Grief

Oscillations

I thought recovery would be like this:

But actually, it was more like this:

Any human who has recovered from something difficult will tell you that progress is frustratingly nonlinear. The average day is probably bad, but there are days when things everything feels entirely fine. These days might happen so soon after the event that you’ll feel guilty for feeling OK at all. “Shouldn’t I be sad right now?”

Similarly, some time will pass and one day you’ll find yourself deep in the pits. And you’ll wonder, “It’s been so long. How can I be doing so badly?” But that’s just the nature of healing.

Why are the high points higher than baseline? I’ve felt some of the most rawest joy of my entire life this year. Maybe it’s because when you’re low for so long any sense of normalcy feels transcendent.

Another puzzling thing is how your outlook is also swinging around. When I’m bad, I doubt that I’ll ever get better. What a funny thing. When I’m sick, I think to myself: “Damn, this thing is really kicking my ass. Meh, I’ll be better in a few days.” I don’t think: “Wow, I’m so sick. I wonder if I’ll ever get over it. Maybe I’ll just be sick like this for the rest of my life.” But that’s exactly how a bad day feels. And I’ll readily forget that last week was a good week and I felt like nothing was wrong at all.

When, this happens, I usually just gaslight myself a bit and tell myself I’m being delusional. This usually helps and I feel better in a few days.

Does time heal all?

It does get better with time. Some people will find that comforting, but personally, I hate it. I hate waiting for something to get better. I’m an obsessive person, and when I have a problem, I want to solve it. I don’t want to wait for it to go away.

Sitting back and waiting makes me feel like life is passing me by. I was told it’ll take a year to start feeling normal. But I’ll never get that year back. Sometimes I’m struggling and all I can do is keep my head above water for one more day and hope that things get better. But I’ll never get that day back.

I’ve noticed that “give it time” incentivizes avoidance. If you’re feeling bad about something, well, the solution is time. So you should just do something to get your mind off of it and time will heal.

This doesn’t really work for me. Time slowly heals things, but I’m often in search of a step change. Grieving isn’t just accepting one fact. It’s coming to terms with a set of attitudes and behaviors structured around a world that doesn’t exist. So when I’m stuck on an attitude of mine, I’ll think about it as much as possible so I can actually work through it.

Here’s an example: I was stuck on a particular idea for six whole weeks after it happened. It was just something I could not accept. Those six weeks were rough, but I truly felt like I could not improve without working through them.

Maybe it was rough because I was obsessing over this thing 50+ times a day. But if I didn’t obsess over it, I may have never figured it out and been stuck in that state for months. Obsessing, brooding, and ruminating over it enabled me to get over it.

Reconstructing yourself and being a WIP

Losing something that’s actually important to you forces you to reconstruct parts of your identity without it. Imagine losing your parents. Even though I’m 24, part of me is still a naive kid whose mom sets him straight. Without her, I’ll have to let go of that part of myself. I’ve spent lots of time over the past year thinking about who I am, who I want to be, and how my identity needs to change.

On the bright side, grief is often such a shock to your identity system that you can change much faster than usual. Some parts of my identity were readily available to drop off. Others, I sort of had to shake them free.

During an identity change, it’s natural to feel uncertain. I haven’t felt like myself for the past year. Sounds obvious, right? How else would changing your identity feel? It’s natural to feel insecure, anxious, or manic.

One thing that’s helped me a lot is spending time with people that give you the space to grow. When I spend time with certain people, I feel like they expect me to be cool, or confident, or certain. But the right people appreciate you for how you are right now and don’t put pressure on you to be “cool” or portray yourself in a way that requires high social status.

Your identity cannot change if you put yourself in these type of high-pressure social environments. In these situations, you need to hold onto the parts of yourself that you’re certain about in order to survive. That’s not what you want to do. You need to be around people with compassion and have compassion for yourself. It is natural to stumble, be awkward, represent yourself poorly and you should expect to do so as a part of healing.

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