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”