“If I have learned one thing, it is that grief does not stop for anyone. It does not ask if you can deal with any more pain right now before it digs its claws into your skin. It does not ask if your eyes already hurt during daytime because you cry yourself to sleep every night. It doesn’t care about the colour of your skin or the money in your bank account or your education. It doesn’t check in on you and inquires after the last time you were confronted with a stroke of fate, or bad luck, or some other blow life has to offer. It comes knocking on your door at the most impossible times and even if you don’t invite it in, it will find its way into your house and into your head: it will squeeze in through the cracks in the wall, filter in through your blinds. It will hide in the nooks and crannies, concealed by shadows, and on a sunny day, when you least expect it, it will show its face. It will find you even if you try to get away from it. Sometimes it won’t release you again for a month or two or for several years. Have you ever looked at a person and thought “they don’t look like they’re grieving at all”? Have you ever found yourself judging others for how they deal with the things life has thrown at them? Most of us don’t wear our grief on our sleeves for everyone to see. We don’t keep it in our mouth - we keep it in our pockets. We carry it on our backs and shoulders. We take it with us wherever we go, and it weighs us down, but it doesn’t always show up on our face. Sometimes we don’t want to talk about it, especially not to people we barely know. The words taste like ash. Like bile. But sometimes grief takes a step back for a heartbeat, for a light moment, and it allows a soft smile to break through. Don’t judge these smiles. Don’t feel guilty if they’re your own. Because smiling, laughing despite the pain, means that you haven’t given up yet. That maybe you’re not ready yet to get back up again and to pick up the pieces, but that eventually you will be. And maybe realising this doesn’t make things easier or better, not right now. But perhaps it makes them more bearable. It makes them a little lighter. And maybe that can be a start to finding your way out of that black abyss.”
— grief / n.j.
