To limbo or to let go

A short piece on grief

Prelude

I wrote the first draft of this while I was in my most vulnerable state. I came back to it several times, uncertain whether I wanted to share it. Then a few more times to edit it and each time leaving it unfinished because I couldn’t. I haven’t explicitly shared what was going on earlier this year that left me incapable of creating for nearly a month but as I process and heal, I wanted to take some of that pain and turn it into something more beautiful. I guess what I’m trying to say is: this is the first look at that.

When you hear about accidents, no matter how devastating the situation (or how empathetic you are as a person) it can sometimes be hard to grasp the gravity or weight of these events. That’s probably a good thing. The degrees of separation allow our brains to see it from a distance. To take it with a grain of salt. To know that it’s a devastating event but to not feel it.

There is also the fact that these things happen every single day. Multiple times a day. So that adds to the numbing we feel towards horrific accidents we wear on the news, over media, or even from people we know. No matter how geographically or demographically close you are, the tragedies don’t quite hit home. They’ll never teach you the same lessons it’ll teach the ones affected.

In December, this all changed for me. The past few years, the world has been filled with tragedies, so large I can hardly believe or even come close to understanding fully. However, when someone close to you is in an accident, despair suddenly becomes crystal clear. Unavoidable. Relentless.

What I didn’t know (besides loosely learning about the stages of grief) is that your emotions aren’t linear. That you’ll sway between feeling nothing and suddenly feeling everything in a blink of an eye. That you’ll feel both like your floating and like everything is crashing down around you. That your mind will even teeter between wanting to hope for the best, and wanting to just let go and move on. The guilt that comes with that. The pain.