It’s strange when we think about how grief works for each person. Speaking for myself, I feel like it’s something that takes a while to sink in, you know? I can’t understand how one moment someone is right there beside you, where you can talk to them, laugh together, and hold each other, and the next, they’re simply not there anymore. It’s something I still can’t quite process. I feel like grief reflects itself in some of our relationships throughout our lives. To me, there is the “traditional” kind of grief, where someone passes on to the spiritual plane (if you believe in that, and if you don’t, that’s okay), and as strange as it may sound, that is the kind of grief that makes the most sense to me. And then there is the other kind of pain, where the person is still alive but no longer takes part in your life.
I have experienced both kinds of grief, but that doesn’t mean I have the right to speak on it. About seven years ago, I lost one of the most important people in my life, the person who gave me my most genuine laughs, the person responsible for some of the best memories I have to this day. And I confess that it still hurts to remember, because grief doesn’t just take that person away from you; it also takes away a part of your future. I’ve caught myself wondering countless times how he would react to my move, to my ex-boyfriends, to the chaos in our family, to all the changes in my college plans, and to our family trips. But deep down, the question that keeps me up at night is simple: What would things be like today if he were still here? I don’t think it’s a fair question, but if we talk about decisions, how would his decisions have affected me today? If he were here, would I still have the courage to move away? There are so many “what ifs” that I’d rather not think about them too much.
When I say I’ve experienced both kinds of grief, I mean it. For a large part of my childhood, I experienced my first kind of grief: the grief of my parents’ marriage. Being an only child with divorced parents isn’t easy for anyone, but I want to talk a little about what happened before the dreaded signing of the papers. There is a moment when your parents hide things from you, not because they are bad or dishonest people, but because they want to spare you from certain adult pains. That wasn’t my case. My parents always made sure to make our situation at home clear. The moment I realized their marriage was over was the first time the sky came crashing down on me, and it wasn’t even my marriage. Grieving an expectation will always be a devastating kind of pain, and I confess that I don’t know if it can ever truly be healed.
Thinking about the years that followed, a lot of things happened, but sometimes, when I find myself thinking about the friendships that were left behind in the past, I still feel a pang of pain. It’s funny because when we’re children, it feels like we have all the friends in the world and never have to worry about that, but as we grow older, the world seems to get bigger and you become more and more alone. To me, grief is a horrible way of saying that a chapter ended before one of the people involved was ready for it, and in the end, the one who stays will always be the one who suffers the most. I keep thinking about how the things around me have been shaped by the small and large traumas that have happened throughout my life. If I let myself get carried away by my thoughts, in the end, my life seems like a long sequence of moments that ended halfway through, and I confess that I don’t know how that could possibly be healthy for a person.
Today, my heart is made up of small pieces that are slowly finding their way back together, and I feel it whenever I find myself smiling again at things I wouldn’t have smiled at during this period. Today, my pain involves one specific person who, unfortunately (or fortunately), chose to leave, but at different moments, my pain was simply the result of a collection of things that happened in a very short amount of time, which is quite different from what I understand grief to be. I’m always questioning the difference between a pain that never goes away and grief, since I can’t seem to see a difference between the two. Grief, to me, will always be marked on my soul, whether it is the pain of losing the person I loved the most, the pain of ending a friendship, the end of my parents’ marriage, or the end of a failed relationship. In the end, I believe grief shapes us as people. I just haven’t figured out yet whether it shapes us for better or for worse.
To no One,
Cora Vesper.