The Thing About Grief

The Thing About Grief

Grief is not what you think it is until you’re inside it.

And even then, it keeps surprising you. Because it doesn’t stay in one form long enough for you to get used to it before it shifts into something else entirely.

There are nights when it suffocates. When it sits on your chest and makes breathing feel like something you have to consciously remember to do. When it hits you a hundred times over and you can’t do anything except take it, one wave after another, your head hurting and your eyes hurting and your heart hurting and your whole body just trying to get through to the next breath. There is nothing to do in those moments except feel it. As awful and helpless as that sounds, that’s all there is.

And then there are other times when it’s just a slow pulse. A dull, numbing presence somewhere behind your sternum that you’ve gotten so used to you almost forget it’s there. Almost. But not quite. Because it never fully goes away. It just gets quieter sometimes. Quiet enough that you can function, that you can move through a day, that you can almost feel normal.

Almost is the word that keeps coming back with grief. Almost okay. Almost fine. Almost like yourself again. But almost is not there. And you know the difference.

The mornings can feel like nothing. Like the grief evaporated overnight and you get to just be a person for a few hours. And sometimes that feels like relief and sometimes it feels like guilt, like you’re betraying the loss by not carrying it visibly every moment. Like feeling okay, even temporarily, means you’ve forgotten.

You haven’t forgotten. The grief is just resting. It will come back. It always comes back.

And the thing so many people do with that unpredictability is manage it. Mask it. File it away for later, for when they’re ready, for some future version of themselves that can handle it better than they can right now.

But readiness is not something that arrives. It’s not a state you reach after enough time has passed or enough healing has happened. It’s a decision. A choice to be brave enough to feel the thing that is waiting to be felt, right now, even when right now is the worst possible time.

There is nothing wrong with breaking down. Nothing weak about it. Nothing to apologize for.

Breaking down is just what it looks like when grief finally gets the space it’s been asking for.

Let it have the space.

It was always going to find it eventually.

-rz