It doesn’t really have bad intentions, it just does a good job at making you feel like shit 90% of the time when it roots its ugly head. It’s not evil like a nemesis or a mean-girl friend, but it’s not pure and good like the supportive angel you would consider your bestest friend. It’s like your shadow that somehow looks darker on super sunny days. Or that weird achy pain that flares up in your knees for no reason whenever it’s like 50 degrees outside.

It’s just there, void of intent but yet, it doesn’t make you feel any better to know that it’s “apart of life” or “a consequence of love.” The justification or explanation doesn’t really appease the hurt you feel, does it?

I feel like grief has been with me my entire life. It’s a funny thing to realize. Not really funny, but just like… oh, I see. I’m realizing that my whole life, I have been feeling this thing that now I’m now so familiar with now. However… Grief, as it is experienced towards, or with, people still alive but not available to you… is so different from the grief you experience when the person is gone forever.

It’s weird how I was grieving my mom before I knew what the feeling was called. Grief in childhood, through foster care, into adolescence. Realizing through my best friend, what exactly grief feels like after a permanent loss. Then, experiencing it again with my mother. Yet, it feels heavier now. Like. Damn. I’ve lost my mom over and over again, just to lose her right when I finally got her back? What type of sick and twisted shit is that. 

I’m not mad at my mom, just as I’m not mad at T. It’s just a new gaping hole that is twice as big and painful than the one I developed after losing my friend. I thought I knew pain and heartbreak after that in 2023. I had no idea until my mom passed. I had no idea at all. At all, at all.

I wish I could describe it in words. It’s like a heavy twist and deep ache that I can physically feel in my chest. Like when I’m thinking about my mom, I can feel it immediately in my chest and stomach.

I would compare the feelings to something that is exists more as an after effect versus a prominent symptom. Like the sting of sunburn when you touch it, the ache in your muscles after a long exercise, the prickly feeling in your foot as it’s waking up from being asleep, or when your hand is cramping at night from typing or writing too long. It’s like swoops in your stomach on a rollercoaster, that sore throat feeling you get when you are about to cry your eyes out, your heart rate is slowing as you start to fall asleep, or your eyes feeling heavy with tears before you’re about to cry.