My personal journey with grief

Grief.
First thing I think of is old women wailing on street corners in Nollywood movies. Mothers screaming at the sight of their sons' dead bloodied corpse on the ground during a mass protest. A man sitting on the cold hospital floor after his wife just died, leaving him alone with their 2-year old daughter, screaming, crying, asking why she would leave him like that.

Crying. Tears. Screaming.

That was what I always thought of grief.

That never happened to me. My grief was silent.

I lost my best friend just a little over a year ago. Suicide. No one knew, no  one saw it coming. I thought we were better than that. I thought we never kept any secrets from each other. I thought wrong.

I was strong and thanked my friend when he called me to break the news. I was okay.

I drove with my parents and two of my other friends to the funeral. We spent an altogether 10 hours on the road.
Lots of flowers, lots of purple, (the theme was black and purple, I didn't even know that. I was dressed in all black, I guess I could get away with it.), lots of people. Hundreds of people who, like me, couldn't believe he was gone, couldn't believe he had made the decision to end his beautiful life.

He was complicated and mysterious. He was beautiful in more ways than words could ever describe. He always smelled of soap and cigarette smoke. The soft distinct smell of Dunhill Light wafted through the room when he was there.
The life of every party, he touched hearts and changed lives. He was there when you needed a shoulder to cry on, even if it was at 3 in the morning. I lived for those calls.

He was my best friend and even though things didn't quite work out the way we had planned, they always worked out.

When I heard the news that he had taken his own life, I was shocked. Utterly and completely shocked. Anyone but him, I thought. But it didn't work out that way. It wasn't anyone else, it was him and no matter how many silent tears I shed through the nights, I couldn't bring him back. It was so weird.
He had always said that people like him didn't die, they just disappeared and came back again after a while. How long this while was going to be, we never discussed. We had too many other things to talk about.
I saw him lying still and bloated in his clearly expensive coffin. I knew how coffins work; you never get out of those. But, he said he would be back. He promised me.Through the years I had believed his promises without second thought. But the coffin...he was in it, and all I could do was hyperventilate. I felt pathetic.
My friend held me up and we made it through the funeral. I never screamed. I lost my balance a few times and had to be seated but I never screamed. I never did what the people on the television usually do. I never thought it was my place to grieve for him. We had plans for the future.
He was going to study law and I would be an author. We would have money and cars and travel the world. We would dedicate a week to each other every month of our married family lives (no no, we wouldn't marry each other) and go paint the town all the colours in existence. It would be fun.
He had promised me and I knew he would come back. But that coffin...

I couldn't cry. I felt I was never supposed to. I was never allowed to.

I saw him a few times, after his death. I caught glimpses of him in hallways and open fields. I dreamt he wished me a happy birthday a week after my birthday. Even in life, he felt my birthday changed year after year. haha, he actually came through for me on my 18th, though.

Okay, I'm drifting. Back to my grief.

It was in these little moments where I found time and space to grief. I never cried though. A piece of me went into that grave with all those flowers and my best friend.
The whole "he lives in your heart forever" theory is nonsense. I have never understood that and I never want to. I want him to live here, in this world. I want to call him and talk about drinking vodka in his basement. Why can't I have that? It was my life. For a few years I had that and I liked it.

I'm angry. I'm angry at myself for believing he was immortal. I'm angry at him for leaving me in that manner. Why didn't he at least let me know he was miserable?!

My grief was, is different. I haven't fully grasped what it means to actually grieve. What I have seen, however, is that grief is not something you do, it is how you live. It alters your life forever and you realise that had it not been for your loss, you wouldn't have become the person you are now.

Grief breaks you down and you rebuild yourself.. From scratch. You take the memories and the lessons and begin the painful process of a different life. You don't move on with your life after a loss that big. The person you were is gone, dead. You are new. And you must begin again.

The only way out is through. You tug and pull and suffer. You scream internally for days and weeks and months because you miss them that much. You sweat in your bed, tossing and turning, scared out of your mind thinking of how you are going to live without your best friend and companion.

You are broken. Nothing can ever fix you. You walk around day in and day out with questions you will never get answers to. You struggle to say "rest in peace, my friend. I am ever thankful for what you have given me. Go well,"
So you don't say it. You tell the truth. "I will miss you." And you do. Everyday.

Grief is a painful process, but if you look back at the road you have traveled, you see it can be beautiful. Sure, the road ahead is long and dark and scary and there is nothing you can do but feel it deeply and honestly.

