_(:3/ L)_

I’ve told some friends about it, but I’ve also been petty quiet about it, because I have a lot of trouble balancing my own grief and emotions and knowing when to bottle things up and when to let them out, but it’s been a week, officially, since my grandmother passed away, and I just have SO many conflicting weird emotions about the entire thing. 

I guess, for starters, this is the first loved one that I’ve lost as an adult. My great-grandparents passed away when I was young, and even though I remember them fondly their absence never left something Missing in my life. I have a lot of anxiety about death in general, and the existentialism can drive me downright mad sometimes. I accepted their deaths with relative ease, but with my grandmother there’s a certain level of reality that sets in that yes, she does not exist anymore, no, you cannot talk to her ever again. 

As for my actual relationship with her, it’s been strained off and on. I have issues with a lot of my family members, but I spent many summers with her growing up. California is a warm memory in my mind, though it got more complicated when she moved to Colorado (I was in high school during those years, and my summers there were a bit less pleasant because of my general everything going on in my life). I specifically remember the summer after senior year and how she’d continuously corner and dog me about my detachment from everything and my worsening relationship with my parents (it was never, in the end, an option for 18-year-old me to confide about all the abuse I’d been internalizing or my messy failing friendships or my awful mental state), and there’d always been a level of uncomfortable resentment I’d harbor for her. I never doubted her love for me, but her actions could and did hurt me. 

Flash forward to the present, the pandemic, and I had ceased talking to her completely because of her views on the virus. Specifically, she got mad I wouldn’t come visit for the holidays. There was always a small part of me that wanted her to get sick so she’d finally understand the severity of the situation, and about a month ago she did. It also happened to be what killed her. It’s a lot to unpack.

Rationally, I know that harboring what-ifs and ruminating on the past is only going to hurt. Those 5 months of silence is not time I will get back, and I’m okay with that because I have to be, and I still stand by my actions at the time. Going back to my great-grandparents, their deaths are memorialized with old pictures and heirlooms. I remember them by things passed down. But I still have old conversations with my grandma on my phone that I can just look at any time. Before she slipped into a coma, she had told me that she couldn’t wait to see me in June. It’s almost July.

It feels like we’re still just feuding, and that she’s still up there doing whatever she’s doing. The silence only gets eerie after I talk with my mom on the phone and listen to her cry, because then the reality of the situation slowly creeps in again and it’s like “oh, yeah.” Time to turn to some sort of distraction so I don’t think much about it. I can see the waves of grief coming most of the time, but other times I look at a blanket she made for me that I use or remember a conversation I had with my grandpa about how he was excited for her to come home and, idk. She never did.

I guess what I’m saying is, grief is very odd and complex and strange. I keep fluctuating between feeling okay and feeling very not. I keep losing hours, sometimes days without even realizing it. My friends have been very supportive and I’ve been sincere with how I’m doing, but it’s not like I can bring up the waves of grief I keep experiencing every single day. If it’s not specifically about my grandmother, it’s replaying the conversations I had with my mom over and over in my head, listening to her cry, having to be strong. Idk

Anyway, I’m sure the feeling will persist for weeks or months or maybe even years. The fallout and shifts in family dynamics are going to be felt for a while, and the most I can do is try to cope the best ways I can.

I’m unsure what the takeaway here is (if there is anything to take away from this situation). It feels like it was a preventable situation, maybe it wasn’t, idk. I’m unsure how to wrap my thoughts up, but I hope that explains the general silence and absence. Sorry if it takes me a few days to respond to dms, time literally doesn’t feel real, LOL.

tbh im (sightly) more active on twt if any of u guys wanna check me out over there