reach out and forgive.

and when I didn't, when I couldn't, I was abandoned. people moved on not just in their own lives, but from me. unlike them I didn't have the choice of moving on, I had to stay put with my grief everyday as it evolved. 

I've realised that second losses* have made me feel so rejected, so unloved, so insignificant. as if by grieving and trying to survive each day, I had somehow taken too much space or asked for too much in the lives of people in my community. that somehow, just by the sheer act of grieving (which I had no control over) I had made a mistake and done something wrong. The silence made me feel patronised, my grief turned into a ploy at victimising.

it's like how silent treatment works you know? it's a form of punishment isn't it? second losses* kind of feel that way too. 

over time, everything that couldn't recieve closure gets entangled in my grief trauma. over time, the suddenness of death, and the subsequent suddenness of all second losses in relationships keep the griever on high alert. the high alert stays on for life events, growth events, health events, interactions with people I love and the fear that everything and everyone could just suddenly vanish. because evidence shows, that they truly can.

it makes you feel so small. so out of control. so at fault even though it really isn't your fault. 

add to that 1.5 years of the pandemic and the lockdown overlapping with my mother's death, and it's a vicious mix. 

as my sister put so articulately the other day, it feels like we've lost agency over our bodies. over our lives. over our twenties. 

parents who I assumed would be healthy and alive for atleast another decade were dead or grieving. jobs I had dreamt of and career goals I had in mind were all thrown away for the comfort and safety of home and family. people who I'd known for decades were gone, while people who stayed were so so out of reach in the pandemic. my safe place, the source of all the love and beauty in life. i.e my mother was dead and gone. period.

my body has felt disconnected from the world for more than a year now. it's been pushed into the four walls of my room, away from air, wind, sunlight, people I love, people I loved, people that died, dreams, futures, streets, flowers, and space itself. why does it all feel like my fault? 

 ∙ ∙ ∙ 

I remember telling someone an analogy to make them understand the position of a griever. it started in a typical fashion with a friend who finally made the effort to reach out after almost a year of silence. they argued and justified that they were leaving me alone for my own benefit, causing me no trouble and no pain by vanishing. Further by leaving me alone they ensured they were not triggering me and that their help would have made me worse anyway. ofcourse this was all an assumption from their side. what they expected for an entire year was that I would reach out when I was "ready" and "okay". 

the analogy I gave was simple:

if a person is drowning in a vast ocean, while you are on a boat, having noticed them drowning, would you not lend a hand immediately? would you not try your best to pull them out or atleast hold on to them so they stay close to the shore or above water? or would you wait for them to shout out while their body fills with the sea water slowly, while gravity pulls them in gradually, while every breathe and every cell in their body is focused on staying above water. 

would you expect them to harness more energy and call out to you? would you wonder, oh maybe I'll pull them up the wrong way and hurt them, maybe the rope I'm throwing at them will be too thin, too brittle? 

in this scenario the grief and death which is now a permanent part of the grievers life is the vast sea. the one drowning constantly is the griever, and the one on the boat is any friend or family who has not experienced grief yet or doesn't know how to support the griever even if they have. 

 ∙ ∙ ∙ 

sometimes it really is too late 

 ∙ ∙ ∙ 

idk how to think anymore. days are just passing, I wonder, if today was the last, was I happy? 

.....

Everyday another news of death, sometimes it's Papa's friends, sometimes a relative, sometimes a parent, a sibling, a friend's friend. It seems like a Pandora's box was opened after mummy's death. Then came Naani, then uncle and then everyone else everyday, every week. I don't know what to say when I hear the news, how to react, how to help, how to behave, how to go on?

...

*Second losses refer to the experiance of losing friends and family as a result of becoming a griever. Friends who were soul mates, family who was loyal, partners who had stayed with you threw thick and thin can all be inexperienced and unwilling to handle the magnitude of grief. This leads to misinformation, assumption, lack of effort, fear, miscommunication which over time can turn into total avoidance and abandonment. The loss of such relationshios as a result of the primary loss of a significant perosn in one's life are called second losses. (You can google it, I'm sure there's more educational and nuanced explanations by trained people out there)