Your pain is your love, turned inside out. That's why it's so deep, that's why it's so consuming. Your grief doesn't change you. It reveals you.

I miss you, Thabang Mohlomi. Everyday.

I'm a woman

I don't know what makes a writer...but it certainly isn't happiness.

There comes a point in every woman's life when you realise that until you are completely satisfied with yourself, you will never be enough for anyone else.

No matter how hard you try.

This truth is unbearably painful. I write this with a broken heart and shaking hands from the tears I'm holding back.
I don't know if it is being a woman, a career woman who foolishly dares to dream about one day being a wife and mom, I don't know if it is the price a girl pays for not growing up soon enough, or too soon, that causes so much self-loathing and regret.
You look in the mirror and see a mistake, a fool who dares to believe she is wanted and makes a real difference.

Relationships are weird.
You can read as many books as you want, go to as many seminars about these weird, horrible essential parts of our lives but you will never get it. You will never know how to be the perfect mom to your teenage daughters, the perfect colleague to that stuck up photographer at work, the perfect daughter to your aging mom, the perfect friend, or even the perfect girlfriend. It sucks.
But you try anyway. You go out of your way, bend over backwards, deprive yourself of sleep and food so you can be there when they need you. You try anyway. You know you are not perfect. You are not blind to the looks of disappointment on their faces when you mess up. You are not blind to the long drawn breaths and heavy sighs of despair when you open your mouth to say something. You are not numb to the fact that you might just be a burden to them.
Does it hurt? Of course.
So you try harder. You exhaust yourself. You serve on your knees until they bleed, just to see them smile. No one knows this. No one sees your sacrifice and your tears. They see you, yes. Oh yes they see you. They see the useless fool. They see the lazy good-for-nothing. That they can't miss. No one misses that.

You feel alone, you feel unwanted but the world has thrust you into this never-ending spiral of rejection and neglect.

You want to keep trying, you want to let them see that you are not all bad, that you can be normal like everyone else but your very presence is clearly a problem. However, you keep trying. It hurts. Your knees cant crawl any further, your heart is dead to the hurt. The tears have dug trenches on your face. Smiling hurts but you do it anyway. No one can see how broken you really are. How incomplete they have made you feel. No one can know. Never!

So you tie your hair back and paint your fingernails. Your are a woman, they tell you. You are stronger than this, they say.
They don't even know what they are talking about. They know your name, not your story. No one cares how you feel inside. Why should they? You are a woman, aren't you?

You want to love. You want to feel the love that you so openly and freely give out. You want to know how it is on the receiving end. How can you when no one wants you? When no one feels you are good enough? How can you when the cause of your smile is the same one who caused the tears? How do you do your best when you know your best wasn't, isn't and never will be good enough?

I'm a woman, I guess. I am strong. I've been for all my life..

Just because I am a soldier doesn't mean I deserve to be put through war.

I'm a woman. I will survive. I will love me.

I'd like you to see me, the real me, but its okay if you don't. I have enough love for the both of us.

Instructions for a bad day

There will be bad days.
Be calm.
Loosen your grip opening each palm slowly now.
Let go.

Be confident. Know that now is only a moment and if today is as bad as it gets, understand that by tomorrow today will have ended.
Be gracious.
Accept each extended hand offered to pull you back from somewhere you cannot escape.
Be diligent.
Scrape the grey sky clean, realise that every dark cloud is a smoke screen meant to blind us from the truth. And the truth is whether we see them or not, the sun and moon are still there and always there is light.
Be forthright.
Despite your instinct to say “its okay, I’m alright,”
Be honest.
Say what you feel without fear or guilt. Without remorse or complexity. Be lucid in your explanations. If you think for one second no one knows what you have been going through, be accepting of the fact that you are wrong. The long drawn breaths and heavy sighs of despair have at times been felt by everyone. Pain is part of the human condition and that alone makes you legion.

We are hungry underdogs, we are risers with dawn, we are pressers of on. We will station ourselves to the calm; we will hold ourselves steady.
Be ready player 1!
Life is going to come at you armed with hard times and tough decisions. Your voice is your weapon, your thoughts are your ammunition. There are no free extra men. Be aware that in the instant that now passes it exists now as then. So, be a mirror reflecting yourself back and remembering the times you thought all of this was too hard and that you would never make it through. Remember the times you could have pressed quit, but you hit continue.

