You're So Last Summer

But it’s the only time I see your face

When my father first died I thought great, he’s a fucking statistic. He’s amongst the 500k people in America who have died the same death in the same pandemic. My grieving is no different from those other people’s. I thought that until I watched this film called Little Fish. There’s a quote that just has stuck with me from the second I heard it. “When your disaster is everyone’s disaster, how do you grieve?” I started to think that it’s okay to be self centered and grieve. My dad isn’t just a number he was the greatest person I’ve ever known and I should be able to be sad and suicidal and miserable about his death cause it’s MY life. I always say to my friend Sydney “I don’t mean to have a woe is me moment” and she always tells me that I should and it’s okay. If anyone else is unfortunately apart of the 500k please take time to feel sorry for yourself. Know that we are part of something other people will never understand. They will never get the rage of seeing people not taking Covid seriously and complaining about minuscule things why your loved ones death has absolutely destroyed your lives. They’ll never get why you see red when people ask if your loved one had an underlying health problem as if it fucking matters. They’ll never understand the feeling of not being able to say goodbye cause they wouldn’t let you even be in the hospital. They’ll never understand the feeling of not having a proper funeral for someone you cherished so deeply. They’ll never understand that people talking about last March all jokingly isn’t a joke to you. They’ll never get the weird specific type of grieving that comes with losing someone to this virus. A virus that some people pretend is over as they party for spring break or say “its just the flu.” They’ll never understand that your grieving has been public. That the triggers are everywhere because we are still living through a pandemic. I want you to know that it’s okay to feel like you are the only one who feels this, because you might be the only one in your circle of friends and family, but know that you are not alone. How you grieve is up to you and is sadly one of the only things we have complete control of. Be safe.

Before I experienced grief I said I couldn’t imagine it. When I saw people lose their loved ones my heart ached for them cause I couldn’t imagine the pain they felt. Now that I have also lost a loved one I was right I had absolutely no fucking idea. A friend of a friend told me that “losing a parent is like a sick fucking club no one wants to be a part of and you only get it if you went through it.” Weirdly it was one of the most comforting messages I got cause it was the realest one. Since getting my membership to the grief club I still haven’t wrapped my head around the fact that my dad is actually dead. In my mind I know he’s gone forever but he’s just gone. When I think about other dead people I don’t see him that way and so far I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. The first four days were the worst. I cried myself to sleep every night which shockingly I have never done or at least I don’t remember doing. I felt like I was in a suffocating fishbowl. I felt like I could see everyone moving on with their lives and I was drowning. I felt like I was three drinks in and I couldn’t sober up. It was so unfair that everyone was moving on like normal and my world was falling apart. My head was just constantly spinning. Every five seconds in my head I had to remind myself that my dad was dead. It just wouldn’t click for me I had to think it over and over and over again. I just couldn’t believe that the person I loved most on this earth was gone forever. I obviously try not to think about it but when I do I wanna scream and rip my hair out. I wanna cry but then the crying gets so tiring. To be honest at this point I’m sick of crying. It isn’t relieving anymore it’s tiring and sucks all the life out of me. The only thing that is relieving is writing but currently I can only write about how I feel. Writing my scripts for class and my carefully articulated fantasy worlds I spent hours on don’t appeal to me anymore cause my reality is so dark. Everyday I just wanna wake up from this never ending nightmare. If I think about it too hard I have to stop myself cause I physically can feel my heart start to hurt and it feels like I’m gonna have a heart attack. I wanna spiral. I wanna stop time. I don’t wanna move on but I have too. There’s so many things that remind me of him it’s insane. One of his favorite Lana songs came on and I cried for like 5 minutes after. You never know what’s gonna trigger you. You never know what day is gonna be a black hole and what day you’ll feel perfectly normal. And on those days you feel perfectly normal you’ll start second guessing if you’re okay or if you’re grieving properly but the thing is you are. Some days are gonna suck but the good days, the good days you have to soak up cause you never know what the next is gonna bring. People really don’t know what to say when someone dies and that’s okay. Just knowing that they want to help is enough. The grief membership does grant you one positive thing. Access to other people in the club. Only people who have experienced the same sort of loss knows what it feels like. If you know other people in this club you know that they’re the people who will help you out the most even if they’re people you haven’t seen in forever or even talk to regularly. I guess that’s all I have on my mind to say at the moment. I’ll swipe my card and tell you all about me again soon.