Wallowing Grief: "United in Grief"
That unexplainable drowning sensation explained in a ramble. (MM&TBS essay 3)
Along with the vast, grand joy I feel, I have an equal and just as vibrant portion of my emotions dedicated to slow, ocean-wave-like grief.
Grief surrounding the ancestors I never met, the deaths I’ve experienced, and most notably — from relationships still intact.
Everyone talks about how grief is a magnitude of emotion and never goes away, but it feels as if no one addresses the layers surrounding grief or how it can manifest in so many ways.
I don’t know if the right word for the prediction of grief is intuition. But it’s the deeply rooted feeling of knowing that a relationship or friendship is on the brink of falling apart — and the control you thought you had in that relationship is slipping between your fingers like sand. All you can do is try your best to keep it together and watch it unfold. Yet, the entire time it’s unfolding, it seems as though you’re not getting the words right, saying the right things, or it simply feels as though you’re standing on the other side of the door — your voice entirely muffled and unheard as yet another argument takes place. At some point, you simply give up. Completely done with the urgent pleas and relentless apologies.
Letting your hands fall to your side, your voice drops. You are just ready for the conversation to be over. At this point, you don’t even want to be heard — you just want it to be over and to be left alone again.
At moments, (whether during an argument, joyful flashback, or in the dead of night) a wave of this particular grief will wash over me. This year, the wave has been threatening to pull me under and into the vast darkness as I float around mindlessly (for I absolutely have no energy to swim out of this depth) in the murkiness with slimy, scaly, hungry creatures lurking around.
The most humiliating part of this grief is that it feels as though you’re being pushed further and further into the woods by some big scary blistering, rotting shadow creature laughing at you for once again making a fool out of yourself whilst trying to get over someone… again.
It’s midnight and morning is creeping up on me and my face is hot, my hands and feet are prickling with sweat, and unreleased tears are burning the back of my eyes and throat. My temperature is fluctuating. One minute I’m freezing and can’t seem to find anything to keep me warm and the second I put on my robe I’m burning up and itchy.
I’m having another “episode” where I just stand in the dark kitchen and listen to the tick, tick, tick of a clock that reminds me of my grandparents’s home. The comfort of it and the low hum of Kendrick Lamar rapping United in Grief in my ear are keeping me grounded— keeping me on the shore rather than following this tug of grief into the ocean. For once you’re in it, all you can see is the ocean and you have to trust yourself to swim, to see beyond the waves, and find shore once again.
I can’t recall when these moments started but I know now more than ever, they’ve been happening three times more than ever. Typically, it’s easier to cry and move on, but today’s started after a knock-you-down-and-make-you-accidentally-swallow-salt-water wave hit me and started this long stream of thought that I now can’t seem to stop.
Once again, the only thing to bring me back to Earth is me prompting myself to think about a book I loved.
In one of my recent reads, Bad Cree by Jessica Johns, the story follows a girl named Mackenzie is quite literally being haunted — or hunted by her grief. An unknown and intimidating force starts plaguing Makenzie’s dream. Because of them, she returns to her hometown (a place she fled years ago). Where there used to be a booming industry, there is now full of boarded homes and worn down abandoned buildings. Hurt and grief gathers there, and it’s creating something.
In my last post, I talked about this and shared how it’s definitely one of my favorite books of the year and absolutely a new all time favorite. It’s a horror story, it’s folktale, but it’s also a fierce and urgent plea to stop the brutality of indigenous and native people and the land that belongs to them.
My god, I will never forget some of the quotes I read from this book. The book taught me many necessary lessons surrounding family, grief, loss, and trust.
“I want this embrace to mean everything between us is forgiven, that the years of heartbreak can be healed. But for all a body can do, it can't dam a river that runs too wide.”
-Jessica Johns, Bad Cree
“I know what it's like to be made into something, to not be sure if the hole in me was always there or if it was carved out over the years.”
-Jessica Johns, Bad Cree
"We aren't ignoring it on purpose, that's just how this family holds hurt. If we paid attention to it all the time, it'd destroy us. Instead, we laugh, we tease each other, we eat. Hurt lives with Us always. Like dirt under our fingernails."
-Jessica Johns, Bad Cree
Thanks for reading.
Yulani.
beautiful beautiful beautiful writing yulani, the clear and distinct voice you use when talking about something so vulnerable is beyond powerful