Be forgiving.
Living with the burden of anger is not living. Giving your focus to wrath will leave your entire self absent of what you need. Love and hate are beasts and the one that grows is the one you feed.
Be persistent.
Be the weed growing through the cracks in the cement. Beautiful! Because it does not know it isn’t supposed to grow there.
Be resolute.
Declare what you accept is true in a way that envisions the resolve with which you accept it.

If you are having a good day, be considerate.
A simple smile could be the first-aid kit someone has been looking for.  And if you believe with absolute honesty that you are doing everything you can, do more.

There will be bad days. Times when the world weighs on you for so long it leaves you looking for an easy way out. There will be moments when the drought of joy seems endless; instances spent pretending everything is alright when it clearly is not. Check your blind spot; see that love is still there.
Be patient.
Every nightmare has a beginning but every bad day has an end. Ignore what others have called you, because I’m calling you friend.
Make us comprehend the urgency of your crisis. Silence left to its own devices breeds silence. Speak and be heard. One word after the next. Express yourself.
Be loud. Make noise. Stand in poise and be open. Hope in these situations is not enough, and you will need someone to lean on. In the unlikely event that you have no one, look again.
Everyone is blessed with the ability to listen. The deaf will hear you with their eyes and the blind will see you with their hands. Let your heart fill their newsstands, let them read all about it.

Admit to the bad days and the impossible nights. Listen to the insights of those who have been there and have come back, they will tell you that you can stack it all, you can pack the despair, and you can even wear your sorrow but come tomorrow you have to change your clothes.

Everyone knows pain.

But we are not meant to carry it forever. We were never meant to hold it so closely, so be certain in the belief that what pain belongs to you now will soon belong to them. Understand that when someone asks you “how was your day?”, realise that for some of us it is the only way we know how to say;
“Be calm.
Loosen your grip opening each palm slowly now.
Let go”

Your grief is your love, turned inside out

Your grief is your love, turned inside-out. That is why it is so deep. That is why it is so consuming. When your sadness seems bottomless, it is because your love knows no bounds. 

It isn’t true that you have to get over it. It isn’t even true that you have to want to

No one else can understand what you have lost. No one else can bear the burden of your tribute to a love, to a life, to an identity now gone. What a privilege it is to feel deeply.

Something happens when you entwine your fate with someone else’s. If they go somewhere you cannot follow, part of you goes with them, and it is like birthing a baby who comes out of you - still and limp.

“What if we never ‘get over’ certain deaths? What if the idea that we should have by now, or will, is a great palace lie? What if we’re not supposed to? What if it takes a lifetime…?” ~ Anne Lamott

"

You are helpless as you watch the labour of your deepest love, your most sacred creation disappear under the dirt without you.

You want to hold it in your arms and join it in a sleep that never ends

You want to claw at the boundary of the earth between the two of you with your fingernails, but someone grabs you and pulls you away, and all you can do is wail.

You become hollow. You are missing a chunk of yourself, and no one can really see it once you put on your creamy lipstick and your designer dress, and you pluck your eyebrows and paint your fingernails and toenails to match.

“The worst type of crying wasn’t the kind everyone could see - the wailing on street corners, the tearing at clothes.

''No, the worst kind happened when your soul wept and no matter what you did, there was no way to comfort it. A section withered and became a scar on the part of your soul that survived. For people like me… our souls contained more scar tissue than life.” ~ Katie McGarry

You have lost the part of yourself that you loved most

Maybe your closest friends think you are lonely, but it is worse than that: you have lost the part of yourself that you loved most. The last period has been stamped onto the page, and yet somehow you were left behind, running your fingertips over a leather bound cover slammed shut.

You are a character in a story that is over, and since this never happens in the fairy tales you were fed in your most formative years, you are lost. You no longer fit in the world, and there is no star that can grant your truest wish.

And yet there is hope, but it is not the hope you want

Your sadness becomes all you have left and you begin to cherish it, to worship at its feet so you never forget the most important thing that ever happened to you.

You hold it in your body and you feed it all your love, all your light, so that it stays, so that you can be closer to death. It will never sneak up on you again, because it never leaves your doorstep.

And they will tell you that you’re expected at the office by nine

They will not reveal the truth.

Their platitudes won’t help you at all, but you’ll hear them so often from so many directions that you will begin to wonder why you can’t heed them. Instead of realising the obvious truth, that the advice is terribly flawed, your conditioning will tell you that it is you who are flawed, adding the burden of guilt to a heart already gasping for air.

