#dearestfather

Last night, something inside me shifted. In the stillness when everything around me went quiet, I finally realised the truth I had been avoiding for years the real trigger that hits me the hardest... my father’s death. It came like a wave I didn’t see coming. The real anxiety that has been living quietly beneath my skin all this time finally hit me hard. It was the same ache that started seven years ago, on the day everything changed.

Even though his 7th death anniversary is only another month away, the pain still feels fresh sharp, familiar and unexplainable. I used to think I had accepted it, that I had learned to live with it. But last night proved otherwise. Grief doesn’t fade it just hides until silence brings it back to life.

I can still remember that day so vividly, the day I stood by his hospital bed. I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t speaking. I was just there, completely blank, with nothing to say and nothing to feel. It was like being trapped in a slow-motion nightmare. My body was present but my soul wasn’t. The world around me felt distant. The soft beeping of the monitors, the sterile smell of the room, the quiet footsteps of nurses. It all felt unreal. I was numb, lost in what I can only describe as a zombie land.

That was the moment everything inside me changed. The numbness became my shield. I moved on with life smiling when I had to, working, laughing, being “okay” but deep down something in me was frozen. I didn’t realise it then but that numbness was the start of my anxiety. It was grief that never had the space to breathe.

And last night, it came back... that same emptiness, that same racing heartbeat, that same quiet panic I felt standing beside his bed. The real anxiety that hit me wasn’t about fear of the future but fear of feeling again. Because to feel deeply is to risk breaking all over again.

I’ve carried that silence for seven years. A silence that taught me both strength and survival. My father’s death didn’t just take him away, it reshaped everything I believed about love, pain and time. I became stronger on the outside but inside, I learned to live with an ache that never completely fades.

My father wasn’t just a man, he was my compass. His strength was quiet, his love steady. He didn’t need many words to make an impact. And when he was gone, it felt like the world lost its balance. I kept moving because I had to but I never stopped missing that grounding presence.

Last night reminded me that grief isn’t just about sadness, it’s also about anxiety, confusion and the weight of unspoken emotions. It’s love with nowhere to go. It’s wanting to talk but not knowing how to start. It’s hearing a song or catching a familiar scent and suddenly feeling that same ache again.

But this time, instead of pushing it away, I let myself feel it. The pain, the anxiety, the longing... all of it. Because maybe that’s how healing really happens. Not by pretending you’re fine but by acknowledging that some parts of you still ache and that it’s okay.

As his 7th anniversary approaches, I realise that grief doesn’t mean weakness. It’s a reflection of love that was once whole and now lives in fragments within me. It’s what keeps his memory alive. His lessons... kindness, patience, resilience have become my compass now. His voice may be gone, but his strength lives through me every single day.

So when I say it hit me hard last night, I mean it in every sense. The grief, the numbness, the anxiety they all came rushing back, not to break me but to remind me that I still feel deeply. That love never truly dies.

Because grief is not the absence of healing. It’s the proof that love continues in silence, in pain, in every heartbeat that still remembers. And last night, for the first time in a long while, I allowed myself to feel it all.