On Grief

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine from high school died unexpectedly. We hadn’t been in contact in the last few years beyond following each other on social media, but I had known him since I was twelve. We had been friends for years, drifting closer and further apart in a cycle as he struggled with what I now know was undiagnosed bipolar disorder. We were friends and academic rivals, at the top of our class. As I started processing my grief, I went through my social media history to review our friendship. In more recent years, we exchanged Facebook birthday wishes and chatted in French (riddled with errors, but comprehensible) about life, music, movies, and books. In the archives of my long-dead Xanga blog, where I once posted about softball, sleepovers, annoying boys at school (including him), and wrote truly terrible poems, he regularly commented, usually derisively. But when I opened the oldest file, and scrolled down to the first post, I found he had commented, years later, declaring that he had “won Xanga” because he had read every post of mine, even “all of those 21 freaking poems.” I don’t think he knew any other way at the time to express his affection, admiration, or friendship, whatever connection we had. I certainly didn’t have the tools to reciprocate either.

I don’t believe in an afterlife, so I don’t believe that I will ever see him again. If you believe you will be re-united with friends and loved ones after death, I am truly grateful that you have that comfort. But in my personal view of the universe, while I have some feelings about death beyond cold empty blackness, I just can’t imagine a reality where our consciousness continues to exist in such a way.

All I have now and will ever have is the version of him that exists in my head. A ghost comprised of decades old unreliable memories and remnants of social media exchanges. I have all the stupid fights, the “edgy” points he made just to start an argument, the swings through high school from trusted confidant to drug-addled stranger. I also carry with me the impact he had on me. Pushing me to do better, write better, to think more critically about the world, to develop a sense of social justice and privilege, to fight for a better world. I have the experience of reconnecting a few years into college when he confided in me his journey through his worst breakdown and subsequent diagnosis and treatment, his experience redefining himself and how he planned to move through the world. I have the pride and awe I felt as he went on to be a successful software programmer who in his spare time wrote absurdist fiction and experimented with combining abstract art and artificial intelligence.

The world was better with him in it. And now that he’s not, what I have left is far from enough. There is so much more to a human being than can exist in another’s memory. I have this reflection of him within me that can be conjured by a song or a book or a photo, a version that I can interact with now only in my dreams. When I think of this gap, the unfathomable abyss between the whole of who he was and what pale reflection is left accessible to me, I have no other way to describe it other than it makes me wholly, terribly, unbelievably sad. The enormity of the grief sweeps up to overwhelm me.

I am awed and terrified by the power of this grief, and of grief in general. Everyone’s experiences with grief are different and change with time, but as I have processed this grief of my friend’s untimely death, I have started to recognize more forms of grief throughout my life. We closely associate grief with death, but grief can be induced by any significant loss, which means it can be induced by any significant change, even a positive one. A new job in a different state can mean grieving closeness to friends and family. Having children can induce grief for a loss of freedom (or a loss of sleep). It’s also possible to grieve something you never had, such as a relationship your birth parents, or a limb you were born without.

I am grieving many things, including the death of my friend and the death of my childhood cat (which horribly occurred within a span of two days). But I am also grieving the joy I missed out on by being ultra-focused on achievement from high school through grad school. I am grieving the loss of the full use of my limbs due to repeated injuries and chronic pain, exacerbated or caused by my hEDS. I am grieving all the things I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do again, like play catch or horse or tennis with my nieces and nephews and future children. I am grieving a life I feel like I’ll never have where half my energy isn’t devoted to doctor’s appointments and surgery and physical therapy and daily pain management and mobility exercises.

When I count the griefs, it’s easy to start to feel hopeless. But with grief, the only way out is through. With the help of a therapist, I am doing my best to let myself experience my grief and to delve deeper into the underlying emotions, experiences, traumas, so I can know myself better. I am learning to be gentler with myself, both physically and emotionally. Grief is a reaction to loss, but loss can also come with opportunities. Here I am practicing vulnerability and sharing these experiences and feelings with you, internet, which is an opportunity for growth I might not have seized were my circumstances different or my grief smaller. We may start by drowning in grief, but gradually we can swim, and then float, and from here perhaps be able to carry our grief in perspective with our opportunities.