There are many lists of trite advice you can read about grief, but they will only add to your confusion about why you can’t seem to sync your feelings with the grief map sanctioned by your culture.

" 

Refuse, my friend. Refuse with all your might to be numb

"

This map is supposed to tell you what is normal, but that map was not made for you. It was made to keep the engine of our cultural machine running. It requires your numbness. Refuse, my friend.

Refuse with all your might to be numb.

I have no trite advice for you. I have nothing prolific to say. I’m not going to tell you to get therapy or accept how life has changed. I offer you this in the spirit of “you-are-not-aloneness” and “there-is-no-scheduledom.” I give this freely from a place of “I-don’t-know-how-you-feel-but-I-sure-as-s**t-know-what-it’s-like-to-be-devastatedism,” and “This-is-how-I-feltity.”

Can anybody hear me?

1. The Lie: You should be over it/him/her by now

The Truth: No one has the authority to tell you how you should feel, when you should feel it or for how long. Do you hear me? There is no normal when it comes to grief. There is no quantifiable estimate of how much value who and what you have lost has added to your life or for how long you should be sad about that loss.

You are not a machine. Numbers: days, weeks, months, years are meaningless.

Death and aliveness are inextricably linked. You may stop weeping (or not), but you will never forget the love, the adventure, the grandiosity of the effect that your beloved lost has made upon your life, and your character. In this way, death will guide you for the rest of your days.

Your life has changed forever. The touch of death is a part of you now, woven into the tapestry of your new and unfolding experience.

“You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly - that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.” ~ Anne Lamott

2. The Lie: You should stop talking about him or her / Stop living in the past

The Truth: The only people who cannot bear to hear you speak of your beloved are those who cannot accept their own mortality. They are people who have never grieved. They either don’t know loss, or they buried themselves with their loved ones. Trust me when I tell you, they have their own mountains yet to climb.

Those who would have you silence yourself, choke on the words that you must speak, are people who do not know their own souls.

“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.” ~ William Shakespeare

I’m not a psychologist. I’m a writer, so you must know by now that I am having a love affair with words. I know how to make them sharp and pointy. I know how to make them sing like music. And most importantly, I know that they keep me connected to everything beautiful in this world, and the next.

Speaking of your loved one can keep their presence with you from far across the boundaries of the point where life meets death. It is a way to honour them, and a way to honour your feelings. It keeps their love alive in you. It extends the meaning of their life into the world in powerful and meaningful ways. It gives them back a voice in a world hell-bent on forgetting.

It’s okay to speak of them, to them, and even for them when there is good that can be done by you, because they have lived. What better way to honour a life, than to extend this love to others?

3. The Lie: You have to move on with your life (right now)

The Truth: This advice is an act of violence against a grieving heart. It is a kick in the ribs while you lie hopelessly seized by despair. Whatever it is your loved one would want, it is unlikely that he or she would want an avalanche of guilt entombing you with your grief. You have enough to climb out of, enough rebuilding to do.

In many ways you are restarting your life from scratch, especially if your beloved lost was the central pin you’d built your life around. For many of us, there is no life to get on with; the lives we were living are irretrievable.

We must begin again, and we don’t want to begin our new lives on a foundation of unacknowledged, disrespected grief.

Being with your grief may require you to sit amongst the rubble. You may have to watch a city crumble. You may have to let go of who you thought you were, in order to make meaning out of the meaningless tragedy of death. Someday you will rebuild this city, but it will be new, updated, your tastes will have changed, you will be more wholly yourself and your kingdom will reflect that.

4. The Lie: You could have prevented this tragedy

The Truth: If your loved one passed in a sudden or unexpected way, somewhere inside you is a voice asking what you might have done differently that would have changed the course of events that led to the death of your beloved lost.

The truth is that the factors that influence the course of our lives are bigger and more mysterious than what we did and did not do. To hold yourself accountable for any reason is to deny the greater context in which life happens, and that is a dangerous choice to make, because it will eat a hole in your spirit that you can never fill without asking much scarier questions. Bigger questions.

How will I live with this loss? Will I survive this sadness? Will I ever love again? Who am I now? In what manner will I go on? How do I want to spend what’s left of my life? How can I honour my loved one’s life? And death? Is there more? What is the meaning of living? How can I find fulfillment now?

Why the **** am I here?

“Watch the ones whose only option left is to lean into the questions. The ones who are uninhibited by the unknown because they’ve jumped into that gaping hole and found themselves, by grace, unswallowable. Watch the ones who willingly stand with Feist and say, “I feel it all” even when it scares the shit out of them. It’s not brave to have answers.” ~ Mandy Steward

5. The Lie: Time heals all wounds

The Truth: The truth is there are losses you never get over. They break you to pieces and you can never go back to the original shape you once were, and so you will grieve your own death with that of your beloved lost.

Your grief is your love, turned inside-out. That is why it is so deep. That is why it is so consuming. When your sadness seems bottomless, it is because your love knows no bounds.

Grief teaches us about who we are, and any attempt to crush it, to bury it with the body, is an act of vengeance against your own nature.

If everyone felt, honoured, respected and trusted their true feelings, this world would be a different place. Instead of reacting, we would respond. Instead of judging, we would see ourselves in everyone. Instead of consuming, we would notice that we cannot fill the gaping wounds inside us with trinkets.

If, instead of pretending we are okay, we would take the time to wail, to weep, to scream, to wander the woods day after day holding hands with our sadness, loving it into remission so it doesn’t turn cold inside us, gripping us intermittently in the icy fingers of depression. That’s not what grief is meant to do.

Grief has a way of showing you just how deep your aliveness goes

It’s a dagger shoved down your throat, its handle bulging like an Adam’s apple protruding from your neck, edges pressed against both lungs, creating a long, slow bleed in your chest that rolls down the edges of your life, and you get to handle that any f*****g way you want.

If you have been sitting on old grief from your childhood, your failed relationships, the loss of a family pet when you were nine, and any other losses you were unable to honour in the past, this left-over grief will also come through the broken dam. Let it.

“Grief does not change you… It reveals you.” ~ John Green

And herein lies the gift that cannot die. It changes the course of your life forever. If you allow yourself the chance to feel it for as long as you need to - even if it is for the rest of your life - you will be guided by it. You will become someone it would have been impossible for you to be, and in this way your loved one lives on, in you.

IT HAPPENED TO ME!

Yes it did. And for the life of me i could not fathom what I  had done to deserve such cruelty. But no! No one deserves it. No one deserves an attack upon their person, an invasion of their privacy and a violation of their peace of mind no matter what you did, unless you are the scoundrel who hurts, abuses, steals and kills for own personal gain.

CRIME! No matter how small, how minuscule, how irrelevant it may seem to the next person, the victim carries the scars of shame and guilt for eternity. The "what-ifs" torture and torment their soul and leaves them fearing the worst. It doesnt matter how many times you've experienced the humiliation, the hurt and the violation, the memories of every encounter never really leave you. Years later, the scars disappear and the wounds heal but the memories remain. With every blink of the eye, every night in the silence of ones thoughts, one is forced to relive the torture. Not because one wants to but because such things are engraved so deep in ones being that it becomes impossible not to. Forgetting is not even a possibility, more like a rare fantasy. Moving on is essential though. The tears dry and you learn to sleep with the lights off and sometimes you can even fake a smile but the event on its own never leaves you. It stays. The criminals live and forget about what they did to you but you, the victim, you are forced to somehow go on.

Support groups and therapy and all similar prescribed rubbish all tell  you the same thing, that you must be thankful he didn't kill you. They tell you to stop crying and appreciate that you're still alive

Really? Are you sure that's what you want to say to me? He didn't kill me? I must be thankful I am still alive? Don't you see? No, I'm not alive and yes he did kill me. I close my eyes and I see his face. The door shuts behind me and I scream with fear. What kind of life am I living, if one at all?
Who and what have I become?  I am afraid of the dark. I am afraid of my own laughter because I know that if I get too happy someone will want to take it away. So, don't you DARE tell me I should be thankful I am still alive. You weren't there, you didn't see what I saw, you didn't feel what I felt. Its shameful that we share a society with such beasts.

I am angry, I am hurt. I have been violated. Don't you see? You don't have the right to tell me it will be okay because it won't. You don't know how I feel.

Society has become numb to such intimate invasions. We have categorized these heinous crimes and placed them in order of what we see as important. HAS SOCIETY LOST ITS MIND???

An attack is an attack. No one asks for these things to happen and when they do then everyone else is suddenly an expert. We are women and an invasion of our space and privacy is no less important than that of the previous or next person.

I am a victim of crime! I am a victim of invasion of privacy and violation of my fundemental right to safety.What happened, you may ask? Does it matter? Does it really matter?

IT HAPPENED TO ME!

Now I sit and cry. Don't you dare tell me how to feel. This is me! Go tell him how to handle women and their belongings, but not me. Don't tell me how to handle my feelings.

IT HAPPENED TO ME!
Is anyone hearing me? Is anyone understanding what I'm saying? ME!!! It wasn't a book I read, it wasn't a television drama, it wasn't  a story I heard. I was there. It happened to me.

Just because I am strong and I can somehow handle it doesn't make it okay. You have no right! This is me! Who the hell do you think you are doing what you did?

IT HAPPENED TO ME!

I saw it, I felt it, I heard it, I lived it.

Apparently I am lucky I am still alive. HA. HA. If this is alive I want very little of it. The fear, the constant worrying, the verge of tears I live on, the "what-if-its-him?" mantra I sing in my head when I see someone who even closely resembles the beast. Is it not enough? Listening to my own heartbeat is scary. I am terrified of being alone.

I am scared out of my mind! Why? Because I know what I'm talking about. It happened to me!

DEATH DO NOT BE PROUD

Death do not be proud. Do not boast and say you have the last laugh, do not be conceited. Your reign lasts only a short while, your hand a mere passage way to eternity. Death, you are not victorious. Death, you have not succeded.

What to say to a friend who has lost a dear family member? When is "I am sorry" simply not good enough? Can you honestly say you understand what they are feling and going through when you did not, could not, grasp the depth of the relationship they shared? Are you then a bad friend for not speaking when they came to you for confidence?

I swallow my own tears and begin to write.

How do we deal with death? Is it even possible to accept the fact that the one person who knew you so well, who carried you when you failed and who rejoiced with you in times of triumph, is simply gone?? How do you say "rest in peace" and "I'll make you proud" with a clear heart when our minds are full of doubts and questions? Why does it happen the way it does? Why does death come at a time so least expected and in a manner so unfathomable? The things we see on television, a terrible reality today.

Death, do not be proud. You have not succeeded.

The Bible gives us instructions and teaches us how to deal with such eventualities. We live in a cruel and harsh world. We are forced to deal with the fact that death is not something for the grow-ups. It is a reality. Our reality. A cold, harsh and bitter suitor we live with. It isn't fair, not one bit. The questions the survivors are left with, the financial expenses, the emotional turmoil the children go through, the grief, the pain, the suffering, oh why??

Is it perhaps something we have done? Is it perhaps our fault? Do we deserve it? How can we fix it? Can we turn back the clock and fixed where we wrongd before it happened? But we were good, surely the heavens know that? So then why all this pain and suffering?

Oh death, you are so cruel.
Did you not see? Do you not realise that you have taken a gem, a rare and precious jewel, the heartbeat of the family? A father, a husband, an uncle, a brother and a friend. All that, now gone!

Death, do not be proud. You have not won.

No amount of words can truly express how sorry I am to the bereaved family, friends and colleagues. Death is never an easy topic to talk about. It is, among other things, painful to the core and scary beyond comprehension. I am truly sorry for your loss and I pray God comforts you and gives you peace in this time of emotional turmoil.

Death is only a phase. A passage way to eternity; a place where it has no more power. Its hand rules over this life, a mere short while before it is rendered powerless in the next world. Death cannot be proud for it lives off the misery of others. It is controlled by, as many a poem have said, misfortune, drugs, illness, age and fate.

Death do not be proud. Soon you will be powerless as there is no place for you in the afterlife.

To my dear friends, I am sorry I had no words of comfort. I am sorry I could not hug you and tell you it was going to be okay. I felt I had no right to say things I had no certainty over and I did not want to lie to you. I am sorry for your loss. I will keep you and your family in my thoughtsand prayers always. I pray for peace and comfort in this time of worry and panic. The Lord is forever in control. Trust in Him always.

"...hard working hands at rest, God broke our hearts to prove that He only takes the best..."

He raised you to be the best you could be and watched you blossom into strong, intelligent young men. Go on and make him proud, he is counting on you!!!

Growing Pains

Sometimes I wish I were a songwriter. It looks so easy to put your feelings, thoughts and fears into a song.

"Therapy" they call it. Oh well, it works for the then and then intensities.

So, here I am .Its almost two o' clock in the morning, I just put down an amazing book I've been reading for a little too long, and over and above that; I'm left alone in the darkness. So I shove in my headphones, grab my laptop and begin to write.

I guess it burns more when you switch on the lights and realise that it isn't the physical and tangible darkness that terrifies you, but its the ghosts you carry around lurking in the crevices of your innards.  Its not the loud and random bangs that make you jump but rather the silence. Its not the fear of seeing someone else behind you in the mirror,but that of looking and seeing yourself. An empty shell, a shadow, a mere reminder of what used to be.

Its not the fear of people seeing you cry, it is the knowledge that you are all cried out and you cannot cry no matter how much yo wanted to.

The only thing worse than feeling itself, is the lack thereof.

The terrifying and bitter cold that your spine has long gotten used and even made friends with, the violent whirlwinds of flashbacks and memories that encompass your mind day and night, the emptiness that clouds the base of your stomach. It is the kind that cannot be filled, the kind that makes your toes curl and your eyes itch. No, its not hunger, its not sadness, its not anger, its not frustration, its not depression, its NOTHING!!

I haven't written in a long time, not because I had nothing to say, but because I had so much it was impossible to structure it properly. So many nights I lay awake until the sun came up, wishing for something different to happen. So many mornings I'd fall asleep and meet the same demons I so badly wanted to bury.

The memories, the flashbacks, the people and places.Whatever happened??

The little girl who would stay up late playing cards with her grandmother and discussing literature with her grandfather. Where is she? The bright spark who did crossword puzzles and word searches with her mom on Friday evenings. What happened to her?

I miss the girl who had dreams of becoming a vet an author. When did we decide to grow up?

I use the word 'decide' with extreme caution. I honestly believe growing up is a decision. One made by uneducated and over excited teenagers, but a decision nevertheless.

You can wake up one morning and realise you are totally different from who and what you were last night. Baggy eyes from all night texting? That's not even half of what I'm talking about!!

You look in the mirror and discover that growing up isn't half as exciting as you thought it would be and had imagined. It's almost as if things changed overnight, or even closer to home; that you changed overnight.

Its a terrifying and bitter sad reality.

So when does this rapid growth begin ? When you finally agree to do what everyone else id doing even though you know with every fibre in your entirety it is wrong to the core?Is it perhaps when you start wearing make-up and noticing the opposite sex?  Well, answers differ from each individual to the next.

I realised I had grown up when I saw the first line of blood on my wrist. It was the 21st July 2008 and I was 14. The winter was bitter and the wind was painful. I sat with my stepbrother outside and watched him smoke. I remember feeling absolutely NOTHING!!! I didn't want to tell on him, I didn't want to try it out because of curiosity, I simply didn't care. I didn't care about him, about me or anything else for that matter.

I had bought the razor blades a few days prior, but I had been flirting with the idea for months.

I walked inside the house house and locked my bedroom door. I don't think I wanted to die. I think I wanted to believe that I did. I just wanted to scream.

I had made so many decisions, been in so many situations, saw things no child my age was supposed to. I knew i was going to drown. I needed to scream, I needed to cut. And I did.

The blood seeped through and I knew I wasn't a child anymore. I couldn't have been.

Where I come from, children didn't speak of death. It was the greatest taboo ever. But there I was; not thinking about it, not talking about it, but actually wanting it. Or at least a little piece of it, if possible. I had made my bed and it was time to lie in it.

I could've stayed a child for as long as possible, but it had to happen some day. I CHOSE to expose myself to things I knew would mess with my mind. I knew the difference between right and wrong and still I chose to do wrong. I CHOSE to grow up.

Now my decisions haunt me. Years later, the consequences won't let me rest. The guilt, the shame, the foolishness. Oh please, let me go!!

I could cry and until I'm blue and purple and say I want my childhood back, but yeah right I can see how that is going to work out. So what then is the solution? For myself and those who share a story similar to mine? Well, there isn't one really. We are adults now. Perhaps a little too soon, perhaps too late but it is what it is.

We had the strength to step away from childhood, surely we have the strength to walk in big shoes. Nothing is ever as it seems and sometimes the wrong wrong decisions lead us to the right places.

I found an opening and I used it. I found my escape and I'm getting there slowly but surely. I found a way to truly smile without pretence.

Do I know what I'm doing? Nope! But I do know that I'm trying and that's enough for now.

As I switch off the lights and wish my demons and ghosts a good night. They are mine now, I made them.